Freddy Shepherd, Saint or Sinner?
Sent in by Steve, July 7, 2006
I think the site is excellent, I have to admit that I didn’t realise how bad things were until seeing everything being brought together as you have here.
I would just like to add my thoughts.
When Mr Shepherd took over the club he was the luckiest Newcastle United chairman ever.
He took over a club that had finished 2nd in the Premiership, arguably the most watched football league in the world.
He took over a club that was known as “The Entertainers”.
He took over a club that was picking up supporters from all around the globe, the football club was on the up and up and only needed to repeat a little of the progress made under the previous chairman.
Did the power and the limelight go to his head?
We’ll never know, what we do know is that the club changed direction, we went from being known as “The Entertainers” to become known as a joke club.
The good publicity became a thing of the past, almost overnight the press seemed to turn against the club and they didn’t have to work hard to find a story.
First bad publicity came when the club started the rebuilding of the Leazes and Milburn stands. The fans who had been asked for and given a payment for a bond which gave the club much needed cash were pushed to one side.
This wasn’t done for the fans, it was to get more cash from the public, or closer to the truth, it was to abandon the public and get more cash from business, the fans became the opposition.
The next debacle wasn’t far away, it wasn’t long before we had to read how our two main directors were getting drunk while being scammed by The News of the World while they thought that they were meeting up with wealthy Arab Sheikh in a Spanish brothel.
Our two arrogant directors seemed to think it was funny and acceptable to rip into the fans for being stupid enough to pay a fortune for football shirts which cost £5 to manufacture.
They also thought that Alan Shearer was fair game, these two men sat in a brothel and had the cheek to have a go at Alan Shearer because of his Mary Poppins image. It’s a shame that these two didn’t learn from Shearer instead of wallowing in the gutter.
I’ll add more when I have more spare time, the dynamic duo really have a lot to answer for. As one of the articles on the site mentions, these parasites have used the club as a cash cow while pretending to be fans.
Shepherd, the next time you appoint a manager make the decision in this way, daw up a list of names, add every manager on the planet, put your first choice at the top and work your way down, appoint whoever is at the bottom as you’ll get it all wrong again. I have no doubt what-so-ever on that point, you’re hopeless.