ohhh_yeah

Answers! I found answers. October 1, 2010. The television announcer reads in a sombre tone over a montage of clips from my career. “The news that football star Keith Gillespie had been declared bankrupt came in the High Court today. “An order was made against the former Manchester United and Newcastle United winger following a petition by HM Revenue and Customs Commissioners over a £137,000 tax bill. “The 35-year-old spent much of his career in England, having played for Manchester United, Newcastle, Blackburn Rovers, Leicester City and Sheffield United. He also won 86 caps for Northern Ireland...” “Where did it all go wrong? Isn’t that what a hotel porter once said to George Best? I’ve been asked the same question more than once but, unlike George, I don’t have Miss World and stacks of cash lying next to me. It’s usually posed by a drunken stranger in far less glamorous surroundings. At Blackburn, the dressing room comedians christened me “Bestie” alright, but that was more a reference to my roguish tendencies than the playing ability. The name stuck with me, up to and beyond George’s death in 2005. I’ve led a colourful life. I doubt that anyone who crossed my path would describe me as a clean living, model pro. I liked a drink, learned to smoke, and swear by an unhealthy diet. I’ve read what alcoholism did to footballers such as George and Paul McGrath, and I’m grateful to have avoided the affliction of that terrible disease. This man was susceptible to other urges. They didn’t cost me my health, but they almost cost me everything else. How much money did I blow? One afternoon, I figured it out. It’s the closest I’ve come to therapy... until I realised that I actually needed therapy. Working out the bonuses was the hard part - the signing-on fees, the appearance money, the inducements. At Newcastle, we received £50,000 a head for coming second in the league, which was huge money in 1996. By the time I moved onto Blackburn, the globalisation of the Premier League had inflated the wages and the incentives. We earned £1,500 per league point, so two wins on the trot could be worth an extra £9,000. And if you scored a few goals along the way, it helped. So, the calculations took a while. Eventually, we reached a club by club consensus. It went like this... Manchester United £60,000 Newcastle £1,102,000 (plus £250,000 in bonuses) Blackburn £3,510,000 (plus £400,000 in bonuses) Leicester £1,050,000 (plus £40,000 in bonuses) Sheffield United £670,000 (plus £75,000 in bonuses) Bradford £15,000 Glentoran £43,875 Total £7,215,875 A substantial amount of cash, eh? And that’s only a conservative sketch of the incomings. It doesn’t include boot deals, promotional appearances, Northern Ireland match fees, libel settlements and all the other elements that come with the territory. Gambling emptied my pockets. Yet gambling meant nothing to me until I moved to Manchester as an apprentice. My addiction started innocently. It was another lazy afternoon in the apprentice digs and Colin McKee announced that he was going to the bookies - a Ladbrokes at the end of our road. With nothing better to do, I tagged along. What harm? I follow Colin’s lead and start small; we are apprentice footballers earning just £46 a week. I take the slip of paper, scribble down a £1 win bet and walk to the counter. I join the group of eyes trained on the screen, and mutter under my breath a horse other than mine is called the winner. I lose money, but don’t care. The thrill is worth it. I bet on the next race - £2 win this time. I feel a rush of adrenaline when it comes into shot, but another horse is going better. Foiled again, but it doesn’t matter. I want that rush of excitement again. The next day, I returned to the bookies on my own. And the day after, and the day after that... until the days that stand out are the ones where I didn’t go. On Sunday, October 29, 1995, I should have been the happiest man in the world. I was on top of my game, top of the league with Newcastle, and received the ultimate compliment from two of the people I respected most in football, Kevin Keegan and Peter Beardsley. “That lad there could just be the best player in the country at this time, Keegan said. “I wouldn’t disagree,” Pedro replied. I had produced a man of the match display at White Hart Lane... after a destructive 48 hours of gambling that had plunged me into serious debt. I had blown £62,000 - a year’s wages. The majority of the losses had been incurred on Friday, October 27, 1995. My Black Friday. I completely lost the plot. I had grown into one of bookmaker Mickey Arnott’s most prized customers. My favourite bet was a £500 punt on four horses. I’d split them up into four £100 trebles and a £100 accumulator. If one of those came off, Mickey might have £6,000 or £7,000 for me. They were the rare good days. Generally, though, I was the one paying up. Before Black Friday, I’d never lost more than £10,000 in one day. There was moderate flat card at Newmarket, and jumps racing at Bangor and Wetherby. The 2.05 at Newmarket - £1,000 on a horse called Quandary from the all-conquering Henry Cecil stable. He won, but there was no time to dwell on it. I picked up the phone to Mickey’s office and had a punt on the 2.10 at Wetherby. No joy. The 2.20 at Bangor. Loser. Then it was time for Newmarket again, and the sequence continued. I suffered a bout of seconditis. I appreciated a good each-way bet. But on this afternoon, I was betting on the nose, and chasing losses. I upped the stakes to £4,000 a race and got one up. Then stuck another £4,000 on the next and lost it. From then, it was £4,000 on everything. I wasn’t keeping record of how I was doing - that was the danger of betting with invisible money - but I knew I was having a nightmare. The last race of the day, the 4.40 at Bangor, was a National Hunt flat race for horses with little or no racecourse experience - a shot in the dark unless you were in the know. Just two and a half hours after a relatively sensible bet on a good thing at Newmarket, I was sticking £4,000 on a 12/1 shot called Dream Ride. He finished 10th, some 40 lengths behind. I had a few blind stabs on the greyhounds until there was nothing left to bet on. I called Mickey. “What’s the damage?” “You lost £47,000 today.” I lay in bed that night restless, thinking about how to win some of my money back the next day. In the morning, I laid down a variety of bets on the horses and football. There was no mention of the day before. My bets were accepted, no questions asked. I lost another £15,000. Eventually, the story of my Black Friday got out. At first I denied it to Terry McDermott. I sorted Mickey out with a few thousand over the winter. But then it broke in the press. I told my mum. “How much? Thousands? £10,000? More?” “£47,000”. “Aack, son.” I rang the gaffer, Kevin Keegan. I’ll never forget how understanding he was. He let me stay and have some food while he rang Mickey and got it sorted. My saving grace was that I was due a new contract because of my form, a £5,500 a week deal that would rise by £500 every season. The five-fold pay increase eased the burden. Keegan spoke to the club’s hierarchy and organised an advance on the signing-on fee. It was that straightforward. The one thing the gaffer was really annoyed about was that I hadn’t owned up to Terry. When I showed my face at training, the welcome was less sympathetic. The lads were pissing themselves. There was no arm around the shoulder; the unforgiving rules of the dressing room applied and, to be absolutely honest, I was glad of the banter. They seemed to be more amused by the fact that I’d backed a horse called Dream Ride. Two days before Black Friday, I nearly won over £40,000 on betting on a football match - our League Cup tie away to Stoke. A regular at the bookies pointed out that, under Keegan, we commonly won games 2-0, 2-1, 3-0 or 3-1. Pedro hadn’t scored for a few games, so I stuck £500 on him to score first at 6/1. I then placed four £500 doubles, with Pedro to score first paired with final scorelines of 2-0, 2-1, 3-0, and 3-1. We took an early lead, courtesy of none other than Peter Beardsley, who must have wondered why I was so excited. We were cruising, and I was running around the pitch calculating my winnings. When our defence switched off, and their main striker, Paul Peschisolido, raced through on goal, I quickly calculated that the odds for 3-1 were better, and willed him to score but he tried a lob and failed miserably. Still, I was well on course for a win of around £50,000 as the game entered the final five minutes. Then, a remarkable thing happened. Darren Peacock ventured forward. Darren averaged a goal a season in his four years at Newcastle. When a loose ball fell in Darren’s direction, I reckoned it was a good thing. Wrong. 4-0. The other lads raced to celebrate a collector’s item. I couldn’t bring myself to join in. I was up £3,000 from the first scorer bet, but it was scant consolation for what could have been. Keith Gillespie didn’t blow all his money on gambling. There were also misguided investments which racked up huge tax bills just as his income was falling in his mid-30s. Ultimately, it was the tax liabilities on these deals which forced his bankruptcy. He explains: “There was always enough money pouring into my account to deal with the bills that came my way. “That changed in 2007, with a letter from chartered accountants Hanna Thompson, which laid out the tax implications of the film syndicate I’d signed up to back in 2001. “Five full years had passed, and now the little details which I had previously ignored were suddenly very relevant. “My understanding was basic. I was still paying off the £1.3million loan registered in my name with an income stream that showed up in my tax forms every year. “By the declaration of that loan as a trading loss, I’d pocketed the £500,000 tax relief, and blown the majority of it. “The missive from Hanna Thompson detailed that the tax liability due on the Film Partnership Profits was £436,000 spread out over 10 years. “The sums increased until 2016, the final year of the arrangement, the tax due was £70,618. It brought home the insanity of the scheme which I’d signed up to. “Hundreds of footballers also signed up. Sir Alex Ferguson had invested into one called Eclipse 35. “What about the films our syndicate had financed? Our partnership was called Castle Media Film Partnership and there was a rumour that the investment had played a significant part in the creation of (award-winning war drama) Band Of Brothers. But that belonged to Castle Media Partnership II - the sequel to our scheme. “We discovered our three productions: (they were called) The Glass, Starhunter and Bride Of The Wind. “No, I’ve never heard of them either. “Their legacy is the tax bills that drove me into bankruptcy."

“Alan Pardew and his management team had a lot of soul searching to do before they made the decision to send Ben Arfa back to France. “But it was a decision they felt they had to make for the good of the whole football club and the rest of the first team squad “Everybody knows what a good player Ben Arfa is on his day – but this season he has been so negative, both on and off the field, and it has had an effect on the rest of the squad. Indeed, since he has been back in France things among the squad have improved considerably. “Don’t forget It was Pardew who signed Ben Arfa on a permanent basis for Newcastle. And didn’t he describe Ben Arfa’s goal against Bolton Wanderers a couple of years ago as the best he had ever seen? “Pardew has tried everything to get Ben Arfa into the right frame of mind. He has given him time off to go home whenever he wanted and even given him his own physiotherapist, all to no avail. “Not only does Pardew know Ben Arfa is a massive fans’ favourite but also that Mike Ashley is his No.1 fan. “This has made the decision to send him back to France all the more difficult, but it was a decision Pardew and his management team felt they had no choice but to make.”

Not very DIY, CT.

Hope Tito can defeat this cancer and wish him a speedy recovery. Never like to hear about a member of the football community in the hospital labeled as in critical condition.

Babelfish translator tells me agent Oliver Cabrera went to London to discuss the transfer of midfielder Filip Djuricic. Linked to him last window. Would MA sanction meeting his release clause? Can not see that happening myself.

I call bullshit on those being homemade onion rings. The tomato slice on top of the pile looks like you sliced it with a spoon. Bury that on the bottom if you want your meal to appeal to us. Will not even mention those tasty looking branches you included. Oh wait...

We had a contraption like that "hell slide" that us neighbor kids loved to spend our time on. Except our apparatus was called a bridge. We would hurl ourselves off of it and know the only dangers were if we did not stay in the tucked position, hold our breath, or hit the bottom of the ocean and then had to pick broken shells out of the bottom of our feet. For added enjoyment we got to play hide and seek every once and while since the bobbies were searching for us.

but that is not controversial CT, you should be focusing your energy towards great grandma's cooking and her buttered rolls.

The epitome of cringe.

Pro Press them through a sieve and then make your own hot dogs.

Get yourself a butane torch. No need to take time out of your busy schedule mashing away at the three, zero, and start buttons.

Do not think his injury is too serious but expect him to pack it in for the remainder of the season.

Will we see the obese bastard at a match again this season?

Quiet, you.

FFS! http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php?topic=313450.msg0#new

By Lee Ryder From hero to near zero - how fortunes of Hatem Ben Arfa have fluctuated while on Tyneside There was once a time when Alan Pardew was ready to build his Newcastle United team around Hatem Ben Arfa. In fact, it is understood that, with the funds not forthcoming for the big- name new striker United fans craved, Pardew was ready to hand the Frenchman the No 9 shirt. The news was an eyebrow- raiser for me but at that stage Ben Arfa still had his best years very much in front of him. The plan was to use the French ace with the likes of Yohan Cabaye (right), Demba Ba and Sylvain Marveaux, who all came in during the summer of 2011. However, it never quite worked out that way. Today, against Swansea City, we could get a glimpse of the future at Newcastle – without Hatem Ben Arfa. It seems a long time ago since the schemer was potentially spoken about as the chief entertainer at St James’ Park. Over a pot of tea in a Jesmond coffee shop I asked Ben Arfa what he thought of the idea one day and he responded: “If they had handed me the No 9 shirt, I would have had no problem pulling it on. “It is a big shirt, but I enjoy the expectation and just want to deliver.” Of course, Ben Arfa is not the type of prolific forward you would associate with the traditional No 9 at Newcastle. Nobody needs to be told he is a far cry from the Malcolm MacDonalds, Alan Shearers and Les Ferdinands of the world. That is why it was a real eyebrow-raiser when I first picked up the news United were toying with the idea of giving him the No 9 shirt. In the end, he was given the No 10 shirt. When Ben Arfa has played for the Magpies we have seen glimpses of his immense talent. He has goals in him, he beats defenders and he creates for others. Is that only when he wants to? Is it only when he is in the mood? Or is this a deeper problem beyond Pardew’s managerial capabilities? How far should a manager go to give a player special treatment in order to get the best out of him? Certainly, the decision to let Ben Arfa play against Stoke City just days after a dressing-room bust-up after the Manchester United game did not go down well with some of the senior players at Newcastle. Fast forward three years from the prospect of him being handheld the No 9 shirt and Pardew’s relationship with Ben Arfa has become strained. Patience has worn thin and Ben Arfa is more likely to leave this summer then be offered a new contract as it stands. All of it is a real shame for the supporters who see him as one of the few players left at the club capable of flying the flag for the old Entertainers. Sadly, that is modern-day Newcastle for you. Pardew has been unable to come up with a solution which has resulted in Ben Arfa rediscovering match fitness, form and general happiness on the football field - despite the arrival of fitness guru Faye Downey last summer. However, Pardew is the man responsible for man-mangement when it comes to Ben Arfa. When Cabaye wanted his move to Arsenal last August, he refused to play in games against Manchester City and West Ham. The talk from club insiders then was: “He does not want to be here.” Therefore, I have sympathy for the modern manager. Quite how much Ben Arfa wants to be here, nobody really knows. My guess is he wants to be at Newcastle but does not want Pardew to be. Whether he is taking his chance until the summer and seeing if the Londoner will still be around for pre-season remains to be seen. The sad thing is, where does Ben Arfa – at 27 – end up next. He was dubbed one of the best players of his generation by coming through the ranks at Clairefontaine and is on a list of famous graduates like Thierry Henry, Louis Saha, David Trezeguet, Nicolas Anelka, Seb Bassong and Abou Diaby. Perhaps too often he has been allowed to go back to the famous French technical centre for treatment. Ben Arfa should be at an age when he should not be running away from his problems and facing the music. Something just has not been right for Pardew and Ben Arfa this season.Especially in 2014. When Yohan Cabaye was sold the hope was Ben Arfa would step up to the plate and try to fill the gap in terms of creativity. That just has not happened - he has been used sparingly and, while he has had the support of the crowd, the deeper problems were at the club’s training ground. Newcastle are a crazy club in which you cannot rule anything out. At the moment, though, it feels like the beginning of the end for Hatem Ben Arfa.

He is getting his first taste of the managerial limelight. T-minus how long until we see him doing a Klopp impersonation?

"Respect the shirt" Just fuck off to Argentina already.

Have to agree with this. We need to bring in players who actually want to play for our football club, says former Newcastle United favourite Rob Lee Would you take Frank Lampard at Newcastle United? Imagine for a minute Chelsea’s record goalscorer, available on a free in June, suddenly announced he fancied seeing out his playing days at St James’ Park. I would drive him up there myself! Lampard may be nearer 40 than 30, but he is still good for 10-plus goals a season. He is a terrific pro, would be a great leader in the dressing room and is capable of at least being available or most games. What is not to like? The answer to that question is, surprisingly, quite a lot - according to the club’s new managing-director. Lee Charnley this week seemed to dismiss altogether the prospect of the club going for an older player, any older player, because he was not value for money in the sense they would not make any money out of them. Liverpool did not make a penny from Gary McAllister when he signed for them at 35. They did, however, win the League Cup, FA Cup and UEFA Cup with the veteran pulling the midfield strings. I would call that value for money. Kevin Keegan paid £1.5m for a 32-year-old whose best days were apparently behind him. Peter Beardsley did okay. It is fair to say Kevin got his value from that bit if business. I would much rather we spent a bit of money on a guy in his thirties who knows what an honour it is to play in that black-and-white jersey, than another Frenchman who is only here because he sees the club as a stepping stone. I played until I was 36. Forget about age. Look instead at what the player can do. It was with some alarm this week I read Charnley saying the club would only sign one or two players a year. They would only be a certain age so they add sell-on value. That is not good enough. You cannot stand still in the Premier League – it is the same as going backwards – and if we only sign two importst, probably from France this summer, then I fear for us. We are going lose four or five first-team players. I am sure Cheick Tiote (pictured below) will go, especially if he can do something in the World Cup. Loic Remy, we know, will not sign, and I would imagine Hatem Ben Arfa will be sold, while Mathieu Debuchy will not be here much longer. We need to replace them AND strengthen. That is six or seven. One or two (and this means it could be on) new players just will not cut it. Let’s get back to this value- for-money thing. I do not have any problem with that. Yet are we getting that right now from the guys who have arrived over the last 18 months? I cannot comment on whether they are playing for Alan Pardew right now because I don’t know. I did think they would put on a show against Manchester United, but they could not even raise themselves for that. To me, it looked as if they did not want to be there. Is shelling out a decent amount of money on non-English players who take time to settle and some, not all, don’t make it, getting Newcastle any sort of value at this moment in time? Of course not. Getting back to Lampard, I could not believe it when Chelsea spent £11m. I thought it was way much – but when you look at what the guy has given the club then it is a bargain! I would love to see Newcastle spend money on some British players. I have two in mind – Jordan Rhodes and Danny Ings. Both are scoring goals for fun in the Championship and would cost a bit more than a French player, but they would walk to Newcastle to play for our football club. If over a period of four years either or both score 20 goals a season, then that is value. To be fair, if we signed Rhodes and he scored 20 in his first campaign, we would sell him for a massive profit. I don’t care about someone’s age. I don’t care how much we pay for them. I also don’t care where the come from, although we need a lot more British lads in the squad. What I care about most of all is, are they the right player for Newcastle United. That is the only thing Charnley and the United board should be concerned about.

Shepherd said: “When he started getting injuries there was a lot of noise then, that we had made a bad mistake. “Hindsight is a great tool. Certainly with Owen it didn’t work out as it should have. Injuries are injuries and this can happens. “Would I do it again? The answer is no. But, as I say, that’s with hindsight.”

Interesting that Ba sticks his boots in on Mourinho now. Most players would be celebrating instead of rehashing this. Wonder if this damages his chances into being recalled? I have to agree with JawD above. "We have three great strikers and I think that a lot of clubs would like to have them" "Maybe he [Mourinho] doesn't have strikers to his liking," said Ba. ''I'm happy to have liberated us. I haven't been given my chance much this season and I've taken it. I'm not out for revenge.''

Most would describe the FA as spineless but they have taken the correct stance on this issue. Two fingers held high in the air directed towards owner Assem Allam.