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[The Janitor]

What’s this all about?

Since Mike Ashley took full control of Newcastle United in June, some people here at Newcastle-Online have gone about forging a mutually beneficial relationship with the football club, something which was sadly lacking during the previous regime. Ourselves, NUFC.com and other fanzines like True Faith and The Mag have recognised the importance of good relations with the club for a long while now and finally, under the new owner, the people that matter have begun to respond.

What does this mean?

Basically, we now have the means to get our member’s opinions across to Newcastle United Football Club, through the proper channels, meaning that your opinion becomes more than just words on a fans’ website. To their enormous credit, the club have given us all a unique and unprecedented chance to get our personal opinions to the upper echelons of the St. James’ Park hierarchy.

Obviously, this is too good an opportunity for us to miss out on and so in the coming days, weeks, months and (hopefully) years we will be doing our utmost to utilise this new tool at our disposal and we need YOUR help to do so. With everything “under review” at Gallowgate, there has never been a better time to have an opinion.

What do you need from me?

The first step on this previously-untrodden path is simply to find out some of your likes and dislikes about the current – and previous - Newcastle United. We want to know about every issue that concerns you and that you want to be heard about, no matter how big or small, whether it’s to do with away games, home games, the Box Office, club merchandise, the atmosphere inside St. James’, food and drink prices inside the ground, the new season tickets, the players, the manager, the staff, the pre-game and half-time entertainment, scoreboards, big-screens, potential transfers, the local media, the club website, the new kits, the club shops, Shearer’s Bar, the internal and external appearance of the stadium...

Literally, anything that comes to mind, whether good or bad, whether you’re from the NE1 postcode or you’re in Outer Mongolia, we want to know – but, far more importantly than that, the club now want to know. No opinion will go to waste, nothing will be overlooked if we don’t agree with it ourselves, we’ve often said before that Newcastle-Online is run for the fans, by the fans, and this our chance to prove it - together.

What does the future hold?

Well, hopefully more of the same. We feel that sites like this one have an awful lot to offer Newcastle United Football Club. We have over 2,500 members on the forum alone and a great deal more who simply read the website, that’s a lot of potential feedback and opinion – from all corners of the globe and from all ages, races, genders and creeds – from people who all have the same agenda and the same interest at heart: to see Newcastle United prosper.

We cannot encourage you enough to take part and have your say, because you never know who might be listening/reading and you never know what it might lead to.

The more replies the better, so get posting!

[Newcastle Fan]

Brilliant 

[DazzaNufc1892]

few points id raise

1) make sure alan oliver isnt allowed to continue to be a mouth piece for the clubs dirty dealings

2) lets fall in line with other clubs with regards to league cup games and pricings

3) more than what is seeminlgy one line to get through to the box office when things like fa cup tickets are on open sale, because that 5 hour wait and hearing an engaged tone gives you a headache

4) more player interaction with fans to build morale and a good image with the media and other clubs. I remember leeds under O'Leary used 2 go out 15 minutes before a warm up and sign autographs for fans, this really gave a feel good feeling to fans and boosted support, also could turn our "s*** club" reputation round around the country.

[Northern Monkey]

few points id raise

1) make sure alan oliver isnt allowed to continue to be a mouth piece for the clubs dirty dealings

2) lets fall in line with other clubs with regards to league cup games and pricings

3) more than what is seeminlgy one line to get through to the box office when things like fa cup tickets are on open sale, because that 5 hour wait and hearing an engaged tone gives you a headache

4) more player interaction with fans to build morale and a good image with the media and other clubs. I remember leeds under O'Leary used 2 go out 15 minutes before a warm up and sign autographs for fans, this really gave a feel good feeling to fans and boosted support, also could turn our "s*** club" reputation round around the country.

1 and 4, especially.

Oh, and fans to be expelled from the ground if they sing that "we are the Geordies/the Geordie Bootboys" s****.

And get rid of Carling from the bar. Its rank.

[Scott Parker's 60's Haircut]

One from an excile

Remove the exclusive internet radio from Newcastle World, or make it worthwhile to subscribe.

I don't want to have to go down the 'illegal' route to hear/see the games live, but at the moment I have no choice.

Even if its just letting Radio Newcastle broadcast over the internet it would help immensly

[NSG]

few points id raise

1) make sure alan oliver isnt allowed to continue to be a mouth piece for the clubs dirty dealings

2) lets fall in line with other clubs with regards to league cup games and pricings

3) more than what is seeminlgy one line to get through to the box office when things like fa cup tickets are on open sale, because that 5 hour wait and hearing an engaged tone gives you a headache

4) more player interaction with fans to build morale and a good image with the media and other clubs. I remember leeds under O'Leary used 2 go out 15 minutes before a warm up and sign autographs for fans, this really gave a feel good feeling to fans and boosted support, also could turn our "s*** club" reputation round around the country.

1 and 4, especially.

Oh, and fans to be expelled from the ground if they sing that "we are the Geordies/the Geordie Bootboys" s****.

And get rid of Carling from the bar. Its rank.

Carling is here to stay i'm afraid, just signed the deal with them now.

Get rid of the fluffy mascots, don't bring in music after goals etc...
Bring back Local Hero.
Get rid of Alan Oliver in all forms.

[James]

I would like to see the club push the Premier League into following the line of UEFA competitions and other European competitions in increasing the number of named substitutes to at least seven.

That is certainly something that would help the club, and help English football in general (and improved English football equals better sales of football merchandise in Mike Ashley's stores)

[Scott Parker's 60's Haircut]

Oh, and a thought thats been in my head for a while...


Replace the programme with a detailed weekly NUFC/North East sports newspaper.

Fill it with news, in depth previews/reviews, interviews, guest comments, the lot.

Basically expand on the programmes to make it more of a rounded NUFC product than a match product.

Could replace the Ronnie in no time as the primary source of NUFC related info

[80]

Bring back Local Hero.

A quickie from me - keep Local Hero out of the ground. Energy-sapping dirge.

[WarrenBartonCentrePartin]

few points id raise

1) make sure alan oliver isnt allowed to continue to be a mouth piece for the clubs dirty dealings

2) lets fall in line with other clubs with regards to league cup games and pricings

3) more than what is seeminlgy one line to get through to the box office when things like fa cup tickets are on open sale, because that 5 hour wait and hearing an engaged tone gives you a headache

4) more player interaction with fans to build morale and a good image with the media and other clubs. I remember leeds under O'Leary used 2 go out 15 minutes before a warm up and sign autographs for fans, this really gave a feel good feeling to fans and boosted support, also could turn our "s*** club" reputation round around the country.

1 and 4, especially.

Oh, and fans to be expelled from the ground if they sing that "we are the Geordies/the Geordie Bootboys" s****.

And get rid of Carling from the bar. Its rank.

Carling is here to stay i'm afraid, just signed the deal with them now.

Get rid of the fluffy mascots, don't bring in music after goals etc...
Bring back Local Hero.
Get rid of Alan Oliver in all forms.

yeah, sort the annoying, yet easy-to-fix problems first.

[DazzaNufc1892]

keep local hero out, its s****, almost as bad as charltons red red robin

[CoachHTT]

Really guys, you should all take up this fantastic opportunity, it will be like writing a letter to the important people at the club and having them read it themselves and maybe even putting some of the things into consideration or even practice. The club have appealed to fansites and fanzines such as ours and want to know what we think about NUFC and how to best go about making NUFC a successful club, a happy club.

Rich, I hope you're up for a 10,000 word essay from me

PS Time to start trusting the club because they want to do things to benefit us all as recent attempts to improve the atmosphere and get more kids into the stadium with free tickets prove, something they said they'd consider and have acted on. 

[Dave]

From what I've read the various ticketing/box office problems are the biggest, most immediate and 'in our face' things that need sorting out promptly.

[Northern Monkey]

Oh, and a thought thats been in my head for a while...


Replace the programme with a detailed weekly NUFC/North East sports newspaper.

Fill it with news, in depth previews/reviews, interviews, guest comments, the lot.

Basically expand on the programmes to make it more of a rounded NUFC product than a match product.

Could replace the Ronnie in no time as the primary source of NUFC related info

but only let people in the north east read it.

[The Janitor]

Really guys, you should all take up this fantastic opportunity, it will be like writing a letter to the important people at the club and having them read it themselves and maybe even putting some of the things into consideration or even practice. The club have appealed to fansites and fanzines such as ours and want to know what we think about NUFC and how to best go about making NUFC a successful club, a happy club.

Rich, I hope you're up for a 10,000 word essay from me

PS Time to start trusting the club because they want to do things to benefit us all as recent attempts to improve the atmosphere and get more kids into the stadium with free tickets prove, something they said they'd consider and have acted on.

I wouldn't expect anything less!

As for the current things the club have brought in, the "early sales" policy on match tickets is another fantastic thing they've changed since coming in, as far as I can see. Obviously they're constrained by the Sky fixtures and all that, but the fact we have tickets on sale for Spurs (h) already is bloody brilliant stuff and something that should have happened a long time ago.

They are getting plenty right already without much input from the fans in this sort of way, it could be EVEN better with us helping them along with ideas and should mean that they get far less "wrong" in the future as well.

[beardsleymagic]

Personally I would urge the club to put pressure of the FA to bring back some standing areas in the ground (preferably behind the two goalposts), this in turn I think would help sort out the atmosphere (lack of) problems we sometimes have.

[James]

I'd also like to see a change of the questions streamed out by Craig Hope. Currently he seems to put out questions that have been approved by both Alan Oliver and Freddy Shepherd as questions the Geordie public  want to hear, but to be honest, they aren't really the questions I want to see asked to the player over and over again.

For instance, he keeps asking Owen if he's confident and match fit yet, and Owen must be pretty tired of that. New signings are getting asked weekly if they are settling in, and giving the same answer.

On many occasions, its Allardyce or the player who is keeping the interview going, and to be fair to our staff, they are quite an eloquent bunch at the moment, but we just hear the same things we'd read in the papers, the only difference is that you'll get to talk to people who normally aren't put in front of the microphone nationally.

Get some banter going. Lets get to know the person rather than the player, for instance Chelsea had a feature on the best looking player where Drogba admitted he had the hots for Carvalho. Mix things up a bit, instead of interviewing Owen, Viduka, Shola, Taylor, Martins and Rozehnal all the time, lets interview the tea lady. Have a feature on what Russell Cushing or Lee Clark get up to on their average day at work. Hope apparently has unrivalled access, and there are so many uncontroversial possibilities, he should start making the most of them.

[nufc_geordie]

would like to see the club push the Premier League into following the line of UEFA competitions and other European competitions in increasing the number of named substitutes to at least seven.

That is certainly something that would help the club, and help English football in general (and improved English football equals better sales of football merchandise in Mike Ashley's stores)

This for one. I also agree with a push for standing areas and more player interaction with the general public. For the amount of money these guys earn I think 1 half day each from every player in the squad into a community based position, whether it be a talk-in or school/hospital trip, something like that. Half a day a week isn't much time but it shows effort!

[Jonny Hall]

Personally, I'd love to see an nufc-tv on Digital TV. Along the lines of MUTV and ChelseaTV. Would make the club more interactive and accessible to people and would give us an insight into behind the scenes at the club as well as exclusive insights and player interviews.

Would also love a return to Local Hero. The roar at the end of that song from the crowd used to spine tingling, it really got me going ready for the match, I can only imagine what it did for the players.

[Dave]

Personally, I'd love to see an nufc-tv on Digital TV. Along the lines of MUTV and ChelseaTV. Would make the club more interactive and accessible to people and would give us an insight into behind the scenes at the club as well as exclusive insights and player interviews.

The traditionalists will have your guts for garters for that one.

[David Icke - Son of God]

Personally, I'd love to see an nufc-tv on Digital TV. Along the lines of MUTV and ChelseaTV. Would make the club more interactive and accessible to people and would give us an insight into behind the scenes at the club as well as exclusive insights and player interviews.

Would also love a return to Local Hero. The roar at the end of that song from the crowd used to spine tingling, it really got me going ready for the match, I can only imagine what it did for the players.

Agree with both of them. A Newcastle TV channel would be brilliant, especially if it was able to show reserve games live, interviews with players, staff, classic matches etc.

Local Hero needs bringing back too

[NSG]

Personally, I'd love to see an nufc-tv on Digital TV. Along the lines of MUTV and ChelseaTV. Would make the club more interactive and accessible to people and would give us an insight into behind the scenes at the club as well as exclusive insights and player interviews.

Would also love a return to Local Hero. The roar at the end of that song from the crowd used to spine tingling, it really got me going ready for the match, I can only imagine what it did for the players.

Agree with both of them. A Newcastle TV channel would be brilliant, especially if it was able to show reserve games live, interviews with players, staff, classic matches etc.

Local Hero needs bringing back too

This. Absolutely spot on.

[WarrenBartonCentrePartin]

get a proper feeder club (either abroad, or someone like darlo) as man utd have with Royal Antwerp.

this would mean we could loan out youth players for experience more freely and easily than having to offer them around.

Moreover, we could also get first pick of any talents emerging from that club (should we partner with a good club).


Freddy made a big hoo-har about this link with Dailan, but what the f*** emerged from it?

[Gav H]

Agreed.

Get two channels set up on Sky or the like :-

1 showing home games.

1 showing away games.

The club will clean up.

Another thing - get something sorted with the stadium PA system.
It's so bad you can't make out 75% of what is said.

[David Icke - Son of God]

I forgot to mention setting Alan Olivers feet in concrete and having Mort and Ashley hoy him into the Tyne after a night out