Who has been the worst owner Newcastle have had to endure?
Posted on June 21st, 2010 | 120 Comments |
However, when I hear that I always say that we have had it worse, much worse than what we have now. Of course it is largely irrelevant as the past can’t be changed, but neither can Mike Ashley and his apparent business approach to running Newcastle United, unless you have the required funds to buy him out of course.
Despite all that has gone on in the past few years though, I still maintain that Ashley is far from the worst owner/chairman/president or whatever we have had, mind you he is trying his hardest to steal the title! In fact Newcastle have been ‘blessed’ with poor management structures for many many years, which is easily forgotten, time is a great healer and all that, so why don’t we have a look at just what some of our previous bastians of power have achieved in their time ruling the iron fist over St James’ Park.
Lord Westwood – Seems a good place to start as he is the earliest chairman that I can find any substantial information on. It was way back in 1963 when Lord William Westwood managed to take full control of the Newcastle boardroom, and he remains the last chairman to pick any serious silverware with us when we lifted the Fairs Cup back in 1969.
Westwood held the position for 18 years after inheriting his fathers toy empire. His tenure at Newcastle came to an end in 1981 after he was asked to pump £16,000 of his own cash into the club to keep it afloat, which he refused to do following the stock market collapse of one of his other comapnies.
Overall, he won a trophy, so he has to be a success I suppose. That is despite what happened in 1977 where contract talks broke down with six players amid claims from Westwood that he and recently sacked manager, Richard Dinnis, had been stabbed in the back. A string of poor results led to a fan revolt, and 10 people were arrested for fighting with each other in the crowd of The Leazes.
Stan Seymour, Jr. – Stan followed in the footsteps of what his Dad had done years before and took control of the boardroom in 1981. The club was in financial chaos, and after Lord Westwood refused to put anymore cash in and resigned, Stan emerged as the new chairman.
A stop was immediately put to spending any cash as Seymour fought to control the finances of the club, but that didn’t stop him stunning the football world when he brought Kevin Keegan to the club as a player in August 1982. Aided by manager Arthur Cox, Seymour then cobbled to gether a team full of players who had been out of the reach of Newcastle for some time. Keegan, McDermott and McCreery were supplemented by home grown players like Beardsley and Waddle, ensuring that Newcastle had a team that could beat anybody on a good day.
Gordon McKeag – McKeag took control in 1988 with the club languishing in the second tier, a ground that was a dump, and crowds that were only averaging 10,000. Most of the damage was done when he was on the board, and he paid the price for some of those decisions whne he took over the running of the club full-time.
The fans never really liked him as he shouldered a lot of blame for letting some of our big players go. As it goes, he didn’t have to put up with the derision for long. After a failed share issue, McKeag was left with no choice other than to give up a long standing battle for control with a certain Sir John Hall in 1992.
Sir John Hall – Arguably the man who put us back on the football map, but his first job was to ensure we didn’t slip into the third tier of English football. He brought a rookie manager to Newcastle in the shape of Kevin Keegan and we managed to avoid the dreaded drop. The season after, Newcastle hit the big time, and the rest is pretty much history.
This success didn’t stop Sir John Hall and his family earning nearly £100 million out of Newcastle United over the years they were involved with the club, although with the succes we had on the pitch it is a fact that is easily overlooked. Hall retained a large stake in Newcastle when he handed over control of the club to Freddy Shepherd in 1997.
Freddy Shepherd – If you ever need a lesson in how to make £170 million disappear, then Shepherd is your man. It took him 10 years to do it though mind, but the fact is that he was left with £100 million in the bank, a team that was flirting with the title, a redeveloped 36,000 all-seater ground and a fanbase that is as loyal as they come. When he left 10 years later, that £100 million had gone and had been replaced with a £70 million debt, a team that was nowhere near it was when he took over, and wads of cash in his back pocket.
He backed managers though, I will give him that, but he also mortgaged every asset we had, and had a tendancy to wield the axe on the managers head of the going got tough, or if he attracted any criticism from the fans. It was either that or he would splash out on trophy signings, few of which worked out, and that is probably the reason why he left us losing £30 million a year as a business, although we did have a brief excursion into the Champions League during his tenure.
So when you compare these to Mike Ashley, is it all that bad? Sure the finances are rubbish, but our fortunes have been worse than what they are now, some of our older readers may be able to back me up on that. Let us know what you think, and have a vote in our poll. In the meantime, I’m off to hide!
NUFCBlog Author: toonsy
toonsy has written 643 articles on this blog.
mckeag takes some beating, like. i remember stories of his family receiving dog sh1t in the post. apologies to anyone eating their tea.