Jump to content
Newcastle-Online

The Magpie Group

Heron

by Heron
in Football

 Share

Recommended Posts

Guest chopey

Guest chopey

Posted
Posted

Ashley is absolutely the worst ever, I hate it when people say he has cleared the debt !!!!!!!!!...........he has moved the debt to himself and added to it, that debt will be part of any deal to sell, his lack of due diligence cost him a fortune and we ended up paying for his incompetence. Ashley has fucked over every person he has come into contact with except his wife who uses and abuses him to this day. (It would be a hoot if a Geordie humped her in a black and white shirt and he walked in)

Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest Howaythetoon

Guest Howaythetoon

Posted
Posted

The thing that makes Ashley the worst owner we’ve had is his malevolence...

 

Yes others used NUFC to make themselves rich and others made monumental fuck ups, but most of them did try and most wanted the club to do well. They just often didn’t have the acumen or money or cared enough to make that happen.

 

Ashley has constantly sabotaged things, be it vetoing the signing of players his Cheif Scout had worked on, undermining managers, using media chums and PR friends to smear former greats and mock fans and the club’s history and heritage or by being personally or by large responsible for two relegations. That and our club’s ability to generate extra revenue commercially. Among lots of other crimes of course.

 

There is nothing anyone can tell me about past eras or directors or owners, I might not have been around in the 80s for example, but I know all there is to know about our club since it’s formation to today and Mike Ashley is the worst person ever involved in our club individually and his ownership the worst period because although we had fallen away from competing for the CL after the Sir Bobby era, he bought a club that only Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea were ahead of in terms of commercial revenue, CL football and being able to compete above us for players, transfer fees and wages. Since then the likes of fucking Bournemouth are ahead of us and always will be as long as Ashley is owner, even if we are separated by divisions.

 

Someone like Freddy Shepherd would never have appointed Rafa because he didn’t trust foreign managers after Gullit, but if he was our chairman right now, for all his faults, SJP would not be in the state it us now and Rafa wouldn’t have to make do with Joselu as our starting striker or our number 9 being a loan signing.

 

He cared, they all did. Ashley doesn’t, never has and never will.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Bimpy474

Bimpy474

Posted
Posted

Not sure how anyone normal with a functioning brain can think Shepherd or Hall were worse owners than Ashley. I would seek immediate help or a very high cliff, as they need help of some kind.

McKeag, Hall / Shepherd, Ashley are all as guilty as each other for using NUFC as their personal cash cow. The level of money raped from the coffers is commensurate with the money coming into the club over that time.

 

Aye but Ashley is still worse than them, at no stage did they make me want to walk away from supporting the club, not how Ashley has. And he's doing far more damage than they ever did.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest The Little Waster

Guest The Little Waster

Posted
Posted

"Three weeks from administration" :lol:

 

What a load of absolute shite.

Imagine actually believing that.

 

Its right up there with WMD

Link to post
Share on other sites
bigfella

bigfella

Posted
Posted

The thing that makes Ashley the worst owner we’ve had is his malevolence...

 

Yes others used NUFC to make themselves rich and others made monumental fuck ups, but most of them did try and most wanted the club to do well. They just often didn’t have the acumen or money or cared enough to make that happen.

 

Ashley has constantly sabotaged things, be it vetoing the signing of players his Cheif Scout had worked on, undermining managers, using media chums and PR friends to smear former greats and mock fans and the club’s history and heritage or by being personally or by large responsible for two relegations. That and our club’s ability to generate extra revenue commercially. Among lots of other crimes of course.

 

There is nothing anyone can tell me about past eras or directors or owners, I might not have been around in the 80s for example, but I know all there is to know about our club since it’s formation to today and Mike Ashley is the worst person ever involved in our club individually and his ownership the worst period because although we had fallen away from competing for the CL after the Sir Bobby era, he bought a club that only Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea were ahead of in terms of commercial revenue, CL football and being able to compete above us for players, transfer fees and wages. Since then the likes of fucking Bournemouth are ahead of us and always will be as long as Ashley is owner, even if we are separated by divisions.

 

Someone like Freddy Shepherd would never have appointed Rafa because he didn’t trust foreign managers after Gullit, but if he was our chairman right now, for all his faults, SJP would not be in the state it us now and Rafa wouldn’t have to make do with Joselu as our starting striker or our number 9 being a loan signing.

 

He cared, they all did. Ashley doesn’t, never has and never will.

 

That's one of the best posts I've ever seen on here.  I was around in the 80s and although McKeag and co were dinosaurs,  they all wanted success for the club ; Ashley couldn't give two fucks whether we're top or bottom, as long as SD is getting it's advertising exposure.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest Howaythetoon

Guest Howaythetoon

Posted
Posted

We would not have went into admin either, there is no way Barclays would have pulled the plug. The appointment of Big Sam was actually FS attempting to recover from the huge and often ego driven extravagant expensive Souness era he plunged us into trying to make his man work or more likely to make up for his huge error, that and accepting we had to improve the backroom set-up to include scouting, coaching, academy, medical and even statistical data.

 

Also, FS did take money out, but he spent a lot of that on buying shares to increase his shareholding. The real parasites then were the Halls and other minor shareholders who took money ou, but never put any back in and had no interest in the club.

 

I was very critical of FS back then because I wanted the best for NUFC at all times and thought his decision making and wild transfer strategy was fucking us over, that and his inability o see outside of the box in terms of picking a manager. I championed Rafa as someone we should be looking at in Sir Bobby’s Final months and was gutted Liverpool got him.

 

Had we got him, maybe the two clubs’ respective trajectories wolnt have been so polar in direction or fortunes.

 

Looking back, I was wrong to be so critical of FS and wanting him out, constantly holding him up to the standards set by SJH and foolishly thinking of his practices were more nefarious than altruism when in reality most business conducted inside and outside the game by those associated with it, from FAs to managers and players to owners and even fan groups is often clouded in let’s say dodgyness.

 

If he were our owner today, I would consider him as one of the better club owners and wouldn’t want him out, I’d still be critical whenever he fucked up and always hold him to higher standards because again all I want is the best for my club, but deep down he shared the same ideals, if not always the same ideas and as such a common ground can always be found between owner and fans regarding their club.

 

With Ashley there is fuck all, just lots of SD adverts.

 

Good to see you posting again BooBoy and I’ve always considered you a knowledgeable and level headed fair poster, but Ashley is by far the worst owner we have ever had. You can’t even compare the eras man, it’s like saying Jackie Charlton was a worse manager than Pardew because he never finished 5th or took us into Europe. He never had 53k gates, a team of internationals from all over the globe and all that money coming into the club.

 

Of course neither did many of his rivals at other clubs back in his day, but that’s an era where football owners or directors were not the differencer even mattered much, nor gates or money spent, it was won and lost on the pitch between the players and managers.

 

As ever we often chose the wrong manager or poor managers and spent money on the wrong players or poor players.

 

When we rarely got it right, we tended to do well and put out the odd decent team.

 

The McKeags were typical of the Edwardian game, a family of title and although wealthy by their own standards, of no such wealth to return NUFC to the glory days of the 50s. They sold Gazza and co to rebild SJP and rebuild the team under managers they appointed, poor managers and poor players often.

 

They lacked the vision to look at the likes of Gazza and bring in a top manager to build a team around them to the point where it become enevitable they would have to cash in on them. Towards the end they were so far out of touch with how the game was evolving, especially financially, NUFC had been left well and truly behind the times and so had they.

 

Two pivotal moments in our history post the 50s that brought failure and sucesss were key in leading the club to becoming what it was in the 80s. The 74 Cup Final against Liverpool. At kick-off we had won more trophies than they had, but they were becoming an emerging power and that win among other wins and players like KK and their manager would bring an era of dominance home and abroad. We lost and in typical Toon style too.

 

Like in 2005 when we finished 5th and Liverpool 4th and we got Souness and they got Rafa, they strived to improve and win more things, hungry. We didn’t, we looked at a Cup Final and our number 9 in Supermac and thought we could still compete. That thrashing should have been a wake up call. It wasn’t.

 

The other key moment was the Fairs Cup win before that which I consider as the precursor to that final defeat and all that followed.

 

Don’t believe what the mackems think, the Fairs Cup was a serious competition of a high standard, similar a standard to the European Cup and considered even tougher. We had a good team and we won a major European trophy. That team with one or two additions under say someone like Clough could have won a league and a European Cup.

 

We actually looked at Clough and he was interested, but like many others the directors were scared of him and being old school men of title and he working class and caring little for anyone of title or authority, they didn’t look twice. Again lacking the vision and wherewithal to join the evolving game other clubs like Liverpool, Derby, Villa, Forest, Ipswich under Sir Bobby et al were starting to see and grasp.

 

All that was made easier to just let all of that nonsense as one director called the European Cup pass us by when you had full gates every week and those in attendance were just as happy to watch their number 9 bang the goals in as see their team win.

 

The cult of the number 9 isn’t a modern cult, it goes way back to Albert Shepherd, Jack Allen, Jack Peddie and then  immortalised by Hugie Gallacher and Jackie Milburn and with the latter Cup Finals and Cup silverware which has cost the club in terms of league success and higher league finishes many a time durin and after asthe club and fans looked to Wembley.

 

Mind, you cant blame fans of that era who all clubs thought more highly of the FA Cup than the League Title, especially fans of clubs from Northern towns and cities where hardship was a daily occurance, football their release and if er football team wasn’t good, as long as they had a goal scorer banging tem in... trips to the Capital and Wembley were like visits from the Queen herself to locals though. The FA Cup, covered by every newspaper and media outlet such as radio and TV the world over was the real glamour for fans.

 

And we were the kings in that regard in the early 50s.

 

So ‘69 and ‘74.

 

Joe Harvey is a club legend and he was our manager during both those Finals, but the board of directors didn’t have the vision to see beyond him in the same way FS didn’t with Sir Bobby towards his end which I regard our modern critical moment which has lead to where we are at now, his sacking and who we replaced him with. Like in ‘74 we were up against Liverpool again...

 

Today it would seem injust to sack or replace someone who had guided the club to a trophy and a final a few years later, but the board back then were often looking his way with an eye on replacing him, but was a safe pair of hands and a throwback to the days of trainers who selected the team and oversaw training.

 

Harvey as much as a legend as he was, wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes today and would have been and should have been considered someone past his sell by date even back then at many other clubs as Sir Bobby should have been considered with the club looking to not sack him, but replace him to build on what he had started.

 

For Harvey the Fairs Cup. After that players got away with murder and directors likewise. Good old Joe.

 

A new breed of manager was emerging then in the likes of Clough and Don Revie who had great success and of course a new breed of club infrastructure with the Anfield Boot Room which was kind of copied even though they won’t accept it from Sir Matt Busby’s era as Man Utd manager.

 

We were still stuck in the 50s under a manager or trainer who as a player won 2 FA Cups in the 50s...

 

We simply failed to build on the Fairs Cup and settled for the Supermacs and days out at Wembley as our lot, board and fans alike. The board lacked the vision to see that European football had become more than an exhibition match but instead the elite standard of club football. They lacked the vision to dispense with an Edwardian football model for a modern model where trainers become managers and coaches, where clubs employed scouting, medical, tactical analysis and comrcial departments.

 

When they did try and get with the times in Gordon Lee and Richard Dinnis it was too late, these more modern men had walked into a time warp whose ideas and methods were opposed on the field, in the boardroom and in the stands. Had either taken over in ‘69 there might have been no Supermac, but come ‘74, there might have been another Cup added to our honours list and maybe a change in history regarding our club’s fortunes directly against Liverpool’s. They woulld have always went on to succeed. But we might not have went backwards as we did.

 

Fast forward to Kevin Keegan as a player, from Liverpool to Germany via an international carreer with England and he walked into a dressing room forged on the fields of a Benwell training ground with verminous changing rooms and YTS players with no boots or kit. More Edwardian than 1980s, an era where he had the vision to maximise his carreer and earnings abroad and not just get with the times but help create them with TV appearances, top of the pops appearances and bubble perms, that and players playing their trade abroad.

 

He walked into a time warp and several years later when he returned as manager it wasn’t so much a time warp anymore, but a museum. We were not only so far behind other clubs as a club, but so far behind the times the emmerging Premier League looked positively alien.

 

Especially so to the Edwardian McKeags up against Sir John Hall who like them were fans and although they had run the club and therefore had experience, they were inexperienced when it come to the modern game. As was Sir John Hall, but he had the vision of a resplendid SJP the stadia equiverlent of the Metro Centre, he had the vision of KK the pied piper reunighting fans and the vision of not just getting with the times which was the Premier League and TV, but being a driving force behind it.

 

What he understood most was though unlike the rest and those that followed is a successful NUFC is more than a goldmine, it’s player and in business is about being a player. Mike ashley is a player, but he’s in it for himself and while the club is totally different in every way shape and form to the club of the 80s, it may as well be that very club because it is stuck in a time warp and in danger of becoming a museum and fans once again are happy to turn up week in week out, easily pleased and easily placated.

 

There are no number 9s of Supermac  fame or days out at Wembley to cling onto, it’s PL survival and days out at SJP to watch PL footy which is to fans what is now more important and valued more highly than anything else.

 

All because Ashley has made anything else over that such as matches bygone like 3-2 against Barcelona, players bygone like smashing the world record on Shearer, teams bygone such as KK’s entertainers or Sir Bobby’s comeback boys, competing head to head, toe to toe with a rival for a title like 95-96, European nights and even derby days a bygone thing where fans look at Sunderland’s league status as a relief because it means we won’t have to watch us lose to them for another year at least. And so on and so on.

 

All before him, if we were not winning things or getting to Finals or playing in Europe or in the top-flight, we had something to put our hopes and dreams into,  a player, a manager, a game, a young prospect, the Derby, the past, our culture, our heritage, our standing in the game.

 

Fucking hell man, thanks to Ashley, we can’t even enjoy having one of the best manager’s in the game in our dugout and something that has always been the envy of many a club and rival fan regardless of its state though the decades - our stadium, our home, brings nothing but embarrassment and shame to the point where we now envy others.

 

We have become, thanks to Ashley, mere consumers there to watch a game of PL football with the outcome although obviously in our thoughts towards positivity, pretty irrelevant outside of those 90 minutes afterwards, where during it is a real contest if only in our minds, we can still at least pretend.

 

NUFC don’t even do that.

 

#AshleyOut

 

Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest Howaythetoon

Guest Howaythetoon

Posted
Posted

Not sure how anyone normal with a functioning brain can think Shepherd or Hall were worse owners than Ashley. I would seek immediate help or a very high cliff, as they need help of some kind.

McKeag, Hall / Shepherd, Ashley are all as guilty as each other for using NUFC as their personal cash cow. The level of money raped from the coffers is commensurate with the money coming into the club over that time.

 

The McKeags to my knowledge didn’t take any money out of the club for their own personal gain, not transparently anyway. The may have done by making money disappear on whatever then pocketing it. Freddy Shepherd did and although he kind of disclosed it, it was bull shit stuff regardless. Pennies in reality though and money he and his family then used to make others richer by buying shares to increase their own sharehold.

 

SJH from the start said if he was to become the owner or majority shareholder of NUFC which he didn’t want initially, offering ownership to the fans in return for his money back, happy to be a player in the game that is business as I’ve eluded to as something real entrepreneurs value equally as much as profit, is he would look to capitalise financially and he did, massively so. But I will never hold that against him or begrudge his fortune from NUFC because every penny he took out, he earned. FS in a smaller way equally.

 

Douglas though, he wasn’t even a key player at any time, his dad’s eyes and ears, it was his dad’s money that paid for his meal ticket if you like. Such a disappointment no doubt to his father. He deserved nothing.

 

At least FS put some of his own money into the club at that time, well before as a fan and after as chairman, as did KK early doors paying Terry Mac’s wages and paying for boots and kit for youngsters all from his own pocket as he did when he joined as a player.

 

He even offered to give SJH his money back if we went down to the then second division, where he would have taken over as owner/chairman with SJH given a seat on the board. He had Arthur Cox lines up as manager to take us back up if we went down.

 

God knows how that would have turned out but between SJH and KK, but between them we had two men who valued money, knew how to use it and wanted nothing but the best for NUFC for different reasons, but with the same goal in mind because as individuals when they got involved in something, winning, like being a player, is just as important and for KK even more as idealism and fantasy overruled common sense and reality.

 

Mike Ashley is a player as stated, but it’s all about him, he isn’t an entrepreneur which is someone who takes an idea and turns into into something good or invests in something and turns that something into something even better. Businessmen don’t inves in start-ups to make money, again it’s to become a player in a new technology or in a certain industry, it’s about turning silver into gold. KK was so similar to SJH in many ways, a businessman as much as he was a sportsman.

 

The key figure in that era, however, was a certain Freddie Fletcher. He had worked for S&N where a local brand become a national brand and then an international one. He understood business better than any of them and how to go about it and quickly.

 

He went to Rangers and despite the Scottish Premier League even back then in the infancy of the English Premier League, was  still a relative pauper in comparrison and it’s clubs like so, turned Rangers into one of the most profitable and money generating machines in Europe. Totally commercialising every aspect of that club as he helped do with NUFC.

 

We went from a figure of about 6m in debt in 1990 with a turnover of less than 4m on the verge of going bust because we couldn’t service the debt and if we could there would have been nothing to spend on players or ground development following the Taylor Rport which many clubs qualified for grants and loans which we didn’t, to turning over 40m + in 5 years, second only to Man Utd who were turning over a we million more.

 

We had taken over everyone in England, Rangers included a then model, and all of Europe with many a top club bankrolled by the state (Barca/Real) wealthy individuals (Inter an AC) or companies (Spurs Sugar and Amstrad, Parma and Parmalet, PSV Philips) and of course criminals in South America.

 

All without SJH having to put anything of his own money into the club, all he put in was the money to buy shares so he could take control and being a guarantee for loans and overdrafts. At the time when Blackburn were breaking transfer records and owned by Jack Walker, the focus on such owners was towards a sugar daddy or financer theme. For both clubs, especially ours, nothing could be further than the truth.

 

TV money accounted for a big chunk of the revenue, but nowhere near as much as is as significant as today. No, the vast majority of that 40m + turnover and our ability to spend a world record fee on Shearer and allow the likes of Fletcher to work his magic was down to fans spending their hard earned on all things NUFC which was commercialise by Fletcher, but only because the delivered something worth spending money on, worth investing in, worth buying everything and everything. By giving us a stadium equal of any, a team equal to any, players equal of any and a genuine belief that our club, our team, were a match for any and that we would go all out to become the best in the land which KK imediately following promotion set the target of, we are coming for your title Alex he said.

 

We spent a lot, a lot needed spent to get us out of the time warp we were in and upto scratch, but contrary to myth, like how SJH was this sugar daddy or had bankrolled us or KK was a cheque book manager, we actually spent less going up than Derby the then moneybags and West Ham who went up with us and spent less than Arsenal, Liverpool and Man Utd did during the KK PL years.

 

It was they who had to spend more to compete with us such was our transformation.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Benwell Lad

Benwell Lad

Posted
Posted

There's no doubt that the impact of Freddie Fletcher was huge after the Magpie Group took control and it's often overlooked as the debate concentrates on owners/chairmen.

We went out and recruited the best and it paid huge dividends to the commercial business development side of the club.

Although the appointment of Rafa was probably as big on the football side, the failure to bring a high calibre business developer on the commercial side has been a big mistake of the Ashley era.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...