View Full Version : Freddy Shepherd - words fail me
JohnA
29-11-2004, 05:09 PM
Large and financially successful football clubs should not be concerned about those struggling at the lower end of the industry, according to Freddy Shepherd, chairman of Newcastle United.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4051543.stm
What "family values" Freddy forgets is that Newcastle isn't exactly the most financially strong organisation & the bigger they are, the harder they fall.....
c_block_lad
29-11-2004, 05:11 PM
Kenyon has said a sort of think before as well.
lohwj
29-11-2004, 05:21 PM
All the "smaller" clubs should boycott selling/loaning/doing any business whatsoever to Newcastle and see what he thinks then!!
Brett
29-11-2004, 05:25 PM
A shocking waste of sperm.
PhilD
29-11-2004, 05:33 PM
What a nob! How long ago was it that Newcastle were struggling near the bottom of the old division two with gates of about 12k? How quickly some people forget.
The Omen
30-11-2004, 05:05 AM
Well that has given me a new found hate for a club.
I hope Newcastle follow Leeds into administration.
Ignorant .
I would like to know what the Newcastle fans think of what he said.
Gooders
30-11-2004, 05:57 AM
Oh him again. He's always been a complete . Even Newcastle fans don't listen to anything he says. :rolleyes:
Glaws Eagle
30-11-2004, 06:18 AM
Complete prick.
He was shown up as the scumbag he is when he took the piss out of Newcastle women and supporters who paid £40 for a Newcastle shirt when they cost £5 to make.
How the f@ck he got back into Newcastle/footbal amazed me.
sydney eagle
30-11-2004, 07:46 AM
I really used to like newcastle as a club but the last few years have really changed my opinion
GanbareWashi
30-11-2004, 07:56 AM
Unfortunately, I am sure that a lot of the Premiership Chairmen feel the same way. The difference is that Freddie the F*ck does not have the brains to keep his mouth shut.
Granada allover
30-11-2004, 08:00 AM
Freddy Shepherd - the Gerald Ratner of football?
I'd love to see his reaction if Newcaslte ever get relegated.
Or does he think that players such as Jenas, Dyer, LuaLua (when he was there), Bramble, Bellamy and Bowyer suddenly found themselves born to be in the Premiership?
nicky
30-11-2004, 08:34 AM
Newcastle fans hate his guts.
nottsunieagle
30-11-2004, 11:31 AM
one hundred million sperm, and he was the fastest. unbelievable.
nicky
30-11-2004, 11:59 AM
Newcastle fans view of Fat Freddies' bullshit:
http://boards.rivals.net/default.asp?sid=893&p=16&style=2&forumId=5689&action=1&replytoid=2128869547
Interesting reading Nicky. Good find.:p
JohnA
30-11-2004, 11:01 PM
Fun Time Freddie perhaps wants the failure of clubs outside the Premiership.
After all that would create a "franchise".
No doubt if this happened he would be able to spend more time with prostitutes (he's such a handsome bδstard that I am sure that they would pay him rather than the other way around) & ensure that the value for money clothing products that he offers his supporters would be de riguer on the Paris cat walks
The Newcastle fans quote that he is a total embarrassment to them all seem to sum up this a grade horses a**e perfectly...
Exactly the kind of self serving pr*ck who is slowly killing off football as a sport full of passion and turning it into another bland corporate commodity.
Psychokiller
03-12-2004, 07:31 AM
Shepherd is the sort of person who pays to get urinated on and whipped by an overweight middle aged lady. Who cares what he thinks?
Fide et Fiducia
03-12-2004, 08:04 AM
Originally posted by Psychokiller
Shepherd is the sort of person who pays to get urinated on and whipped by an overweight middle aged lady. Who cares what he thinks?
Overweight, middle aged prostitutes?
DougleMcNori
03-12-2004, 12:01 PM
i do hope someone like scunthorpe knock them out of the fa cup - what a complete tosser
1f98
cranesparkeagle
04-12-2004, 05:26 PM
does being a fan justify mr shepherds dividend or did I misread that. I notice his divvies alone would see off wrexhams tax bill. Finally, Let him tell Wrexhams supporters that because their Chairman is a complete they deserve losing their club in favour of a supermarket.
Ruskin Old Boy
04-12-2004, 05:38 PM
Commentator on 5 Live was taking the piss out of him over his comments today - which clubs did you sign Macdonald, Beardsley, etc etc from?
celery stick
05-12-2004, 10:19 AM
http://www.gocontinental.com/photos/elmstreetgroup2a.jpg
Clapham Grand
05-12-2004, 09:09 PM
disgusting
I wonder if Freddy thinks his team should be granted a bye in the FA Cup against Yeading - seeing as they aren't a proper Premiership established team with a multi-million pound turnover......
Shipp Ahoy!
05-12-2004, 09:26 PM
What a knob.
Here's an article that is on the Observer website about the subject. I thought it was a good read....
I know I shouldn't, because it is just too easy a target, but what the heck, even Thierry Henry accepts a tap-in every now and then. The Newcastle United chairman Freddy Shepherd has been in Dubai at the Soccerex international business forum (catchphrase: 'The beautiful game must also be the beautiful business') and delivering his views on football in this country.
'It's dog eat dog,' he said. 'The big fight will be for the Premier League to take over the running of the other leagues. The time will come... Many of those clubs will have to go part-time. When we have got 52,000 fans at each home game, the last thing we are worried about is clubs in the Third Division. There is no sympathy here.'
Something seems to happen to Wor Freddy when he gets a bit of sun. You may recall six years ago, in a sting by the News of the World, he and another Newcastle director Douglas Hall were caught on tape bragging about the amount of money they made on replica shirts, that Alan Shearer was like Mary Poppins, that Kevin Keegan could be a funny bloke and that Newcastle women were 'dogs'.
Shepherd had to resign from the board and serve a time out of the limelight before returning. You can't keep a wrong man down. Where once it used to be benevolent, if autocratic, butchers and bakers running football clubs, now it is men to whom the bottom line is the balance sheet and the cut of their tailored trousers. They pay themselves sums that could keep lower-division clubs going for a season.
Peter Kenyon, currently chief executive of Chelsea, echoed Shepherd's statement a while back that half the Football League clubs could go out of business. The Premiership would barely care. I used to think that Brian Glanville was exaggerating when he called it The Greed Is Good League, but you can only agree with him now. Actually, the Premiership had better beware.
They have sought to ridicule my colleague Denis Campbell's excellent exposι in these pages recently about their condition, including falling gates and potentially decreasing TV revenue, as well as increased disillusionment among ripped-off fans, but the Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein was also at it in Dubai, almost conceding the points. The game, he said, was in 'intensive care'. The Premier League had to be careful about the saturation of television and its effects on gates. He might have added kick-off times and prices, too.
When only 14,000 watch a Fulham v Chelsea cup tie (live on TV, naturally), and Charlton Athletic are sending back half their tickets for a local derby, even the Prem suits' bottom lines must be twitching. Now I know that the presence of West Ham and Leeds have had an effect, but Championship gates are rising. (And I am one of those who agree with the Football League making the most of their assets by calling it the Championship; there was, after all, 100 years of the game before the Premiership.) So, too, are attendances increasing in Conference National.
It may well be adding up to the early days of a trend. Many fans are becoming turned off by the Premiership, not only through its marketing of a product that is becoming less competitive, but also because of the drip-drip in recent seasons of tacky stories involving overpaid, too-much-too-young players.
Thus are supporters looking back to their local communities, to places where tickets, programmes and refreshments are affordable and the whole event is more down to earth and real. They will still view the Premiership on television, perhaps at the pub, but for their watching experience they go somewhere where they can park at less than a fiver and actually move about and get closer to the action.
I won't criticise Shepherd for calling it the Third Division. I am still known to call League Two the Fourth. But he had better watch out. Increasingly sharper and recovering from the effects of the ITV Digital collapse, the Football League could one day be taking over the Premiership and returning the English game to its traditional four-division format.
But I will criticise Shepherd, and Kenyon, for the crassness and ignorance of their comments. In the Conference, more clubs are going full-time, and able to afford it, rather than more going part-time. The case of Wrexham is a shame, but I have little doubt that, due to fans' efforts and finance, they will emerge stronger after administration.
Northwich Victoria in the Conference are; sometimes administration is a blessing in disguise. Should a restructuring occur - and it surely must, with champions of regional leagues playing off for promotion - the lower divisions will reassert themselves. They could even become a breeding ground as of yore, which Shepherd and his ilk will do well to recognise. New Uefa and Fifa regulations in the pipeline talk of clubs being forced to field more home-grown players and they have to come from somewhere.
The sheer arrogance of it, anyway. Newcastle were but a defeat away from the old Third Division not much more than a decade ago, until Keegan rescued them. I suspect were Mr Shepherd consequently involved, he would have been looking for a share of trickle-down wealth.
English football has a deep, rich and unique fabric, from which the Premiership ultimately benefits. It is, or should be, a fraternity. And Shepherd and Co would do well to familiarise themselves with the Cain and Abel story of contemptuous fratricide.
stevek
06-12-2004, 10:15 AM
Interesting fact from Five Live - number of different teams to have won a major domestic trophy since Newcastle last did?
33 - including the likes of Luton and Oxford.
15a
brighton_eagle
06-12-2004, 10:15 AM
Good article and puts SJ's comments into perspective.
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