As a football columnist, you are expected most weeks to be a newspaper’s guardian voice, its moral conscience on matters of significance for the game.
When you see Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer at each other’s throats, you should be outraged at a scene that tells of a decline in the game’s standards of behaviour and the shocking example it sets to youngsters.
To be honest, I broke into laughter. It was one of the funniest things I have seen on a pitch for years. Two of the game’s noted rare-do-wells squaring up was but fitting of careers thus far misspent. Example to youngsters? In 10 years of coaching and watching youth football, I have never seen its like (although onlooking adults have come close). Better Bowyer and Dyer go to the parks and see the example that youngsters set for them.
It was only when Match of the Day’s cameras cut away to the angry and humiliated face of Freddie Shepherd that my sense of outrage kicked in. You knew that soon the Newcastle chairperson would be issuing statements of regret, berating the pugilistic pair for the shame they had brought on the club, when his own record tells of equal, if not greater, embarrassment caused by his very self.
It is worth recalling here a few of the lowlights from Shepherd’s own career. Let’s go back eight years, when his company, Shepherd Offshore plc, sold a warehouse, quite legally it should be said, to his brother, Bruce, for £175 000. Newcastle then did a 17-year deal with Bruce Shepherd to store their merchandise in the warehouse at an annual rent of £150 000. That is £2,5-million.
A year later came that astonishing episode in Marbella when Shepherd and fellow director Douglas Hall were set up by a tabloid newspaper and, drunk and lured into a brothel, were caught on tape talking of how much they made out of fans for replica shirts, how Geordie women were ”dogs” and why Alan Shearer was the Mary Poppins of football. A sting it may have been, but the wisdom of the club’s leadership was, at best, questionable. Shame on who?
A period of penance followed, but when the heat had died down Shepherd returned to the chairmanship of Newcastle United plc. The man who talked last week of players receiving ”Hollywood salaries” now receives a basic of £500 000 a year for running the club. Last year it was up at £668 920, including bonuses and pension contributions. Hall also returned as an executive director, now earning £450 000 basic a year.
In addition, Shepherd owns more than 32-million shares in the company — some 22% — 31-million through Shepherd Offshore. The Monday after the player brawl, Newcastle’s interim financial figures were announced. They would be paying a dividend of 1,03p per share (lower than usual, actually). Shepherd will net about £350 000 for the year, payable next month.
A couple of hours later, he met Bowyer, Dyer and the manager, Graeme Souness, to agree their stories for the media. Bowyer, Shepherd said, ”should go down on his hands and knees” in gratitude at not being sacked. Memory fails, and I may be doing him a disservice here, but I do not recall Shepherd genuflecting after the Marbella fiasco. I do recall the cry of foul at the sting.
Now, both in football and business terms, the practical person in us cannot blame Shepherd for not sacking the miscreants, even if the principled part demands them being cast out. Aldershot did dismiss a couple of fighting team-mates a few years ago, but as their manager at the time has now said, they were not worth £5-million and £8-million respectively.
What is troublesome here is Shepherd’s own terms of employment. Were he to be relieved of his duties, he would be due two years’ notice. If Newcastle are taken over, he is entitled to three months’ salary — and two years’ compensation in lieu of notice.
It is one of several double standards when it comes to Shepherd. On the same day as the financial results, he announced that the club had reached agreement with Bobby Robson on compensation of £2,1-million for the premature termination of his contract. But it appears not. It is understood that Robson is being asked to sign a confidentiality agreement, which his lawyers are said to be advising against.
Shepherd is seeking this despite Robson having thus far kept a dignified silence even though maligned by the chairperson, who opined that Newcastle would have been relegated this season under Robson and that Shearer would not have re-signed for another year had Sir Bobby still been in place. They are shabby, unworthy sentiments said of a man who deserves better.
Add to this Shepherd’s recent insensitive comments, when out in the sun again, this time in Dubai, that he had no sympathy for the lower-division footballing fraternity, and it becomes clear that he suffers from, at best, foot-in-mouth disease. It is off-the-field performances like this that may be a worry to shareholders of the company.
There may indeed come a time when the board (total remuneration £1 545 587 and trebles all round last year) and/or shareholders of Newcastle United plc wonder if this is the type of leadership that sets the proper tone, creates the right environment — and chairmen do set tone and environment, for good or bad — for a club to flourish.
After all, the buck stops with the chairperson, who has overseen and been involved with, if not directly responsible for, all the problems of wayward players at St James’ Park over the past couple of years, which Souness was apparently brought in to sort out, and which he began by shipping out Craig Bellamy on loan to Celtic. It appears a task, though, that is having, shall we say, some teething troubles on the evidence of Bowyer and Dyer.
Mind you, the plc will face the dilemma of modern football if ever they do wish a change of chairperson. Shepherd will cost a minimum of £1-million to get rid of. He also has those shares and dividends to soften the blow further. — Â