The managers

Each of the 5 managers Freddy Shepherd has appointed thus far all have one thing in common; they were the exact opposite in style to their respective predecessors. Yes, the key to appointing a manager Toon styleee is to pinpoint the outgoing manager’s biggest flaw whether it be character wise or football management wise and pinpoint a manager who is quite good in those areas, or at least better than the outgoing man. If that fails check his birth certificate for the Geordie by birth stamp of approval.

Kevin Keegan whose defence was apparently full of holes was replaced by Kenny Dalglish who was defensive minded and we were told, guaranteed to shore up that defence, and OMG, win us the league. Didn’t happen and Dalglish’s dullness soon seeped into the team who at times, were as dull as their manager which just shouldn’t have been possible.

What does Freddy do? Appoints someone shexy to add some spice to the mix, Ruud Gullit. The Dutchman soon ostracised the dressing room, fans and star man Alan Shearer, however, with his aloof and foreign ways.

Out he went to be replaced by the antithesis of a foreigner, local man Sir Bobby Robson who wasn’t aloof at all, who players and fans alike could relate to. A big nice cuddly uncle Bobby.

A few years later…

Uh oh, Sir Bobby’s lost the plot with discipline, players are running amok. “I know”, thought Freddy, “lets replace him with a disciplinarian”.

So in came Graeme bastard fuck face Souness who after a short while started to piss everyone off; fans and Toon players alike. And Robbie Savage and Sam Allardyce.

What does Freddy do after promising everyone a world-class manager? He gives it to the caretaker because unlike the hated Souness, wor Glenn is a nice man. He nearly died you know, lost half his brain. What a guy. Arhh.

The money

Freddy Shepherd is a dab hand with money, oh yes. Did you know he once gave the worst manager in the club’s history the most ever money to spend in the club’s history!? Nearly £50m quid.

This club called Liverpool offered this club called Real Madrid £8m for this player called Michael Owen who Freddy thought was a canny lad so he just offered Real Madrid double the money. Just as well we did, or there would have been 20,000 disappointed fans… I bet Liverpool were kicking themselves, without Owen they had to rely on a midfielder to win them the FA Cup, lol. Can you believe that? Mugs.

Viana £8.5m - sold for £1.7m, Boumsong £8m - sold for £3.3m, Cort £7m - sold for £2m, Robert £9.5m - sold for £0, Ferguson £8m - sold for £4m, Marcelino £6m - sold for £0.

Total spent £47m
Total losses £36m

Freddy’s yearly salary: £600,000

Freddy’s total dividends to date: £5.4m

More than almost every other Chairman in the Premiership and some of the country’s top CEOs running proper businesses.

Paid over £800,000 to get Souness out of a contract which was to be terminated by the then rock-bottom Blackburn had we not turned up. Extending our benevolence further, we paid a reported £3m in compensation to Souness for sacking him. Effectively we shelled out over £50m to drop 10 places in the space of 18 months. With their loot Rovers appointed Mark Hughes and haven’t looked back since. Still, at least we can fill our stadium, he he.

Freddy Shepherd’s company, Shepherd Offshore, sold a warehouse to his brother Bruce for £175,000 which he kindly rents to Newcastle United football club for a bargain £150,000 A YEAR! This warehouse we understand is currently the home of some cobwebs, spiders and dust which is the height of interior design in Gibraltar apparently.

Paid Sir Bobby Robson £2.1m in compensation after sacking him, a month into his final year at the club.

When Newcastle floated the shares went up to a high of 135p, today they are worth over 60p. In financial terms that means the club is worth 3 times less than what it was before Freddy took over. Of course with share prices falling, that has allowed the Chairman to snap up a whole bunch of them on the cheap…

Coleman’s balls

“At the Man City game when Parker, Emre and Clark all ran in to each other in the centre circle during the game, I thought then, either I had lost the plot or the manager had lost the plot because that should never happen in a football game. Obviously the formation was completely wrong. I would never try to tell Graeme Souness how to put a team out, but just looking at it I thought something was seriously wrong.” - Freddy Shepherd describing the exact moment he knew Souness wasn’t the right man for the job.

“If I told you who wants to come to Newcastle, you’d be astounded. Of course they want to come to Newcastle, they all want to come to Newcastle. Anybody leaving here, unless they go to Chelsea, is going down. Let’s face it, one of the big reasons for Chelsea is the rewards at Chelsea. Fine, I have not got a problem with that and I would probably be the same if I was a player. But where do you go when you leave Newcastle?” - Freddy Shepherd informing the world that Newcastle are the number one club… after Chelsea of course.

“Last season’s 14th placing was the only failure in the last 10 years since John Hall moved in.” - Freddy Shepherd insists season 2004-05 is the only failure he’s presided over. We’ll not mention Dalglish and Gullit, or two FA Cup final defeats, embarrassing InterToto defeats, losing to Partizan Belgrade etc. etc.

“He’s always an optimist.” - Freddy on Graeme Souness. Presumably said when the Scot wasn’t predicting defeats while his proper players were all out injured.

“If he was standing in front of me I’d punch him on the nose.” - Freddy on John Barnwell, chief executive of the League Managers’ Association.

“Of course people want the job. It’s one of the biggest in world football, so why shouldn’t they?” - Freddy Shepheard reveals lots of top managers want the Newcastle job following Souness’ sacking. Just as well we eventually appointed one of the best managers in world football then or Freddy would have looked a right tit.

“The board and myself felt that 5th place wasn’t good enough.” - One of the many reasons put forward for justifying the sacking of Sir Bobby Robson which was then contradicted a few months later by declaring Souness’ job was to erm, get the club back into the top 5.

“We at Newcastle are accused of many things but we have never been accused of being boring.” - Freddy on NUFC.

“We have spent more money than the likes of Arsenal in the last four seasons.” - Freddy brags about being able to spend more money than Arsenal who will just have to be content with the Title and FA Cup successes they’ve had in recent years, while crying about not having as much money as we do, ha ha.

“Money is available, but it has got to be spent wisely.” - Freddy Shepherd reassures fans money is available but warns Sir Bobby about spending it wisely. Wonder if Souness get the same warning…

“I just want to reiterate that we are not selling anyone - least of all Kieron Dyer.” - Freddy Shepherd wants to keep Dyer at all costs. A few weeks later he snubs the Captain’s armband and refuses to play for Sir Bobby Robson.

“Roman Abramovich may be the new kid on the block in English football, but he will quickly learn that money is no guarantee to success. We’ve been down that route and the evidence that big transfer fees don’t neccessarily bring in trophies is shown by the spaces in our trophy cabinet.” - Oh fucking really, Freddy. No but appointing good managers helps.

“Those types who do not care are found out eventually and the gravy train stops running for them.” - Freddy will have no wasters at his club…

“We do not want Glenn Roeder to buy players willy-nilly.” - So what do you call Antoine Sibierski then, Freddy?

How to win friends and influence people

“There was even a ‘leaked’ full colour brochure doing the rounds in Newcastle which laid out Ottmar Hitzfeld’s CV and his record as a manager. It’s amazing the lengths people will go to start a rumour which means they can bet for or against a certain person getting the job.” - Freddy Shepherd insults thousands of Newcastle fans who wanted and campaigned for the appointment of Ottmar Hitzfeld.

“Alan Shearer, he’s boring isn’t he? We call him Mary Poppins.” - Freddy Shepherd and partner in crime Douglas Hall insult Newcastle’s then new £15m man. For his penance Freddy has promised Big Al a job for life in one way or another. What a guy.

“Newcastle fans are mugs for paying £30.00 for shirts that cost us £5.00 to make.” - Freddy Shepherd and partner in crime Douglas Hall reveal their true contempt for Newcastle United fans.

“Geordie women are dogs” - Freddy Shepherd and partner in crime Douglas Hall on why they prefer the company of the opposite sex in a Marbella brothel to their ‘own’ womenfolk back home.

“I think it is dog-eat-dog. The big fight will be for the Premier League to take over the running of the other leagues. The others can’t hold us back, the time will come, I think, when it is the Premier League running the whole show. Many of these other clubs will have to go part-time.” - Freddy Shepherd writes off the entire football league and grassroots game as a burden to the Premiership.

“Perhaps our timing was wrong. If we had signed Damien Duff or Oba Martins on transfer deadline day our fans would have been dancing in the street.” - Freddy patronises Newcastle fans once again.

Autocracy

Independent directors David Stonehouse (chief executive), John Fender (PLC Chairman), Mark Corbidge (chief executive), Freddie Fletcher (chief executive) and others have all either resigned, been sacked or left for reasons unknown over the years to be replaced by Allison Hall, sister of Douglas, the increasing involvement of Bruce Shepherd in NUFC activities and other ‘family associates’. Meanwhile Freddy holds the following positions: Chairman, PLC Executive Director and PLC Chairman. And of course, part owner.

The lies

“The supporters have identified Glenn as the man they want. We have listened to them.” - Freddy Shepherd on why he appointed Graeme Souness. Over 5,000 fans would disagree with him as the below N.O poll results from the time show:

Poll Archive Archived On Tue 14th February

Poll Question:

Who Would You Like As NUFC’s Next Manager?

Total Votes: 5516

Ottmar Hitzfeld? 2317 votes (42%)
Guus Hiddink? 677 votes (12.3%)
Paul Le Guen 271 votes (4.9%)
Martin O’Neill? 1215 votes (22%)
Sam Allardyce? 362 votes (6.6%)
Alan Shearer? 212 votes (3.8%)
Kevin Keegan? 256 votes (4.6%)
Alan Curbishley? 29 votes (0.5%)
Steve Bruce? 43 votes (0.8%)
Other? 134 votes (2.4%)

Freddy likes to call himself a Geordie, claiming to be a Walker lad, he was actually born in Gilsland, on the Northumberland-Cumbria border.

Blame game

Who does Freddy Shepherd blame for any failure?

“I think the most significant figure is the £2.1m we have paid out as a result of the management change. If that had not been in there, we would have been under the 50 per cent wages-to-turnover ratio.” - Freddy Shepherd blames having to pay a man he sacked compensation as the reason why the wages-to-turnover ration shot above the recommended 50% mark.

“I can understand fans gunning for the chairman and the manager because they always do, but what about the players? We pay them Hollywood money and for that they have a responsibility to go out and perform like a Rolls Royce. We have paid the huge transfer fees and the huge wages, given them one of the best stadia in the world, marvellous training facilities, and a terrific, loyal crowd.” - Freddy puts the blame on the players.

“After we have done our bit it is down to the manager and the players to fulfil their side of the bargain.” - Freddy puts the blame on the players AND the manager this time.

“Yes, we failed last season but we played something like 54 games because we did so well in two cups and that caught up with us. That is not an excuse, it is a fact.” - Freddy Shepherd blames finishing in our lowest ever Premiership finish (2004-05) on success in the Cups. Did we get a trophy for being thrashed 4-1 by Man Utd in Cardiff and capitulating in equally spectacular fashion in Lisbon?

“If the teams have failed, that is down to the players and perhaps in some cases the managers as well. We can only supply the ammunition.” - Freddy once again blaming the players and managers. Who keeps appointing these managers who keep buying these players?

“But there is no one to blame for us not getting other players in before the transfer deadline. It’s the window to blame. It is absolutely ridiculous and really a restriction of trade and I would like to see somebody challenging it.” - Freddy blames this summer’s transfer window debacle on the transfer window.

Hands on Freddy, the Chairman who likes to undermine his managers

Read it and weep: Extracts from Sir Bobby’s book

The successes

1: Appointed 5 managers in just 9 years

2: Sacked 2 officially, 2 ‘resigned’

3: Finished outside of the top ten 5 times in 9 years

4: Finished in the top 5 just 3 times

5: On average 8 teams finish higher than Newcastle in the league

6: 2 FA Cup final defeats

7: Over £6m paid out in compensation to sacked managers

8: Wages currently at 60% or more of the club’s turnover, during Leeds’ meltdown their wages topped 70% of the turnover

9: Moved the AGM to that there London

10: Qualified for Europe 5 times via the back door of the InterToto and FA Cup

11: Resigned once and then appointed himself again

12: Took fans to court over the SOS farce

13: Dyer-Bowyer gate

14: Dyer’s contracts, brushes with discipline & other players’ ill-discipline

15: Bellamy-Gate

16: Grosvenor hotel crap which brought the polis to NE1

17: The NOTW scandal

18: Took over a club who at the time were regarded as 2nd only to Man United, today we give their bairns work experience

19: Still no trophy

20: Today we are running at a £12m loss, wages are past the 60% of turnover ratio and we are massively in debt.

21: Paid Blackburn £800,000 to buy-out Souness’ Ewood contract which was going to be terminated anyway.

22: Sacked Kevin Bond a few weeks after appointing him.

23: Lost the only qualified man at the club in Tommy Craig who left in dubious circumstances.

Freddy Shepherd, you have proved incapable of managing Newcastle United football club to a satisfactory and successful level. The next manager you sack will be your last.

Shepherd Out!

If you’re depressed, give these links a once over

Nufc Mismanagement
Nufc Finances
Latest Financial Results (PDF)