Bye Bye Freddie
So it's official, Freddie Shepherd has been replaced as chairman of Newcastle United and no longer has any say in anything that happens at the club. I’d just like to say Freddie, if I may, cheerio, adios, aufwiedersen, ciao and goodnight!
After 11 years at the helm, I think we can safely say that, while Freddie talked a good game, sometimes with a nasty habit of putting his foot in his mouth in the process - we have put Chelsea in their place and are now the third biggest club in England anyone? - he failed in his ultimate objective to secure some silverware for the club.
For all of the bluster and hyperbole, broken promises and failed ambitions, Freddie did achieve some notable things in his time at the helm. The expansion of the stadium to 52,000, the promotion of the Newcastle United brand around the world and the appointment of Sir Bobby Robson, who briefly returned the club to the status of Champions League contenders.
But there were too many failures to label his time as chairman a triumph. He appointed six managers in 11 years, but, with the exception of Robson, none of them were able to bring success to Tyneside and many of them sent the club backwards rather than forwards.
For many, the shoddy treatment Shepherd dished out to Robson when he sacked him just four games into the 2004/5 season just a few months after he had guided the club to fifth place in the Premiership was one of his worst acts as chairman.
In big business it is ultimately the man at the top who has to take responsibility for failure, even if they are unwilling to shoulder such a burden.
One thing we cannot doubt about Shepherd was that, while he has also made a handsome profit from his involvement with the club, he was a fan who genuinely wanted good things to happen at St James’s Park.
Whether he was ever the right man to make those good things happen is open to considerable debate, but today’s announcement that he has parted company with Newcastle United is the final nail in the coffin of an increasingly unhappy and bitter era.
While managers have often been made the scapegoat for failure at St James’s Park it is worth pointing out that as much anger and disenchantment was aimed at Shepherd and the board as it was at the hapless Glenn Roeder last season.
Even after the appointment of Sam Allardyce, the mood towards Shepherd was far from positive and protests never looked as though they were far from the surface, even if Allardyce’s arrival had given some renewed cause for optimism.
In the end, the appointment of Allardyce was Shepherd’s final act of note at St James’s Park and it will be interesting to know what Newcastle’s manager thinks about the present situation. He has been assured his job is safe by new chairman Chris Mort, but it is never nice to know that the man who appointed you is no longer in charge.
Personally, although other journalists got on with him very well, I had a difficult relationship with Freddie and I got the distinct impression he didn’t like me very much! He certainly didn't like criticism.
He did take me out for a very nice meal during a pre-season tour in Hong Kong a few years back along with Douglas Hall - who had forgotten to buy his then wife a birthday present - and he was good company, charming and entertaining. That, though, was the only time I ever spoke to him face-to-face.
Instead, the only time I heard from him was when he was angry about something I’d written about his running of the club. He banned me twice from the ground for lengthy periods as a result and naturally that puts a bit of a strain on a relationship!
Freddie will be hurt by what has happened, but the real pain came, not on Tuesday, but when he discovered the Hall family had sold their shares to Mike Ashley behind his back in May.
When that happened, the writing was already on the wall for the self styled boy from Byker, but at least he has several million pounds in the bank to console him as he ponders what to do now that he finds himself with so much more time on his hands.
Significantly, I suspect few fans will miss him.
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Luke Edwards - is Chief Sports Writer of The Journal and uses his blog to give a unique and entertaining insight into events at Newcastle United and Sunderland.
Good riddance to bad rubbish!
Long overdue. This is one of the best days of my life, I hope Fred is feeling miserable. It's just a shame he had to make so much money before he was got rid of. He will not be missed
He won't be missed, and for all the bluster, he leaves taking a lot more cash out than he put in...all the transfer splurges were financed by putting the club into debt!!
Good riddance.
It’s been three years and more of campaigning against this man for me, the press who supported him throughout are the bigger villains!
Even though you’ve only accepted an odd meal from him it has compromised you!
How much more was compromised by the actions of those who accepted work from him and therefore payments!
His epitaph…who cares!
Note From Luke
Crikey Commulus, it was just a meal, everyone on the trip went to it. Would it make you feel any better if I felt sick afterwards?
his treatment of bobby robson was a disgrace,in the true style of poetic justice it also ultimately did for him.
Banning you from the ground, eh? I guess that explains why he always seemed to be guarded from bad press and criticism in certain publications then! Good riddance to him.
Note From Luke
I was actually on my final warning. One more "step out of line" and I would be banned forever and ever and ever. Can't say I'll miss him!
Yeah, pleased to see the back of the muppet. However, as a journalist I am suprised that you adopt the rose tinted glasses hindsight to the Robson era, that seems to be increasingly the norm. Being better than Souness and Roeder is hardly an accolade and if we truthfully cast our minds back, Robson had little control over the dressing room or, lets be honest, his marbles when he left. It was sad to see a great man floundering in a profession that had been second nature to him for so long. He also brounght in players like Carr, Viana, and Bassedas; I could go on. The sacking of Robson wasn't wrong, it was the timing and the successor.
Note From Luke
I don't think it is rose tinted spectacles. Robson saved the club from relegation after he inherited a complete mess in 1999. He stabilised and then secured three successivew top five finishes, with a third-place finish putting them above Chelsea. While things may have been a little fragmented at the end, I would still have given Robson one more season. It was Shepherd's stupid decision to go public on the fact it was going to be Robson's last season in charge which undermined Robson at the end more than any of his own actions
Let's just shatter this myth that he is a great fan - if he was such a great fan, why then did he take out such scarce resources (cash) in the form of dividends, disproportionately obscene wages and god knows how else he milked the club, at a time when the club's debt was ballooning?
Fans - such as the 52,000 that turn up to St. James - put money into the club. Not take it out as Shepherd did.
I bet the last penny I have that as a percentage of disposable income, I spent more on NUFC than Freddie Shepherd ever did.
Sure, he should have received a salary, but not the ca. £1m per year (including benefits, such as pension, etc.) he and his cohorts sanctioned.
Fans put in, not take out. True fans make sacrificies. HENCE, SHEPHERD IS NOT THE GREAT FAN SOME MAKE HIM OUT TO BE.
Ditto the Halls.
Good riddance to the lot of them. Never forget the contempt this lot held us in.
Even as Shepherd was selling out to Mike Ashley, he had to squeeze another penny per share out of our new owner. That sums the buffoon up, having his snout in the trough as he was getting kicked out of the door.
Note From Luke
Very good points I only aluded to with my usual sarcasm. The Shepherd family has made millions out of NUFC. If they were such big fans they wouldn't have taken a dividend each year, or used the dividend to buy more shares to make more money. it's been theirs and the Halls cash cow, little more
Sorry Luke!
F.F. liked to portray himself as true fan, but his disgusting comments in Spain destroyed that illusion. No fan would ever slag off Big Al or Geordie lasses. My only regret is that he has made a huge fortune out of our loyalty to wor beloved Toon.
Adios Mr Shepherd,
Your treatment of Sir Bobby Robson and the appointment of Souness as his replacement was a disgrace and a lousy business decision.
The appointment of Roeder was only slightly better than that of Souness.
Both froze out key players which is lousy management.
Your remarks about the club's supporters and the women of Newcastle should have precluded you from the position of Chairman.
I do however wish you good/better health and a long happy retirement.
Geoff Forster
Benarraba
Costa Del Sol
Spain
Note From Luke
Are there are Toon bars in Spain, I've heard about their existence and wondered if it was true. Like an Irisah Bar, but for Geordies!
Reading The Journal this morning I still find it staggering how some fans believe it was Shepherd himself that invested millions in our Club.
It was our money he was spending not his own!
Anyone of reasonable intellect could have spent millions on players and extending the ground.
And many many people smarter than Shepherd could have done a far better job of it!
It's fantastic to see back of Shepherd at NUFC. It's long overdue but fantastic all the same.
Toon Bars in Spain...there's one on Tenerife in Playa de l'america
Note From Luke
Thanks, although obviously I won't drink there. I get enough of Toon Bars living in Newcastle but it's strange how some people like to go on holiday and then stick to what is familiar!
It's very encouraging to read the comments posted on here about the money taken out of the club by FF and the Halls. I've tried for years to convince supposedly hardened supporters that we were being ripped off by these two and their predecessors for years. At least Westwood had the decency to dress as a pirate!
At last, I feel vindicated for my fairly recent comments about the Halls and the Shepherds. When callous, vitriolic slurs against the people who keep you in very fine clover are casually rolled off the tongue to ' Cocknies ' who share that opinion, you deserve a good smacking, never mind sacking. Big deal ! So the Halls and the Shepherds spotted an obvious knocking bet that N.U.F.C. was potentially a sleeping giant, or cash-cow more like it. Well, anyone who knows me will remember me saying on many a freezing, raining wednesday night in the Gallowgate end watching Rambo/Mavis Riley, in 14,000 - 16,000 crowds, that if I had the money, I would buy this club and invest in players. It wasn't rocket science, the inbred Geordie passion was a phenomenon waiting to be resurrected from the fifties. Sir John Hall wasn't even a supporter. Sorry, he was a season ticket holder at Sunderland if memory serves, and he never really put his own money in anyway, it was loans that he knew would return handsomely, just like I knew. Yes we all fawned and slavvered up to him when the dream materialised, but history has no place for emotion and we're all glad that he did accomplish what he has. Shepherd, with his scrap money could've beaten Hall to the punch if he'd shared the same vision, but as history will show, he just climbed onto the bandwagon. Now after all's said and done, and between them they couldn't actually make us into an established top challenging team, the REAL business people are attempting to realise the true potential of this club. And by club, I mean the fans and fanbase, without which there is nothing. The true product is, the heritage of being a Geordie, the dialect, humour and passion for where we live. The years of living - standards below the richer half of England, the death of shipyards and other industry, the unfulfilled promises from Whitehall. These things shaped us into the proud, hardy, get on with it, good humoured folk called Geordies, and that my friend IS Newcastle United. It is a flag of identity we've held with pride, even in constant soccer failure. That is what made the contemptuous remarks by Shepherd and the obnoxious ' born with a silver spoon ' Douglas Hall so impossible to forget. Some may think that a thankyou to that lot is in order, but they walked away with a hell of a lot more than they put in.
Note From Luke
Precisely Ronnie me old son
Hard to disagree with much of the vitriol poured over Freddie as his epitaph. Personally I thought he was an embarassment of a chairman, just the comments on supporters gullability and the video of his comments on Michael Owen show that.
Regarding your treatment at his hands you should be proud of the fact that you at least provoked some measure of response from the guy. Unfortunatley your colleague Alan Oliver has served only to act as his mouth piece. We want critical reporting, not the views of some insider or propaganda
Shepherd has left the club a very rich man, who says failure doesn't pay? It certainly has in his case.
No more embarrassing comments to bring the good name of our club down, this last two months has really been like living the dream. I still have to pinch myself when thinking about what has happened at our club.
Here we are in the last week of July, we have a new owner, a chairman who has been given the job on merit, a new manager who actually knows what he’s doing and the dead-wood is more or less gone or going, these things don’t happen at Newcastle.
A lot of hard work still remains to be done over the next few weeks but I’ve never felt more confident that we’ve got the right people who can and will ensure that what is required becomes reality, it may be blind faith but I feel better about the seasons to come than I have for more than a decade, a decade that was on the whole a wasted decade, the only constant in that time has been Freddy Shepherd and those behind him who might or might not have been pulling his strings. If he was just jumping to the tune of the Hall’s then he’s spineless, if he was making the decision then he was inept, either way he was a failure as a Chairman.
I have confidence that the club is now in good hands but I hope everybody is going to take an objective view of what happens in the future, unlike certain members of our local press who still seem unable to distance themselves from Shepherd, I don’t mean Luke either.
If the media are going to act like nodding dogs then how are those in power going to know when things are going wrong? We need an objective media for the good of the club, if things are going wrong then say so. It’s refreshing that our new Chairman is accountable to the owner, if he does the job then he’ll remain in work, if he doesn’t then somebody else will be brought in.
We’re a few players short of what is needed for a successful season but the new owner and Chairman have a honeymoon period, if they get it right and get the crowd on board then we really can move forward in the way that we did in 1992, maybe this time the trophy cabinet may see a new addition, something that didn’t look possible for most of the time while Shepherd was Chairman.
The supporters of Newcastle are up for it, we just need to see signs that the new Chairman feels the same way, personally, I think he is. A successful businessman may receive the plaudits for a job well done but that will be nothing when compared to being the successful owner or Chairman of Newcastle United. If that doesn’t bring the best out of people then nothing will, I think a few of the new faces which have appeared during the summer may be in for something of a surprise, I can’t wait for this season to begin.
Any negativity I had towards those running the club has gone, I'll not forgive Shepherd for his ineptness but he's now history.
Freddy who?
The end of an era nobody is unhappy to see the end of. Freddie Shepherd has used NUFC as a cash cow for him and his family for long enough. I know he is not the only chairman to have done this, but when you ally that to a lack of success on the pitch, a big mouth which made us the laughing stock of the Premiership and an arrogance which showed his complete disregard for the Geordie people he liked to claim he belonged to we're delighted to see the back of him.
You are not one of us Fred and you never will be. I'd take your millions - most of which have come out of Newcastle United - and head back to Australia. You achieved virtually nothing as Newcastle chairman other than an increase in your personal fortune. Oh and you didn't step aside either, you were booted out. Get over yourself
Luke,
As mildly as you've put it in your article, and I'm sure you have your reasons for that, I for one am glad to see the back of the man who, in my opinion, is fully responsible for the backward slide of our club over the last 10 years. Bye Bye Freddie is right, and as you have suggested, there won't be many mourning his departure.
A new era of hope dawns over SJP.
F.S. leaving is probably the best thing to have happened to the club in the 29 years i've supported them. Shady character!
He`s gone, lets stop backstabbing him, he was always there with the money for the transfer market. If the new owners/chairman make mistakes how long before the `fans?` turn on them.
Let`s just see what happens this season.
I`m not very hopeful, the squad is to small at this moment.
I think the Halls are just as much to Blame as Shepherd, and I am not supporter of Shepherd but at least he had the guts to stick with the club, and not move into the shadows like a modern day Machiavelli, one of the really good things to have happened is we got rid of all the hangers on.
Dirty Doug
Alison whats her name
Bruce and Kenneth
I will feel a lot cleaner supporting NUFC now.
Minus the ToonGate Saga of 1998, I don’t personally have anything against Mr Shepherd.
He made some bad decisions? Well he’s not a football man, so perhaps being in charge of the hiring and firing was a mistake, where a Director Of Football should have been his first appointment in 1997.
He has always provided (Our) money for his appointments which is not what could be said of “Deadly� Doug Ellis, but the one time that Newcastle United needed to push on and spend “Big� was in 2003.
Picture the scene, we’ve just qualified for the Champions League in third place an improvement on the previous season, and the thought Im sure going through everyone’s mind was, WOW, Imagine if we were to get three or four big signings on board, we might challenge for the league, but sadly who did we get: Lee Bowyer on a free transfer.
Cue a shambolic second leg defeat on penalties against Partizan Belgrade in the Champions League Qualifier and we’ve never recovered since bar a couple of UEFA Cup runs.
Sir Bobby Robson must have felt highly annoyed to have his efforts rewarded with Lee Bowyer for finishing Third. “What? No Ronaldo, Rooney, Ronaldinho, Mr Chairman?
Freddy Shepherd wasn’t necessarily a BAD chairman, just not a GOOD one.
Paul.
Hello Luke
How are you? Do you remember me?
I know your parents quite well, they have just spent the weekend with us, updating us on your progress!
As Tottenham fans, we would be interested to know if Kieran Dyer will be signing for us next week.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Note From Luke
Of course I remember you, although the last time I saw you I probably had considerably more hair!
As for Dyer going to Tottenham, I think it would have happened if this "family reasons'" thing had emerged earlier in the summer. I think Spurs have probably spent most of their transfer and wage budget now, so I'd expect Kieron to go to West Ham if anywhere
I had wondered why it was just you that told the hard facts about Shepherd.
Other, local journalists (mentioning no names) always looked far too pally with Shepherd and seemed to be reading off the same songsheet as the rendundant chairman. Instead they chose to wind up excitable errant French midfielders to the point of handbags. :)
I guess little fights are better than big fights if you lose. Especially if your matchday dining is at a burger van outside a forbidden St. James Park.
If we'd known earlier we'd have smuggled you into the leazes Luke. ;)
Note From Luke
I always liked the idea of being smuggled into the ground, but then again I've always been a James Bond fan. I did once sneak in on a friend's ticket after being banned, which brought some smug sense of satisfaction, but it was for an awful 0-0 draw with West Ham and I was so bored I started to count the empty seats in the stadium. Can't normally do such mind numbing things when working you see.
Anyway, thanks for the support, I probably should have made more of it at the time, but I didn't have a blog back then to vent my spleen
good riddance to bad rubbish why should us true in fact the best in the world supporters have to have been led off by a scrap metal merchant.
lets hope we get the team, the board and the trophy's we deserve im for once really looking forward to the new season sam in my view knows exactly what he is doing