You know when you see a small child jumping up and down and performing daft tricks to try and impress their parents? “Look mam, no hands,” they’ll shout, normally before falling spectacularly off their bike with a crash, writhing around in pain, thinking “I probably shouldn’t have done that.” They never learn though, do they?

Before long, they are once more pedalling furiously downhill towards a wall, trying a “no-hander” that maybe one day will raise a smile from their mam. That’s a bit how I see our beloved chairman Freddy Shepherd.

He’s always at the front of the queue trying to impress his “friends” in the football world by hoying his hat into the ring for the world’s superstars – Rooney, Owen, Shearer, Ronaldinho, Roberto Baggio. “Look at me boys, I can buy anyone. We’re the biggest club in the world man. Lads…lads…lads man, look!”

Now don’t get me wrong here, I think there are worse chairman in football than Freddy Shepherd. He has his faults, but he outweighs them by his continual backing of the manager with funds. But it’s becoming clearer and clearer that a rich man doesn’t become so by being understanding.

When Mr Bling himself signed his new £80k per week contract last year, many fans were up in arms. The Little Waster had doubled his salary without actually having done anything on the pitch to deserve it.

Freddy Shepherd had splurged yet more of the clubs wage budget on a player who in his seven seasons on Tyneside has managed a meagre 220 appearances (many of those as sub) and a pathetic 35 over the last two years. To hand over such a huge amount of wonga to a player who’s appearance record is so dismal would surely signal that the club must have a bottomless pit of wages to give to its staff? Correct?

So when Mr Shepherd finally bit the bullet and kicked out Souness and his cronies in February of this year, the £3m payoff would have been a mere drop in the ocean, yes?

Wrong. At Christmas 2005, all staff were due their annual pay-rise. Every Christmas, staff members across the board, be it at retail, administration even down to the catering staff are given a small 3% pay rise to keep up with the cost of living. In 2005, it never materialised. The official reason given to us was that a downturn in takings over the year of 04/05 had meant that the stores had not hit their target for merchandise income, due to poor performance – on the pitch.

Essentially, the players were under-performing, causing a downturn in profits, and as a knock-on effect, the staff were told that the pay rise would not be forthcoming. The pay rise was sat awaiting authorisation, and yet it was never agreed to, and staff went without.

There’s also the shambolic distribution of these free scarves - a faulty bunch arrive, granted (and they were atrocious quality) - but it’s now gone on almost four months, and the best the club could do was to hand out a batch of left-over Shearer Testimonial scarves to the away fans at Manchester City. Not good PR, not well dealt-with.

Off-field there any many problems. Despite it having pretty impressive figures each year, mail order is situated at the back of a dilapidated warehouse in Walker – rented to the club of course by Mr Shepherd’s brother, who allegedly originally bought it from Freddy for less than the club now pays back per year.

The club stores insist on charging £40 for football shirts that can be bought elsewhere for at least £10 cheaper (although Mr Shepherd was inaccurate when he said they cost £5 originally – they actually cost £17 per shirt).

When we got to the FA Cup semi final last year at Cardiff, any staff who applied for tickets were given one of the priciest tickets of the lot - £45. A fantastic thank-you for all staff I’m sure you’d agree. Staff do not get free tickets - they do not even get discount on match tickets. In fact, it is sometimes more difficult to get tickets for matches if you tell the Box Office that you are staff, as they tend to stick the applications on the desk and they don’t get seen to till ages later.

For the game at the Riverside against Middlesbrough lately, it was the Friday beforehand when my tickets arrived, leaving me two days to take a spare off me and to sort my travel. Luckily it wasn’t a London game or a European game. Again, a great thankyou for hard work and effort.

This is where Flintoff the Fan comes back into it. I love the team, I’m passionate, I’ve got black and white blood. But there comes a time in all our lives when the thing you love pisses you right off. I’d estimate that virtually everyone who reads this will agree with the following statement: “love the team, hate the club.”

Maybe hatred is a strong word, but when you have such fine upstanding gentlemen like Mr Shepherd and Mr Hall on the board, it is extremely difficult to feel any affinity to the people behind the scenes.

Back onto the playing field, and we have a proven failure in charge (not that I’m not behind Roeder, but facts speak for themselves), a squad badly lacking in quality and quantity, and a back four that boasts the “talents” of Messrs Bramble, Babayaro and Carr.

We have two “strikers” in Ameobi and Martins, a mid-table cast off in Sibierski (who has done well in his defence), a non-entity in Luque and millions of pounds worth of midfielders, who between them seem to create the square root of nothing. We have a lot to worry about, that’s for sure.

The longer it goes on, the worse it is going to get. The last transfer window was a shambles, and the next one is absolutely vital. But something tells me that Mr Shepherd will not use it as wisely as we need to.

My brain tells me not to, but all I can think of now is Freddy, on a bicycle, pie in hand, trying to avoid that brick wall at the bottom of the hill. Think fast, Freddy, because it’s getting closer.