I know I've said it before, but we are a club run by counters, not creators. Theirs is a static vision: they look back or at the present, not forward. Their one goal is to keep within budgets, not to invest for the future to become the best. So, while people like Risdale were investing in players, we were congratulating ourselves that we were keeping within budgets and staying out of the relegation zone. Now Leeds, who were then below us in the League, are challenging for a place in the Champions League, and who doubts that Risdale will get more than 100% return on his investment in a single season, with the opportunity to attract and invest in other top quality players as we sit back and congratulate ourselves on our good accounting?

At the end of the season in which we sold Andy Cole and failed to get into Europe, because we lacked a decent striker, Kevin Keegan said this should never happen again, that we should always qualify for Europe. Of course, he was right. Who can doubt that, except those who at present run our club, people like Stonehouse, who says we're "doing fine" because we're set to achieve our "ambition to attain mid-table stability in the Premiership." Satisfied with this season's achievements, he says, "We do not have to get into the Champions League, mid-table stability is more important and we will cut our cloth accordingly."

Now when they lift their gaze from the balance sheets and look out on the field they will see a product they know is poor, and probably won't stand another season in the Premier League. We can't attract the best, we have no vision towards which we are developing, and the standard of football leaves the fans of other clubs chanting from the terraces "Can we play you every week?", while our own jeer the team off the field. If you have a quality product it sells itself. If you don't, you must try to retain the loyalty of your customers by all sorts of promotional strategies: you freeze prices and you fill their ears with promises of better things to come, even though you know it will be the same next season as it has for the last four.

-- Anonymous, May 02, 2001

Answers

and what will Mr Stonehouse then say when 10000 do not return their sseason ticket applications and he is left with 15000 spare seats every Saturday?

Surely that is the obvious next stage

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001

Agree with everything you've written Brian. I'm just away down the chemists now to fetch the razors. Imagine what our lives would be like if we'd ever witnessed a great Newcastle team? I reckon I'd have discovered a cure for cancer, ensured world peace and still had time on me hands before me tea

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001

I don't think anyone could argue with everything you're said. What is open for discussion, however, is the question of how we get out of this situation. Personally, I just can't see us getting rid of the clowns who run the club. Things are not so terrible that they could think of selling up. I'm sure that the clowns are making a killing out the club. The only possible buyer would most likely be a corporation such as NTL who would run the club in the same manner. Maybe the only way to change is for the club to go to the dogs and hope a decent buyer saves us when our share price is low. It was touted on another thread that maybe we'd benefit long term from a brief spell in division 1. The finicial implications would be disasterous but it might get rid of the management.

Maybe best to just hope that we can get rid of the old guard (Lee, Speed, Shearer & Barton) and get the next Martin O'Neil to manage us.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001

Robson won't put up with having to buy shit players who reflect on his ability. He has said in the press that he needs the money, if he doesn't get the money I reckon he'll resign.

Rosbon doesn't need his reputation slurred in this manner by such a bunch of incompetent tossers. The Players or the Board I hear you ask!

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001

Revolution doesn't work. The animals turn in to humans in the end.

We believed that there could be nothing worse than McKeag, and I believe we were right. In the long run though we seem to have slipped and slided back to that stage.

Shepherd and Hall are amongst the most successful businessmen in the north east. If we were still in the McKeag era we'd be looking for the likes of Shepherd and Hall to come in with their money and change things around. Well, sadly, they've done all that and we don't seem to feel any better today than we did 12 years ago. (We are of course infinitely better off, but how much of that is a Sky windfall rather than a Hall/Shepherd one we'll never be know for sure).

We have always been a limited company, with the shares previously stuck in the hands of a few families. Being a PLC hasn't changed that, just the names on the share certificates are different. The family inheritance has now moved out of McKeag/Westwood territory into being a Hall one.

We could try and have a revolution and get Clarky and Jonno to be the new bosses with a solid long term vision, but in the end they'd get stale and bored, and let their kids take over and we'd be back to where we started from.

It won't happen but we should look to have the Spanish way. They seem to elect a president of the club every few years. There is an election, they state their case, and it is their's to run for their term of office. We lose ability to have a long term decline cos we can vote them out. They keep on their toes if they wish to succeed. If they fail a new vitality is introduced to replace them.

There may the view that we have enough troubles with short term managers but it doesn't seem to trouble Spanish sides.

What is needed is Hall and Shepherd to have the balls to extract ourselves from being a PLC. I'm sure they can manage it to make them plenty money. They should then make is into a 'club' and set the new way into motion.

Discuss !

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001

I've always said we had come too far too fast in the beginning. The Halls for all their money were only applying a band-aid to a situation where we were almost in the third division, a team with real serious issues and problems. For all of the "glory" Keegan provided and how we all were over-awed by such pretty play, we still were a house with no foundation.

Let's compare us to Fulham, another ambitious club who have done it by fixing all the existing problems they had prior to Keegan, continued to progress after he left them, and I have a fancy that they'll be around the Premiership for years to come.

We are a mediocre side not because of management, not because of money, it's because we have realised the problems at SJP were numerous and have had to address them all at once.

In fact there are problems that still haunt us. The training facilities, the academy, all of it still mere "promises".

We lost the big "name" players (Shearer being our greatest and last BIG signing), we lost our attractiveness, and thus we are quitee lucky to still be alive and kicking in the premiership.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001

Not sure Fulham are any different from us, or Blackburn or Chelsea. You don't really really expect them to be in the Premiership three years after Al Fayed gets bored with it all.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001

true enuff macbeth, but you will note that Keegan did not use the same approach with Fulham as he did with us, even though he had similar resources, simply because he knew he had made mistakes and was bound and determined not to do it again.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001

I think your idea is a really excellent one Macbeth. NUFC really should be owned by the Geordie nation.

I worry about the Presidential election process and who might stand, but the concept is very sound.

The main problem is how to get from A to B. To take the Club private would cost at least £20 million, and why then would the present owners simply give the Company away. On the other hand, to buy out the present shareholders could cost perhaps £80 million. Just can't see it happening I'm afraid.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001

Right now I run Swedens largest gaming network, www.gamersinside.com, and we are now pretty close to make a deal with a venture capitalist. If that happens we will go abroad and when I in about five years sell my 25% share of the company for lets say 5 billion pounds you all know what club I will buy. And the one of you have bought me most pints 'til then will be the manager. Ok? =))

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001

Well at least that finally gives us something to look forward to Sudden. Unfortunately, I don't think you'll be getting too many pints if we have to become Manager if we buy you the most! Nice thought though.
When are you going to put in a pre-match appearance at the Strawberry?

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001

I hope I can come and visit you lads in the autumn. Depends on how much I have to work and so on. Sometime during the next season is a must at least.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001

Sparxx

I think Keegan did go down exactly the same route at Fulham. He bought better players than were in the existing squad, for more money than any one else in his division could afford. This was our way with Lee and Sellars and Cole, we didn't pay stupid money until a couple of years into the Premiership when he bought Shaka, Barton and Sir Les. Why did he buy Barton ?

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001

interesting thread. BG makes a good point that for a PL club 2 basic strategies exist. 1) mid table survival 2) euro power

given the nature of football (risk, uncertainty) as a business bloke i'd always go for # 1. it costs much less to achieve, the money's good (sky, sponsorship gate money) and the risk level escalates dramaticaly once you try to be one of the big boys. compare chelsea with soton this season - not a big difference in league position or income compared to cost difference (i think)-.

this season the toon have been caught between the two strategies. want to be a euro power, but have spent big money on players who were injured crap or both. people here have said the club lacks ambition by not going into the transfer market to take up the slack, the club would counter with "we spent 5 mil on shearer, speed & dabizas's wages and they did nowt all season, plus the transfer system thing" - fair points, not all their fault and nowt wrong with prudence when appropriate.

i'm not among those people moaning about this season, - perhaps because i haven't had to sit thru too many games - but, unless good decisions are made this summer i think i'm destined to lose interest.

i still believe that the club has ambition (or why would they expand the stadium) and that the "counters" know that 52,000 won't show up for ever if the product stays the same. the incentives are there for nufc, its a question of execution.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001

The problem with making any judgement about the value of players is that it is relative to what you use as a criterion. If you value a player on the basis of the returns that are likely to accrue on your investment as a result of getting into Europe, even the Champions' League, then this justifies a much higher outlay. And that is what KK and SJH had as their criterion a few years ago when they were buying players, like Les Ferdinand.

But if you have a board of counters, as we do today, your criterion is a fixed budgetary figure decided on at the beginning of the season, which is blind to any event, any contingency, any opportunity that may arise during the season. In other words, it is blind to any footballing factor: it's only concern is staying within preset budgetary limits.

The chief executive and the board, perhaps even the management, see their job as maximising profit from available income simply by reducing costs. This means making a decision as to what is likely to be the income from a normal Premiership season, before it has even begun: that is, one in which we end up no more than mid-table and in which we have a normal run in the FA and Worthington cups, not a successful run, just two or three rounds. It doesn't mean European football - it doesn't mean any ambitions beyond surviving for another season in the Premier League. It means maximising profits within this unaspiring vision by reducing costs as low as possible. Remember what Stonehouse said, "We do not have to get into the Champions League, mid-table stability is more important and we will cut our cloth accordingly." Cutting our cloth accordingly means reducing costs within the income limits set by this bleak, unaspiring vision.

They don't have other ambitions, and, perhaps even more important, they don't see players as assets to be used to generate success and, thereby, new sources of income. When Risdale invested in new players in the middle of the season he did what any ambitious entrepreneur would do: invest in capital assets if you see a way of generating a good return from those assets. Our board doesn't view players in the same way. For them players represent liabilities and increased costs, so they should be minimised at every opportunity. If we can sell on a defender in the middle of the season and get a reasonable return for him, then we should, even though this means we will not get into Europe and struggle to stay in the Premier League.

Their only footballing concern is that we do in fact stay in the Premier League; that's the bottom line. The rest follows. A guaranteed 52,000 coming through the gates for every home fixture and a certain level of shirt sales can be entered into the books without thought at the beginning of the season. Then the budgets can be fixed around these assumptions. Thereafter, it's all a question of reducing our costs, and that means transfer fees and wages. It's an accountant's way of running a company, not that of an entrepreneur with a vision of creating something worthwhile.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2001

BG.

i understand your point but i don't agree. nobody in their right mind expects that 52000 will keep coming thru the gates if this season is repeated.

for 8 years the club have had the benefit of a 36000 stadium - demand exceeded supply - this spilled over last year as almost all season tix were sold. imagine if there were 10k tix available for each game, the incentive to get a season ticket disappears and soon after 20k are available. the directors know this and they realise the product won't sell itself indefinetly.

in the short term the club have some problems - old, injured and overpaid players - that apart they're in an invest or die situation.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2001

I always enjoy your thoughtful posts Brian, but I'm with George Best on this one.

I actually think you're crediting the NUFC Board with more business/financial management acumen than they deserve, and if they're running the Club for profit then they are doing a particularly lousy job.

Like GB, I don't believe there is any shortage of naked ambition, but an inability to develop and execute a strategic plan that will deliver success - IMO they are high on ambition, but badly lacking in execution.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2001