macbeth

Your backside may look 23 with the use of all that Ulay, rest of you looks far older

Man Utd 1.8 Arsenal 2 Chelsea 3.8 Liverpool 4 Newcastle 8.3 Aston Villa 8.8 Tottenham 10.4 Leeds 12.6 Everton 12.9 West Ham 13.8 Boro 13.9 Blackburn 15 Southampton 15.1 Charlton 17.4 Leicester 17.8 Bolton 19.3 Sunderland 20

It is a good game. The 'proof' for the 5th best is found by taking the position for all sides over the last 9 or 10 seasons. You add up all the finishing positions and you end up with a points total for each club. You sort this into smallest to highest. You then get Man U with the lowest points total, and an average finishing position of something 1.8. Next best is Arsenal, avergae 2.0, Chelsea average 3.8, and then Liverpool average 4.0. The next best is Newcastle with an average finishing position of 8.3, then Villa with 8.8. So on this league table we finish 5th best. This is the fact used by NE5 to justify saying we are 5th best. Now many of us feel this just doesn't seem right. 4 times in those ten years have we finished in the top 5, and 5 times we have finished in the bottom half. Those that feel this discomfort prefer to look at the actual average finishing position of 8.3. This would mean that on average every year 7 sides finish above us. That feels more like reality than suggesting there are only 4 sides better than us. Such is the way of averaging figures that even if we were relegated this season we would still be 6th best over the last 11 seasons, and NE5 could continue to be justified in telling us we've never had it so good

Plenty of recruits to your crusade out there...... Crozier is your answer, right :roll: sorry I must have missed the bit where you highlighted which costs the board had kept under control. You raised the "fact" that they had done this and that I hadn't given them any credit for it. I know others may be shocked that I'm going to say this but I will anyway. I think you made it up. You know the history of the club, so you know how it is. You know they have not controlled costs in the slightest, exactly the opposite, the costs are going up every year, that they haven't a clue how to control costs. You hoped that you could plant the comment in the midst of you post and that some may actually read it and accept it. Say it aint so. Say you were telling the truth. Say that you weren't just making up facts that were just downright lies. We want to believe something you say and if you just randomly make up some 'facts' how can we trust your other 'facts' to be true. It is unfair to try and compare Crozier with Shepherd. Crozier runs a business with £9000m, and rising, turnover; Shepherd a business with under £80m, and sinking turnover. Crozier runs a business with assets of £3000m, Shepherd one with assets of £150m. Crozier has 193,000 people to manage, Shepherd 300. Crozier makes money for his business, reduces the business costs, Shepherd doesn't. The only thing I can find that they have in common is their 'basic' pay. Crozier gets £500,000 per year as his basic, and so does Shepherd. If Crozier meets strict targets he can get a performance bonus. Shephered awards himself a bonus if he thinks he deserves it. Crozier's pay details are at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4114276.stm As far as performance from the NUFC is concered the accounts have the wonderful quote on page 18 of last year's accounts "The is no formal evaluation of the performance of the Board or of the individual Directors. The Board considers that is easier to recognise effective performance than to measure it". I think they just ask you. Unfortuntately, Crozier appointed a failure manager for 4m quid a year and has sold off the England team from grassroots supporters for the next century. Which means, your figures are utterly meaningless, proving nothing other than such qualifications have little relevance on the ability to run a football club/association etc. I guess your lack of reply to the costs means I was right. I am so sad. I love arguing with you, but now you've admitted you made something up, makes it all seem so cheap and dirty. I guess Crozier should have appointed Souness ?

Plenty of recruits to your crusade out there...... Crozier is your answer, right :roll: sorry I must have missed the bit where you highlighted which costs the board had kept under control. You raised the "fact" that they had done this and that I hadn't given them any credit for it. I know others may be shocked that I'm going to say this but I will anyway. I think you made it up. You know the history of the club, so you know how it is. You know they have not controlled costs in the slightest, exactly the opposite, the costs are going up every year, that they haven't a clue how to control costs. You hoped that you could plant the comment in the midst of you post and that some may actually read it and accept it. Say it aint so. Say you were telling the truth. Say that you weren't just making up facts that were just downright lies. We want to believe something you say and if you just randomly make up some 'facts' how can we trust your other 'facts' to be true. It is unfair to try and compare Crozier with Shepherd. Crozier runs a business with £9000m, and rising, turnover; Shepherd a business with under £80m, and sinking turnover. Crozier runs a business with assets of £3000m, Shepherd one with assets of £150m. Crozier has 193,000 people to manage, Shepherd 300. Crozier makes money for his business, reduces the business costs, Shepherd doesn't. The only thing I can find that they have in common is their 'basic' pay. Crozier gets £500,000 per year as his basic, and so does Shepherd. If Crozier meets strict targets he can get a performance bonus. Shephered awards himself a bonus if he thinks he deserves it. Crozier's pay details are at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4114276.stm As far as performance from the NUFC is concered the accounts have the wonderful quote on page 18 of last year's accounts "The is no formal evaluation of the performance of the Board or of the individual Directors. The Board considers that is easier to recognise effective performance than to measure it". I think they just ask you.

sorry, "strangely" wasn't aimed at you. I always have a post code in my head when I start these things. :winking:

Thing is though Macbeth that the title of Finance Director is just that, a title. I could pretty much guarantee that Shep has employed someone who performs the role of finance director and someone who performs the role of marketing direct. But they won't have director after their name to keep salary costs down. I would seriously doubt that Shep gets his hands dirty on financial or marketing activities apart from rubber stamping accounts or finalising details. I would love to believe that, I wust struggle to see any evidence of it. There is no obvious budgetting within the business. To spend the way we did on transfers in the summer of 2005 was ludicrous. On the back of not spending in the summer of 2003, and the negligible spend in 2004, makes it look as though the spend is just made up as they go along. The 2005 spending could be attributed to getting a Shearer replacement, but the need for that was clear for years, and it seems no plans were in place to finance it. A serious Finance Director would also not allow the dividend payments, and share buyback deals to hit the business as badly as they have done. The club are now in the state of borrowing money from the banks to pay for the dividends, a ludicrous situation. The worst example of the financial mess is the wages we pay though. A real Finance Director would never have allowed us to get to the point where our wages are 68% of our income. The reason this is so horrendous is that general expenses of running the business (so putting on games, paying for the ground etc) seem to be about 40-45% of the income. You don't need to be a great Finance Director to see there is a problem there. Our board seem to have not noticed. As for Marketing. Again I see no evidence of a joined up plan. Whether at the international level or the local level. Douglas Hall has the international remit for this but that cannot be taken seriously at all. The best I can say about him is that he does not seem to making things worse. The most senior person apart from Hall seems to have been Hazel Greener as PR Manager. Her role seems to be little more than a PA role, which would match up with her previous experience in doing that role for Sir John. All very depressing.

(Strangely) I agree. People have their moments. Bob Murray can be justifiably proud of getting sunlun out of Roker Park and into the SoL. It was a great thing Sor any chairmna to achieve, he did it in a cost effective way and left a good home for the club. He was demonstrobaly not the person to take the club forward from there. He stayed with a small town manager for too long, he had no vision of where the club could go, he was just wrong. At Newcastle there was a director on the board, Russel Jones whose sole remit was to manage the ground develepment. Clearly he did his job well. The ground grew at a good pace, and ultimately ended up as good as it could be managed in its location. He was a Hall appointee having been key in the whole growth of Cameron Hall. He left in 2002 when the need for his skills was passed. We now have only two paid directors running the club in Freddy Shepherd and Douglas Hall. It is a struggle to see what they bring to their roles. What key skills they possess that moves us forward, Douglas Hall is in a role that means he is responsible for international marketing of the club. I'm happy that someone should be doing this, not convinced he has the skills, and not convinced that he warrants his £500,000 per year pay package for what he does. If you look at his recent CV then all it has on it is Cameron Hall which has all but gone bust under his leadership. The key role of the chairman is to make appointments to key positions that make the business move forward. He has not done this well. The board is purely Hall and Shepherd family, with only Tim Revill who lives and works in Gibralatar as an independent voice. The only other two senior managers are listed as being Russel Cushing and Ken Slater. Cushing has been with the club for 35 years, and Slater for 34 years. Great servants but not under any stretch of the imagination likely to either stand up to their bosses, not to have some great worldly input to the running of the business. I think the harsh lable would be that they are "yes men". (I have no personal axe to grind with either Cushing, who seems to be a very good administrator, nor Slater who I have no knowledge of). A business that is runnign with a turnover of £80m needs more professional leadership. There should be a Finance Director who understands football financial requirements. Who can spot when spending is not acceptable, who creates a budget for the business and ensures we that it is stuck to. There should be a Marketing Director who leads us into new areas, projects us well within England and on to the European stage. There should be a Director of Football who can lead the direction of the footballing part of the busines, who works with the team manager, but is more responsible for making sure that all the football parts of the business fit together. (We all have different views on the what omes uneder the label of "Director of Football" but it has to be accepted that without one the de facto one is Shepherd or Wilie Mackay). The role of the chairman should be to co-ordinate all these board members to move the whole thing foward. How would we pay for all these directors ? Well back in 2001 was the last time we had a non Hall/Sheperd as a paid director int he shape of David Stonehouse. He was CEO of the company, and he was paid £150,000 per year, lets say £200,000 is required by that sort of person now. So five directors at that rate would cost £1m per year would cost us £1m, which is exactly the amount we are paying the board at the moment. So no extra cost, but far more talent on board. Of course the only flaw in my argument is that the recruitment of these key appointments would normally be done through the chairman.

everybody respects your old age, your wisdom, your grasp of your "facts". The issue is that if you are not viewed as being a good judge of the current board then how can people respect your judgement of boards from 30 or 40 years ago ?

just because 10 years ago we were 2nd, doesn't mean an average of 5th since is shit either. On average 7 sides finish above us each season. Damn statistics. The point is - as I'm sure you realise is - where should Newcastle United be ? In europe regularly, buying international players ? Do we do that now or not, and did we do that with the previous board for decades ? We know that. I know you keep repeating it as if we don't know it, but we do. Where you and everyone else in the world seem to differ is that you wish t compare the current board with something as bad as you can imaigine (Ellis is your usual other exmaple) and say be thankful for what you have, cos it is better than the worst. I want us to compare ourselves with the best that is around and aim to reach that. I want us to grow as a club, not spiral downwards. You aim to be better than the worst and to be happy with that. And those clubs I have named, were above us for the most part, for years, a decade, or longer. Not a year or two. The club has had teams good enough to win trophies, borne out by their league postions, so I am afraid the blame for that should be laid where it belongs, at the feet of the players for bottling the big games that have mattered, and maybe the managers for their preparation, tactics etc. being not right, especially some of the managers who fielded reserve players in League Cup games. Why only them ? Really, why only them ? Players have the on-pitch responsibility. Their manager coaches, picks and motivates the players. The role of the board is to manage the finances of the club, and make key managerial appointments to make sure the business runs to its optimum. Tea lady makes the tea. And as we had shit directors with no ambition before, and plenty of big clubs have the same now, where does it become automatic that any replacements for the current board will be ambitious ? I don't belive there is any football director anywhere who is not ambitious for his club. I'm friends with a chairman of a Scottish Leage side. He is driven in his ambitions. Unlike our board he pours personal money in to help those ambitions to fruition. The ambitions are not to be buying Scottish internationals or playing in Europe, they are essentially one for survival at the level they are currently at. I'd be amazed if anyone who is a football director is any different. You seem obsessed with "ambition" as a key criteria. "Ambition" is great, the probelm is lack of talent. Souness had ambition, Mick McCarthy had ambition, Bob Murray had ambition, Freddy Shepherd has ambition. I don't see you acknowledging this though, and I am not really interested in your views on dividends, nor do I think people like Crozier - as you think - would be better in view of his appalling footballing decisions in charge of the FA. Took a while to get those in again. I was getting worried. I can talk about dividends if you want. NO they scream. :shtup: Hall and Shepherds have taken out roughly £33m from our club in 9 years. I undertsand why you don't want to talk about it.

me, me, me sir ? Although the club's financial results will be out any day soon. Or should be. Last year they were out 13 weeks after the financial year end, we're already two weeks passed that time this year. (although Cameron Hall took two years to post their last results ) I need to be able to come on here to advertise the fact that my site as the figures for this year included, so people can ha ve a look. When I do that I expect to get the blame from some postcodes for them showing the board in a bad light. Cos it's always best to shoot the messenger

But all those sides have still won trophies since we last won one, not sure how that makes the current board any more successful than any of the previous ones ? You raise the point, so I guess you see it as good that nothing has changed on the trophy front. And since Shepherd took over we have had Blackburn, Tottenham, Everton, Boro, Man City, Villa, Charlton, Birmingham, Fulham, Southampton, sunlun, Ipswich, Leeds, Leicester, West Ham, Derby and Sheff Wed have all finished above us. Its a pointless list of names really, but you started it. Just because 20, or 30, or 40 years ago the sewers smelled appallingly doesn't mean they don't smell badly today.

but you're missing the point. The only reason these sorts of 'facts' are repeated time and time again are because they are real, unarguable facts. Do you have some sort of mental defect that means you cannot understand that ? I think it is contagious and most of us are suffering from it.

I've only read the first two pages of messages. I feel so disappointed. NE5 produces a long detailed history with a reasoned argument. Slips over into opinion rather than fact a few times but nothing that can't be avoided when you are trying to get a point across. Then within a couple of subsequent postings he's not accepting others opinions cos they are younger, or glory-hunters, or mad for expecting things to stay the same or even wishing improvement. For God's sake man rise above it. If you've got something to say, and the original article shows you have, then argue about the points in it. To dismiss someone's opinion because they wanted Robson out, or are under 30, or weren't there in 1968 to see us play, or some other personal prejuduce you have just weakens everything else you valdily point out as plusses within the 15 years. Dismissing others so readily just makes you look as though you can't actually see anything wrong with Shepherd and Hall. I hate what they have done with a vengance. I hate the Hall & Shepherds taking nearly £33m out of the clubs coffers in 9 years. You seem not to mind. You and I can, and have, played this to exhaustion. That I hate them robbing my club of that money does not mean I don't appreciate they financed the stadium extension well. I wouldn't instantly dismiss someone for having an alternate position, as you so readily do. You are a lot older than most posters on here, you should have a more mature attitude, rather than just name calling.

But every side comes to Newcastle and plays like that. They have done for years. Expressing surprise at that is like Roeder expressing concern at a thin squad with so many games coming up.

Exactly. This is what made Bellamy so different when he joined us. Constantly hassling opposing defenders, constantly moving, making himself available, causing the opposing defenders to have to work for 90 minutes On Saturday my granny could have marked Shola and Martins. Totally static waiting for the ball to come to them. Their lack of movemend made it so difficult for the defenders, and Shay to do anythign but play HOOF football. It wasn't just the forwards though, the midfield was as guilty of waiting for the ball to find them, and making it wasy for the opposition to mark them.

Anyone saying he will come good is basing this on reports of others who have seen him play for Inter or Nigeria. Most who are not yet impressed with his performances for us are doing so on the basis of 72 minutes on Saturday. Either people are believing the publicity that he is great, or they are jumping to conclusions very quickly. On Saturday's 72 minutes he was no different from Michael Chopra in what he brought to the side. I struggle to believe that that is the limit of his abilities, he would have had no games at Inter if that was the case.

bluesleep.gif we all slept thro it with the last lot too

I've been very good and not got involved for ages, but ..... NE5 seems to want to justify everything by comparing it with the worst he can find, and accusing anyone who disagrees of prefering one of these other worse periods to now. So prefergin a McKeag, or wanting players to leavr, or wantinrg to have a Murray or an Ellis as chairman. Everyone gets accused of these desires despite never ever expressing them. Those who see issues with the present board don't really care about 20 or 20 or 40 years ago, any more than I cared about the 40s or 30s when I was young. It was a different era. The concern is how the team, and the club finances are slowly descending, that we are slipping back from where John Hall rescued us. Using dodgy statistics which show that if you take an average finishing position for all sides, then only 4 finish above us just winds people up. The idea is to make them feel they should be grateful at being 5th best. In the same period our average finishing positoin has 8 teams very season who finish above us. Five times in the bottom half of the division. I want be proud of the team's finishing position, and its cup runs. To have had 5 European campaigns from league finishes is great, but it should be better than that, it shouldn't have 5 seasons where we were closer to relegation than the CL. 30 years ago it was hard to try and highlight what the board were doing wrong. We could only guess where the gate money went. Luckily we can now know for sure. There have been 8 financial years reported since the club became a PLC. In 5 of those individual years more money was given away to shareholders than was spent on investing in players. The overall amount spent on transfers was bigger by £15m, but in the majority of the years shareholders were viewed as more important than the team on the pitch. In one year £8.5m was spent on shareholders than the team. (Last season which has not been reported by the club yet will show big transfer investment, as the figures are not released we will have to wait to see the numbers)

Just wondered if you were selective in which sales you viewed as beiing good/bad. I like the way you slide the problem off on to someone else rather than stickign to your won opinions. Shepherd appointed Souness to sort out the bad boys, like a real man. That is why Bellamy is playing CL football for Liverpool now

Bt it is selective use of FACTS, that you moaned on in your own inimitable way about when you perceived I was being selective on another thread. Our average league postion is 9th. Only 4 sides may better than that, but generally 8 teams finish above us each season. The feel good factor of having 8 teams above you isn't as good as the feel good factor of finishing 5th. That 5 of the last ten years have had bottom half finishes adds to the sense that we aren't 5th best. We may have played in 2 FA Cup finals in the last decade, but again the feel good factor for people about those two appearances isn't very high. Boro have appeared in 5 major finals in the same period, not something that makes me feel happy.