The Freddy Years
Nufcmismanagement, almost 9 years of “Rolls-Royce” players under performing and “Rolls-Royce” directors performing in the wrong places, brothels.
It’s coming up to 9 years as chairman for Freddy Shepherd and he’s certainly made an impact although it isn’t for the better.
This December sees the anniversary of the retirement of Sir John Hall and the rise of Freddy Shepherd to the position of chairman of Newcastle United; it’s also the anniversary of the beginning of our decline, no coincidence I think.
Since December 1997 we’ve seen a catalogue of disaster after disaster from within St James’ Park.
The club that was fighting to knock Manchester United off the top of the Premiere League was universally known as the entertainers, the second team of most fans and the club made headlines for all of the right reasons, the headlines were usually for what happened on the pitch, not off the pitch.
Today, those headlines seem to be in the distant past, not that we are short of headlines, it’s just now we expect the worst when we see our name in print or see the club name on television, we’re rarely proven to be wrong either, here’s some of what we’ve had to put up with.
January 1998 was probably the start of things and a sign that the man in power at Newcastle was so arrogant that he could do and say whatever he wanted.
Newcastle were drawn away to Stevenage in the FA Cup. This should have been a great day for a club that could never dream of playing against multi-millionaires but we made sure that we spoiled it for them by trying to bully them into playing at Newcastle instead of somewhere down south. The press loved it and Newcastle and Freddy Shepherd were made to look like bullies in a school playground, I felt ashamed.
We didn’t have to wait long for the headlines to get even worse and for that we must thank The News of the World and two of our illustrious directors, none other than our chairman and deputy chairman, Freddy Shepherd and Douglas Hall respectively, I use any word which contains “respect” very lightly when it’s used in the same sentence as these two.
Back to the sting, we had the two most senior directors getting drunk in a Spanish brothel, what an example to set our young multi-millionaire players. Alan Shearer was branded as “Mary Poppins,” the fans became mugs for wearing our clubs colours and badge with pride, and our female relatives became “dogs.” Shepherd and Hall rightly became outcasts, Hall was to pay a price a few years later when his children had grown up, and his wife divorced him.
They didn’t leave without a fight and backlash from the fans. No, they tried to remain in those high paying positions which they held within the corridors of power, it took over a week before they realised that they were having a negative effect on the brand that Newcastle had become.
The decision to leave had nothing to do with honour or dignity, neither men had either of those traits, it was the damage that remaining would do financially, the share price was going down quicker than Sunderland.
Within a month of the two leaving Newcastle appointed Alistair Wilson to the board, his job was to improve the image of the club.
Shepherd and Hall were away from March 1998 until December of the same year when they returned after two votes at the club AGM.
First came a show of hands for both men to return, it was no surprise when the motion was overwhelmingly defeated only for Freddy Fletcher to call for a formal poll of all shareholders, they were back and it was only a formality as they controlled 60% of the vote between them, they got back with 70% of the vote.
The next farce didn’t take long to rear its ugly head, 2000 came and with it arrived Newcastle United v fans.
A lot of fans had purchased bonds for £500 which promised them a guaranteed seat for 10 years, the fans thought it was the seats that they had at that time, the club decided later that this wasn’t the case, the club wanted to sell these seats at an inflated price and no fan was going to get in the way.
The club won the court battle and the fans were moved, a campaign known as “Save our Seats” has failed.
The BBC described the battle as “another embarrassing episode for the directors of the Premiership club that has some of the country's most fanatical fans.”
2001 brought the resignation of David Stonehouse; the reason given was 'personal reasons' although he had commented that the clubs falling share price was due to the string of public relation scandals, including “Toongate” which had rocked the club.
Newcastle shares were worth around 95p each in early 1999, but have fallen steadily since then to 35p; something tells me that the 10% of shareholders who voted with Shepherd and Hall to get them back into the club were regretting that decision.
2003 brought rift within the club, not club v fans this time; this was football v finance, manager v chairman.
Sir Bobby Robson and Shepherd were at odds with each other over a televised game against Wolves which came 48 hours after a European game against Basle, Alan Shearer became involved claiming that the decision to play was "ridiculous."
Shepherd said "We have the fourth biggest wage bill in the Premiership and the money has to be found from somewhere. "That's why Newcastle United explores every avenue so that we can compete with the best teams in Europe.”Our players are on high wages even though we are outside London and we are happy to maintain this. "But if our players feel that they should not have played two games in three days, then they should look no further than Real Madrid.”The Real Madrid vice-president, Emilio Butragueno, told me only this week that they played 68 games last season, and that they were making two tours at the end of next season to Asia and the US. "The Real Madrid players aren't asked if they want to go on these tours, they are just told they are going, it's as simple as that."
The club received £650,000 for facing the cameras against Wolves.
Eight months later and Shepherd announced to the world that Sir Bobby would not be having his contract renewed, Sir Bobby was asked about this during a press conference and he said that he didn’t know anything about it.
Within hours Sir Bobby was being labelled as a “Lame Duck Manager.”
The press were predicting that things would go wrong within the club now that the manager was shown to have no authority, how could he have any authority considering the players would be at the club long after the manager?
This all happened within the closed season and the predictions from the press didn’t take long to become reality.
Kieran Dyer was asked to play on the right wing at Middlesbrough because we had so many players out through an eye infection.
Dyer refused and that was it, all hell broke out, the manager was being questioned, just like the press had predicted.
Sir Bobby was sacked within weeks; we were told that the club would have been relegated if they had not sacked Sir Bobby.
Worse was to come, names were being thrown about as to who would become manager, all of the top managers were linked, we ended up taking Graeme Souness off the hands of Blackburn and we paid them compensation for the pleasure.
They must have loved it because at one time he looked more of a favourite for the sack than Sir Bobby, they didn’t only save money, they were given money, and the sad thing is, I’m starting to laugh as I type this, it’s comical, it’s starting to resemble a script for Mr Bean but it’s factual.
5th in the league was unacceptable for Sir Bobby so we had something good to look forward to as the new manager would have to beat this, he didn’t.
We went from 5th to 14th inside of one season, we had one of our star players shipped out to Scotland for calling his manager a liar in response for the manager telling all who would listen that the player had feigned an injury because he didn’t want to play out wide.
We had two players send off during one match for fighting with each other, Lee Bowyer ran over to Dyer and started punching him, the media loved it, the circus was back in town and headlines were assured.
Freddy Shepherd had appointed a disciplinarian and now we had two players acting like a couple of prize fighters in front of 52,000 fans and millions watching on TV all over the world.
We were still the entertainers, not for football, but comedy value, and the fans were getting in on the act, we had paper aeroplanes being launched towards the pitch from the stands and the same fans were getting photographs of Laurel & Hardy and photoshopping the heads of Shepherd & Souness onto the bodies of the comic duo, laughter was to be heard long and loud.
14th was our final league position under Souness, the football was terrible more often than not so a few people expected to see a new manager at the club.
Freddy Shepherd kept faith with his manager and so we ended up looking at a new season with Souness picking the team.
After a few early games the natives were becoming restless over the inactivity in the transfer market.
The manager was going to the press and letting everybody know that he had given his shopping list to the chairman, the fans were starting chants of “sack the board.” Shepherd went out and spent £millions on Michael Owen, Albert Luque and Nolberto Solano.
We’d already sent £8.8 million up to Ibrox to acquire the services of Boumsong who had joined Rangers some 5 months earlier for nothing.
This transfer was enough to have the Rangers chairman thank Souness for keep going back to Rangers for players and in doing so helping his friends club out.
To cut a long story short, the football was dreadful, Luque sustained a bad injury, the fans turned against Shepherd and Souness, we were dumped out of the League Cup by Wigan reserves, away fans were barraging Shepherd and calling for heads, two players collided on the pitch and Souness was history, sacked in early February.
Shepherd told the media that one of the reasons that Souness had failed was because the fans were against him and that he wouldn’t make the same mistake again, the next manager had to be popular with the fans.
Glenn Roeder was appointed team manager to be supported by Alan Shearer, results picked up along with the atmosphere in the stands.
The fans tried to get a German appointed, the most successful manager in Europe, Shepherd branded the efforts as a betting scam one day only to deny ever saying it, this is the same man who had claimed that Shearer wanted to knock 10 bells out of Bellamy only to retract his statement on the clubs official website.
The fans applauded Roeder as a “thank you” and Shepherd took this as an endorsement for Roeder to become manager, at least that’s what the chairman claimed when appearing to blame the fans for Roeder being appointed even before sacking him.
The 2006 closed season brought promises of team strengthening, we were told that we were in pole position for 3 players within hours of the close of the transfer window and were we not to be disappointed, in came Rossi and Sibierski followed by Olivier Bernard the day after the transfer window closed, he was allowed to move because he was a free agent.
The sad thing is that both the Hall family and Shepherd family have made £millions out of this club, they’ve been rewarded while the fans have suffered for most of the last 9 years.
We’ve come a long way since 1991 but we’ve also fallen a long way in the last 9 years while the Hall family have trousered £12 million more than they initially invested.
They still hold in the region of 53 million shares so will make something in excess of £20 million on share dealings alone, Douglas Hall has also taken a salary.
The Shepherd family have taken the club for £5 million for the investment of just over £8 million, most of that has come from dividends, it hasn’t been coming out of Freddy’s pocket, the Shepherd family currently owns in the region of 34 million shares, not bad for a £3,500,000 investment which allowed him to set his own salary.
So far almost £24 million has gone out of the club to the benefit of the two families, that’s without taking salaries into account.
We’ve all heard that the club is subject to a takeover bid which is at an early stage.
The Belgravia Group have held early talks with Sir John and his son, it’s been reported that Sir John and Douglas are not too happy that Shepherd is holding out and preventing them from cashing in on the shares.
What would the Belgravia Group bring?
It’s hard to say but from looking at the core activity of the Belgravia Group it would appear that they would be looking to tap into the fan base through financial interests which they currently have setup with other sports based businesses, they have dealings in club credit cards and hospitality.
The club would need to be a success for the Group to increase revenue although the loyalty of the supporters when things don’t go well would offer them steady business on this front.
The chairman of Newcastle United has access to publicity which would cost a fortune for a normal business; the media have pages just waiting for the chairmen of football clubs to speak out.
Rumours of a connection to the ruling family of Dubai have been refuted which is a pity.
Look at what these people have done for the country they call home and it’s not all a result of tapping into oil, they were building up Dubai long before they had oil and they will have a stable economy long after the oil has gone, they’ve built something that will be long lasting, they’ve shown foresight and are being rewarded for it.
If this is the callibre of potential investors then the quicker this happens the better for our club. We can all moan that we've become a play thing for the rich and that may turn out to be true, personally, I'd rather moan about this than be moaning that we can't compete and are going backwards, currently, that's the case.
This is becoming a regular statement now but here goes: