The Magpie Group

[AyeDubbleYoo]

True Faith are always looking for writers as well.

[UncleBingo]

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.

 

Alistar Wilson at S&N was also an important figure, he knew both Fletcher,.and Keegan from his time here as a player.

[Mikky]

Those HTT posts are such a great read and history lesson

Thanks

[summerof69]

Class posts HTT

[54]

Class post HTT.

 

But that was 3705 words over all your posts that last page. My highest Uni assignment, bar my project was 2500. Thats 6 A4 pages of 9.5 font.

[Guest Howaythetoon]

Nah, I don’t like either of those fanzines and again write for my own comfort. Thank you those who read the posts btw, if there is one thing I love about our club it’s the history of it. Its magnificent.

[Stal]

Definitely in the camp that loves an HTT post. I learn so much and I enjoy the writing style.

[Guest chopey]

Never really thought about it until reading HTT's post but Ashley's total disregard for our history is yet another reason to detest him 

[ToonArmy1892]

Watford v Spurs game i noticed lots of Watford fans wearing yellow tshirts which i assume had been put on the seats by the club, loads of ASHLEY OUT tshirts for fans to wear in ground?

 

Would need to be taken into the ground like.

[Greg]

[Rich]

Thought the first one was well worth going to, will be at this as well.

[Darth Crooks]

 

That poster is great

[Si]

Some class speakers lined up, very impressive.

[ToonArmy1892]

Aye, if one person has definatley rattled him then Chi has, great she will be at the meeting.

 

Will hopefully get up for this.

[James]

Aye, if one person has definatley rattled him then Chi has, great she will be at the meeting.

 

Will hopefully get up for this.

 

She has but Ashley will hide behind the fact that Labour aren’t in power. I would like to see Chi invite Jeremy Wright, now that would truly rattle him.

[morla84]

Will be at this, hopefully bump into some of you there!

[Stifler]

I’d be there but I don’t finish work until 7.

I’ll see if I can start l and finish earlier.

[biggs]

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

 

Great post well thought out .

[Dokko]

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

 

Basically NE5 was right.

[Sho Time]

Very possible I can make the 3rd as I should hopefully be in Newcastle then. If I'm about I'll definitely make a point of attending.

[Big Geordie]

I'll be there on the 3rd, all things being good and equal.

[Raconteur]

 

Basically NE5 was right.

 

Ye gods!

 

Shepherd's time was over when he left. It wasn't the shambles Ashley likes to portray, but he had lost control of the finances and we were all eager to see him gone. He's, of course, no Ashley, but lets not beatify the man, which was what NE5 and HTL did (ad nauseum).

[NG32]

Im not so sure he did lose control of the finances, we had a 50 million mortgage against the stadium expansion and a 25 mil interest free loan from NTL (I think).  Looking at todays TV deals, we could have cleared that off in one season 

 

FS also knew how to sell NUFC, he had created an image for the club which ashley has gone out of his way to dismantle.

[LFEE]

Im not so sure he did lose control of the finances, we had a 50 million mortgage against the stadium expansion and a 25 mil interest free loan from NTL (I think).  Looking at todays TV deals, we could have cleared that off in one season 

 

FS also knew how to seel NUFC, he SJW had created an image for the club which ashley has gone out of his way to dismantle.

 

This. Apart from sell instead of seel.

[Guest neesy111]

I'm not sure about that.  SJH was very quick to sell his shares when they didn't need to sell them.