macbeth

I find it hilarious that you're all quibbling over around £1m a year going to the chairman and 1/4 owner of the club when 1 (one) player is payed 4 or 5 times that. Do you expect Ashley will take out less for his £213m over the long term? You do all realise that these "loses" you're all so damning about are directly due to the amount of money the club payed in transfers and wages trying to achieve success. I guess you're implying Ashley should spend less so that his profits are higher? this point has been mentioned before to him. Macbeth, without a shadow of doubt, prefers the club to exist among also rans as he has always said the club should not get involved in attempting to speculate and take risks to buy the top quality players. As all the successful clubs do. He has also never really attempted to answer when he has been asked to explain how 1m a year would have any sort of significant impact on the clubs fortunes, and also obviously thinks that directors and owners of the club should be doing it all for nothing but goodwill. One thing in his favour, is that if the club is actually run in this way, he won't start squealing about the club lacking ambition - as surely as the vast majority of people on this board WILL do - as he will be happy with real mediocrity [certainly nowhere near playing in europe as regularly as we have] and a balance sheet showing a profit, however meagre. Going by his logic we wouldn't have signed Martins last season as we couldn't afford him, even though without him the club would likely have been relegated. And therefore lost loads of more money. This logic has been stated before, by HTL if I remember, myself, others and now yourself He likes living in his little cocoon, macbeth, taking no risks. He would have loved McKeag, Seymour etc, selling players for profit. Six of the last ten seasons we finish bottom half of table, greater than any other period in the club's history, but not would shoule be accepted as a greta achievement. Chairman appoints Souness and Roeder as managers. We get what we deserve. It seems that spending all our money on a star player is all we want, so it's all we get. While we seemingly have to buy Owen, Luque, Martins, Duff cos that is what we want, in the same time we also bring in Moore and Bernard to strengthen the defence. If investing and speculating means taking the club to the brink of financial meltdown then I completely understand why you feel Shepherd was so good. Me I'd like us to spend to the absolute limit of what we can afford. like we did under McKeag, Seymour etc for over 30 years ? You wish to compare us with the worst you have seen. I aim higher. It's liek saying we're better than sunlun. Great, maybe enough for you, but not enough for me And all for financial meltdown, a half empty stadium, generating less interest and less money, so selling our best players to make ends meet, and a footballing result of staring at 3rd division football. No we have none of those things. We have full stadium, huge income, therefore a huge advantage yet we still have 6 finishes in the bottom half of the league. And a financial result of a failed share issue that couldn't even raise 2.5m quid, achieving only half of that from a combination of business and supporters in the city. Selling Peter Beardsley to Liverpool, a local lad who knew Newcastle were a dead duck, raised more than that. Again, absolutely. But that had nothing to do with the chairmanship of Freddie Shepherd. That turnaround was done by a top class business man, who passed on the control of the club to Freddie Shepherd and Douglas Hall. Still, if that is what you want, fair enough. No I don't. I never wanted to see the incompetence of McKeag repeated. Sadly I did. I wasn't one of those who swooned when Shepherd made some great statement, brought in Souness and Roeder, ansd then gave us "what we wanted" with trophy signings rather than trophies. UV has raised an interesting question, that I suspect you are avoiding due to myself and Baggio replying first and hoping nobody will notice. Missed it, will go back now and have a look. Oh, BTW, if you consider numerous years in the old 2nd division, including one stretch of eerrr 6 years, and just as many years fighting to stay up once we got up, superior to our league positions in the last decade, you have a bit of a problem. You must have missed the bit I've now highlighted for you in blue. Again, it depends on your ambitions.

I find it hilarious that you're all quibbling over around £1m a year going to the chairman and 1/4 owner of the club when 1 (one) player is payed 4 or 5 times that. Do you expect Ashley will take out less for his £213m over the long term? You do all realise that these "loses" you're all so damning about are directly due to the amount of money the club payed in transfers and wages trying to achieve success. I guess you're implying Ashley should spend less so that his profits are higher? this point has been mentioned before to him. Macbeth, without a shadow of doubt, prefers the club to exist among also rans as he has always said the club should not get involved in attempting to speculate and take risks to buy the top quality players. As all the successful clubs do. He has also never really attempted to answer when he has been asked to explain how 1m a year would have any sort of significant impact on the clubs fortunes, and also obviously thinks that directors and owners of the club should be doing it all for nothing but goodwill. One thing in his favour, is that if the club is actually run in this way, he won't start squealing about the club lacking ambition - as surely as the vast majority of people on this board WILL do - as he will be happy with real mediocrity [certainly nowhere near playing in europe as regularly as we have] and a balance sheet showing a profit, however meagre. Going by his logic we wouldn't have signed Martins last season as we couldn't afford him, even though without him the club would likely have been relegated. And therefore lost loads of more money. This logic has been stated before, by HTL if I remember, myself, others and now yourself He likes living in his little cocoon, macbeth, taking no risks. He would have loved McKeag, Seymour etc, selling players for profit. Six of the last ten seasons we finish bottom half of table, greater than any other period in the club's history, but not would shoule be accepted as a greta achievement. Chairman appoints Souness and Roeder as managers. We get what we deserve. It seems that spending all our money on a star player is all we want, so it's all we get. While we seemingly have to buy Owen, Luque, Martins, Duff cos that is what we want, in the same time we also bring in Moore and Bernard to strengthen the defence. If investing and speculating means taking the club to the brink of financial meltdown then I completely understand why you feel Shepherd was so good. Me I'd like us to spend to the absolute limit of what we can afford. In the last 10 years Newcastle United have had to borrow money, not to buy players, but to pay dividends to shareholders. That people are happy to borrow money for anything but investment in the club is something I can never understand.

The differnce is that as both majority shareholders and board members they were making the majority of the payments to themselves. A justification can be made for their salaries, even if someone feels £10,000 per week may have been excessive. The club issuing dividends while not making money is just wrong. http://www.nufc-finances.org.uk/profits2.htm has two graphs ... http://www.nufc-finances.org.uk/profit2.gif http://www.nufc-finances.org.uk/profit5.gif

as ever I only used the figures for pay and dividends straight from the club accounts. Any suggested dodgy dealings are difficult to believe. Wasn't having a go mate just merely stating that your figures might just be a part of what he took out. I've tried searching to see if I could find the companies he's director of with no luck, but I'm certain a year or two ago I saw such a list - consider he'll take a 'wage' from each. It's okay, you have to read everything I say and picture me grinning. Only Shepherd's love child wound me up NUFC own various companies under the NUFC umbrella but I think they have to say what the total pay for any director is. So Douglas got his £450,000 per year for being a director of Newcastle United FC (International) Ltd, and this was reported inthe accounts. Not sure how our interntaional standing will survive without him in this role

Check the accounts for 2000, loss and dividend payment. You can probably compensate losses with profits from previous years. Football is no different from any other business in this respect. Doesn't change the fact that any dividend needs to have been earned as profits before.. As I say, dividends are DEFINED AS paid out profits.. Can't seen how you can question this to incriminate Shepherd. It certainly doesn't make your argument more convincing.. 2000 accounts Operating profit before player trading £766,000 Player Trading £19,874,000 Operating Loss £19,108,000 Loss after interest and taxation £15,544,000 (so there was a tax credit in there) Dividends paid £3,836,000 Retained loss for year £19,380,000 And I've never understood how they did !! The only thing maybe that they split group and company results to somehow make it legal ??

The warehouse was sold between the Shepherds for £175,000 and leased back to the club for £150,000 per year. and the rest 2006 £341,000 2005 £335,000 2004 £271,000 2003 £316,000 2002 £265,000

as ever I only used the figures for pay and dividends straight from the club accounts. Any suggested dodgy dealings are difficult to believe.

not sure I could do a "proper" one Not slurring you past work, just an all in wonder to end the era as such. I've started to do a similar, but smaller, analysis on other clubs. It's at www.football-finances.org.uk and will be taking up my time for a few weeks. It's probably best to wait a while anyway. If I did something now I may only be able to see the downside of Shepherd whereas if I wait a few years I may have though of something good he did. May.

not sure I could do a "proper" one

I doubt he is. May well still take £10,000 per week in pay, but I suspect he does have some business sense which will be a huge advantage over his predecessor

In the 8 years up to July 2006 Newcastle United (funded by its fans buying tickets, shirts, paying Sky subscription money) paid Freddie Shepherd £3,247,034 to do his job Newcastle United (funded by its fans buying tickets, shirts, paying Sky subscription money) paid dividends on the shares he owned.This came to a total of £5,489,239. The total amount of money he took from Newcastle United was therefore £8,736,273. He also made several million from the sale of his shares to Ashley, but that didn't directly effect the club's own accounts, that was purely Ashley's money. For too long Shepherd robbed us. In the end it cost US over £9m to have him as chairman for the last 9 years. If he is never allowed back in the ground again it would be too soon for me. A thieving bastard, 90% driven by his own financial desires, 10% driven to do the best for his local football team.

of course TT, but it made me smile to see macbeth popping up again when he thinks there is a chance to have a pop at fred or the finance at the club. I know what I hope this is all about... oh go on, tell us There is no way in the world that this can be about Souness. Souness had no access to the club's money. He could madly suggest he had to spend what ever it took to get a player, but others had to make the money appear. If Souness made a signing happen, and the receiving club made it worth his while thro some very big brown paper bag, then I'm not sure that NUFC have lost out directly. If the club now feels it has lost money in a criminal sort of way then it is the people who had access to sign off cash who are the only ones who could be concerned. I'd guess this would cover Bruce and Freddie Shepherd, Douglas and Alison Hall, and Tim Revill as they are the directors of the business. It also probably touches Russell Cushing and Ken Slater as the only other two senior employees.

i like the 'only in the corner flag for 5 seconds rule', particualrly now Shearer has gone

Possibly, but I would say if the managers professional judgement says a player is worth 8 million and he turns out to be worth 8 quid, there is only one person to blame I doubt the police are involved because Souness's professional judgement was wrong, there'll be an awful lot of worried football managers around if that is what they are persuing. The club statement says that the club will prosecute if they have been victims of a criminal activity. Souness had no access to money, it cannot be him they are interested in. that isn't what me and you were discussing though. We were talking about how many or how much people were rating Bumsong as a footballer. We do not know who is implicated here, it has happened before at other clubs. many apologies I moved away from the topic of the thread, and tried to distract people away from the current issue

Possibly, but I would say if the managers professional judgement says a player is worth 8 million and he turns out to be worth 8 quid, there is only one person to blame I doubt the police are involved because Souness's professional judgement was wrong, there'll be an awful lot of worried football managers around if that is what they are persuing. The club statement says that the club will prosecute if they have been victims of a criminal activity. Souness had no access to money, it cannot be him they are interested in.

unbelievably the backing of the manager in itself may have led to the club somehow being conned out of money. These things can happen when you go 5 years without a Finance person on your board

but they weren't Rangers fans. They're probably the same people excited about Rozenhal. Best not to make a judgement until they've been seen in action, otherwise there'll always be someone to say "told you so".

The club accounts, with Shepherd's signature on them, includes in the "Internal Control" (that works at so many levels ) section "The group has established an internal financial control framework that is appropriate ..... designed to manage rather than eliminate risk ..... includes .... clearly laid down authorization levels for all types of expenditure and financial commitments ...... the board has considered the need for internal audit function, but has decided that ....such a function is not currently considered appropriate" So it will have been Souness's fault then

we probably won't find out itll the police release him

Slightly worried that I agree with NE5, but it has to be Robert Lee. I also have to agree with the view that Shearer wasn't. He should have been but it just didn't work out. His last thee years were exceptionally poor, and a real side would have moved on, without leavign him to shuffle around, giving 100% but it not being as good as him playing at 60% of the 1996 player. The concentration on his requirements, rather than on the team requirements can also be viewed as a negative impact. Shay is clearly value. Of the early Keegan buys Venison and Sellars were great buys. We have definitely had our money's worth out of Solano too. Later on value for money came from Kevin Gallagher. The buy that excited me most was Ginola having accidentally seen him on box the previous season playing fantastically in a CL game. How could we be the team he came and played for ? Biggest let down was Maric, he could have, should have, been great

if Setanta have 46 games for the whole season it needs to be a bargain

Each country is assessed by Uefa as contributing to the commercial success of their competitions. The Uefa Cup had a marketing pool of money which totalled €13.5m across all the countries in it. Each country then gets its market pool back to reward its teams who have made the quart-finals. Spain had a marketing pool of €4.883m and two teams in the quarter finals so they got €2.44lm each. England only had Spurs in the quart-finals so the English pool of €3.5m all went to Spurs. If we had qualified for the quarter finals we would have split the pot with Spurs and got €1.7m each. It is similar in the CL but has the added complication of the finishign position of the team the year they qualified, so Chelsea > Man U > Liverpool > Arsneal, and some other muliplier related to games played in the CL Hope this helps

Huntington had 14 games to make some mistakes, Edgar only 3. I suspect, as with most kids, the more games you give them at an early age the more chance of a cock up. To play them both out of position, in a crap defence would have doen neither much good. If Huntington has been head and shoulder above his contemparies then I still hold out hope. Tay lor made some right cock ups at the same age, it wasn't correct to write him off then. From 14 and 3 games form Huntington and Edgar it isn't really correct to say they're great or crap.

Messi wants a challenge, Ashley has given Sam £50m, Shepherd there to get last big-name signing, we need a left back ....

aye, nobody should show it