more Newcastle...

stolen from Football365:

Newcastle were so poor on Saturday that it would have been understandable if the small band of Sheffield United fans participated in the post-match protest against Freddy Shepherd outside St James'.

While the notion that Toon boast the most loyal fans in the country is overplayed - barely 15 years have passed since St James was regularly half-full - they deserve sympathy. Has ever any other club on the shores been so systemically mismanaged, at every level, as Newcastle United?

According to at least one Sunday broadsheet, it was the Toon chairman himself who ruled that an extra ?250,000 from Sky to cover Saturday's night shambles was of greater import than an extra day's rest for the first-team squad after Thursday's UEFA Cup tie in Italy.

"All over the pitch we were a yard or two slower," commented Glenn Roeder. "You have to look for reasons when the performance is as poor as that, and less than 49 hours ago we were playing in Italy. I'm not saying that is the reason, but it certainly hasn't helped."

The priorities motivating Shepherd's decision to accept Sky's cash are as questionable as the business transaction in 1998 which saw Shepherd Offshore plc sell a warehouse to Freddie's brother, Bruce, for ?175,000. Newcastle United plc then completed a 17-year deal with Bruce Shepherd for the warehouse to store the club's merchandise at a cost of ?2.5m.

How Toon could do with that sum now. For one thing, Shepherd has believed to have a clause in his contract stipulating that he will receive two years' pay if dismissed. Or, in other words, around ?2m. And as Shepherd implicitly confirmed last month when he revealed that the club had recorded pre-tax losses of ?12m, that's money Newcastle simply don't possess.

Posted By: blindasabat, Nov 6, 17:11:10