Articles for the site

[McFaul 35]

LeazesMag has mentioned articles for the site. I've half written one about the lack of self esteem NUFC have a club now, but are we actually having published articles on here on newsnow, or was it just Leazes crack.

 

What I've done so far, is poorly written waffle so far without getting to my main point, but I'm slowly getting there. I'll write more tomorrow.

[Tooj 17]

I offered to do some writing at about August time but haven't actually got round to it yet.

 

Ant has told me though it's definitely something he wants people to do.

[Tooj 17]

Pardew is also a major part for that lack of self-esteem and belief we have at the moment. Ignoring our on field performances I'm talking about every time that he's interviewed in the media he always plays down our chances at anything.

 

Used to love how Keegan would make us all believe. I miss that feeling.

[McFaul 35]

Pardew is also a major part for that lack of self-esteem and belief we have at the moment. Ignoring our on field performances I'm talking about every time that he's interviewed in the media he always plays down our chances at anything.

 

Used to love how Keegan would make us all believe. I miss that feeling.

Well I touch on that. I'm not even half way through, what I've written so far is leading uo to Mike Ashley's time. I want these to confirm they'll publish articles and I'll paste the first half, if not I'll give it to someone else. It's basically just me rambling about the shit McKeag, Shepherd got, and what good they did, as well as the esteem we gained as a club from the 80's to mid 90's down to Hall, Fletcher, Shepherd and Keegan.

[Park Life 71]

Pardew is also a major part for that lack of self-esteem and belief we have at the moment. Ignoring our on field performances I'm talking about every time that he's interviewed in the media he always plays down our chances at anything.

 

Used to love how Keegan would make us all believe. I miss that feeling.

 

One of my main Pardew bugbears.

[Park Life 71]

Well I touch on that. I'm not even half way through, what I've written so far is leading uo to Mike Ashley's time. I want these to confirm they'll publish articles and I'll paste the first half, if not I'll give it to someone else. It's basically just me rambling about the shit McKeag, Shepherd got, and what good they did, as well as the esteem we gained as a club from the 80's to mid 90's down to Hall, Fletcher, Shepherd and Keegan.

 

Look forward to it mate.

[Tooj 17]

Would love to see you do some of your away day tales as some articles as well Stevie. Think you're writing style could be quite similar to some of Billy Furious' stuff.

[Alex 35573]

Would possibly be up for writing them but would also be prepared to act as editor / proofreader, i.e. not to censor anyone's views but I think it definitely helps sometimes to bounce your ideas off someone / get someone else to have a look at your stuff. Even if it's just spotting obvious typos etc. I always think it looks crap and detracts from any good points raised when articles look like they haven't even been proofread first.

[Park Life 71]

Would possibly be up for writing them but would also be prepared to act as editor / proofreader, i.e. not to censor anyone's views but I think it definitely helps sometimes to bounce your ideas off someone / get someone else to have a look at your stuff. Even if it's just spotting obvious typos etc. I always think it looks crap and detracts from any good points raised when articles look like they haven't even been proofread first.

 

You did some good writing back in the day on NO.

[Tooj 17]

I think I wrote one article for them back in the day. Was about our transfer window in possibly 2005. I said we should've bought Yaya Toure from Monaco.

[Alex 35573]

You did some good writing back in the day on NO.

Think I did one on Martins and one on Brasil '82. Safe to say I preferred the latter

[Park Life 71]

I think I wrote one article for them back in the day. Was about our transfer window in possibly 2005. I said we should've bought Yaya Toure from Monaco.

 

[Park Life 71]

Think I did one on Martins and one on Brasil '82. Safe to say I preferred the latter

 

iirc the Martins one was pretty scathing.

[Alex 35573]

I went easy on him

[McFaul 35]

This what I've done so far, it doesn't even make sense reading part one, without reading part two, but I'll write that tomorrow.

 

Right. "Who else would write articles for the site???" Me!

 

I'll be honest most of you who read my pish, know I'm as set in my ways about Mike Ashley as anyone, so it's likely to be predictable pish, for those who can be arsed to read.

 

Supporting Newcastle for me was never about being good, it was always about being us. Growing up with me fatha, and me pals on the Gallowgate in the late 80's as a bairn, we'd get the occasional great result. If I remember rightly we beat Man Utd twice, I remember Roeder of all people getting a winner against them. We had some great days, I remember it pissing it down in a game near christmas against Tottenham (who had a really canny side) and Gazza playing one of his best games for the toon in a 2-0 win. I think that game as much as any, probably made him Venables top priority for the following season. These great days on the pitch were few and far between though. The fans are what made us special. Although it was before my time as I was 8 at the time, we went to White Hart Lane with 15,000 fans for a cup tie, no one else did that even then, so when these arseholes tell you Newcastle only had support after Keegan became manager, they're talking shit. In 1984 we were in the Second Division we averaged 30,000 people, the third highest in the country behind Liverpool and Man Utd.

 

That 1983/84 season was probably the only one between Super Mac being sold and 1993 where we actually had anything like a team worthy of Newcastle United. When Keegan retired in May 1984, he actually said the job isn't half done and the promotion team still was no where near what we should have had. In the background was Stan Seymour, he loved Newcastle, but was often criticised for lack of investment. Gordon McKeag took over as chairman about 1986, and he was very much hated, he was blamed for everything, lack of ambition, financing the Milburn Stand with player sales, as a kid I remember "KILL MCKEAG" slogans right around Newcastle, and you just went along with the mob view that he was the anti-christ as far as Newcastle fans were concerned.

 

The fact is we did sell Waddle, Beardsley and Gascoigne in that era. All of whom were world class players. In my view Waddle was the least talented of the three, and to think he's recognised as Marseille's second greatest player ever and came in the top three in the European Footballer of the Year poll in 1991, it shows you how good the other two were. The Milburn Stand cost £4m to build, we got £2m from the Beardsley deal, plus spent nearly £3m on Beasant, Thorn, Hendrie and John Robertson. So the sands of time forget these little important details.

 

As a young kid the almost universal view was McKeag was a money grabbing twat, the evidence contradicts that in the cold light of day. He wasn't an astonishingly wealthy man, he was basically a posh geordie solicitor from Gosforth, hardly a billionaire or even a millionaire. I felt quite guilty at the abuse I gave him as a young kid, and the disdain I've held him in for all these years. When you look at the bear facts, NUFC spent as much as they could afford, he didn't have the wealth of people like Irving Scholar at Tottenham or even Ken Bates. Clubs who spent a lot less money than Newcastle won things. Wimbledon, Luton got a few finals, so while McKeag may have got the brunt of the criticism, maybe some of his biggest mistakes were not finding someone with vast funds to pump in (rare in those days), and poor managerial appointments. At the end of the day we as fans thought we deserved better, but we had 25,000 loyal fans, and irrespective of what anyone says we just didn't get the rub of the green. Other big clubs were shit. Arsenal were terrible for the majority of the 80's they averaged just 22,000 one of the years. In terms of player purchases, you'd probably say Newcastle were 6th or 7th. There was a recognised big 5 of Tottenham, Man Utd, Liverpool, Everton and Arsenal. We in everything but league position were just outside of it, but were passed by Nottingham Forest, Leeds, Sheffield Wednesday and Villa amongst others, in an era where football was pretty fair, illustrated by the fact Man Utd, the biggest club even then, came 13th in SAF's second full season. My point is McKeag did his best, it wasn't good enough.

 

The back end of the McKeag years overlapped Sir John Hall's involvement in the club. From being a depressed club, all of a sudden Keegan was in, and the black and white tiger as people used to call it was off and running. They were the best days of all to be honest. SJH was a millionaire, McKeag wasn't, at the beginning Hall was a bit reluctant to spunk millions on players because he wasn't sure if he'd ever get it back. Keegan had clearly been sold the dream by The Magpie Group, and when he was only allowed to spend £200,000 on Brian Kilcline and Darron McDonough (he was total pony), he and Terry Mac left the club as they believed they'd been sold lies by Hall. They were talked back up the motorway, literally, with the understanding if they kept us from Division 3, there'd be substantial investment the following season, but should they fail then the very future of the club would be in grave danger.

 

In the end we stopped up by 4 points. What summed the difference that summer made to the future of NUFC, could be seen in two games away at Derby County in less than four months. The first a 4-1 defeat (we had three players sent off) in April, and the second a 2-1 win in the August. We got four players in, they were absolutely class, and from being a club which was on its' knees, after 11 games we'd won the lot. 11 out of 11. It just got better and better, we added Robert Lee, Andy Cole came in a bit later, and for someone my age it was amazing, Newcastle felt like somebodies. We felt great. We were geordie owned. Our manager loved the club as much as any supporter, we felt like we could do anything. We kept growing at a rate that no other English club has in such a short space of time. Our turnover in 1992 was £4m, six years later it was £49m, we were the FIFTH richest club in Europe at that time. People find it staggering to see that but that's where we were in 1998. We had such self esteem as a club, other fans used to say we were getting cocky, but I loved it because we had something to be cocky about. You had players like Hristo Stoichkov coming out with statements like "I would love to play for a club like Newcastle." From a position where big donkeys like Ian Ormondroyd from Bradford City were turning us down in the early 90s, we had all time world greats saying they'd love to play for us! Berbatov is a Newcastle fan from childhood, I remember reading an interview by him saying everyone in his part of Bulgaria loved Newcastle because the people were the same, and the team had the same spirit. I don't even know what that means, but what it shows me is how well Hall, Freddie Fletcher and Freddie Shepherd did for the club in the 1990s, that some shithole know one has ever heard of in Bulgaria had people walking the streets wearing Newcastle tops. They got the message out there, and with that our ticket prices went up, everything went up, but you didn't mind because we were growing as a club. Even the Gullit and Dalglish eras showed me the club weren't going to settle for second best. Dalglish was sacked after a 1-1 draw at Chelsea!

 

Sir Bobby Robson did wonders for the club, and although many people have nothing but bad to say about Shepherd the club was making significant profits right up to 2004. In fact you often used to hear "Shepherd is a good businessman" to that point. He lost it a bit with Souness, and it's a shame FFS is thought of as a disaster because apart from the "geordie women are dogs" comment he did well for NUFC up to the point of Souness. He never reigned the fans aspirations in, he never said we were far behind Man Utd and Arsenal, the truth is when we came 3rd in 2003, we were equally as wealthy as Chelsea and Liverpool, with the aspirations to kick on further.

 

Mike Ashley came in and we all thought we'd hit the jackpot. Here was our English Abramovic.....

[The Fish 10963]

Enjoyed reading that, there is a "Know one" instead of "no one", but other than that it's good. You deliberately left it open because you're intending to write some more about Ashley?

[Park Life 71]

Good read Stevie. Smaller para's is better. Think I first clapped eyes on Gazza (live) away at Palace - he came on for the last 10min. I turned to me mate Alan and said, "This is the one".

[Park Life 71]

I'm gonna do one on SBR's time at Barca. I heard some very interesting things from my Spanish mate (Barca) who now lives in HH.

[McFaul 35]

Enjoyed reading that, there is a "Know one" instead of "no one", but other than that it's good. You deliberately left it open because you're intending to write some more about Ashley?

aye that's just part one.

[Christmas Tree 4825]

This what I've done so far, it doesn't even make sense reading part one, without reading part two, but I'll write that tomorrow.

 

Right. "Who else would write articles for the site???" Me!

 

I'll be honest most of you who read my pish, know I'm as set in my ways about Mike Ashley as anyone, so it's likely to be predictable pish, for those who can be arsed to read.

 

Supporting Newcastle for me was never about being good, it was always about being us. Growing up with me fatha, and me pals on the Gallowgate in the late 80's as a bairn, we'd get the occasional great result. If I remember rightly we beat Man Utd twice, I remember Roeder of all people getting a winner against them. We had some great days, I remember it pissing it down in a game near christmas against Tottenham (who had a really canny side) and Gazza playing one of his best games for the toon in a 2-0 win. I think that game as much as any, probably made him Venables top priority for the following season. These great days on the pitch were few and far between though. The fans are what made us special. Although it was before my time as I was 8 at the time, we went to White Hart Lane with 15,000 fans for a cup tie, no one else did that even then, so when these arseholes tell you Newcastle only had support after Keegan became manager, they're talking shit. In 1984 we were in the Second Division we averaged 30,000 people, the third highest in the country behind Liverpool and Man Utd.

 

That 1983/84 season was probably the only one between Super Mac being sold and 1993 where we actually had anything like a team worthy of Newcastle United. When Keegan retired in May 1984, he actually said the job isn't half done and the promotion team still was no where near what we should have had. In the background was Stan Seymour, he loved Newcastle, but was often criticised for lack of investment. Gordon McKeag took over as chairman about 1986, and he was very much hated, he was blamed for everything, lack of ambition, financing the Milburn Stand with player sales, as a kid I remember "KILL MCKEAG" slogans right around Newcastle, and you just went along with the mob view that he was the anti-christ as far as Newcastle fans were concerned.

 

The fact is we did sell Waddle, Beardsley and Gascoigne in that era. All of whom were world class players. In my view Waddle was the least talented of the three, and to think he's recognised as Marseille's second greatest player ever and came in the top three in the European Footballer of the Year poll in 1991, it shows you how good the other two were. The Milburn Stand cost £4m to build, we got £2m from the Beardsley deal, plus spent nearly £3m on Beasant, Thorn, Hendrie and John Robertson. So the sands of time forget these little important details.

 

As a young kid the almost universal view was McKeag was a money grabbing twat, the evidence contradicts that in the cold light of day. He wasn't an astonishingly wealthy man, he was basically a posh geordie solicitor from Gosforth, hardly a billionaire or even a millionaire. I felt quite guilty at the abuse I gave him as a young kid, and the disdain I've held him in for all these years. When you look at the bear facts, NUFC spent as much as they could afford, he didn't have the wealth of people like Irving Scholar at Tottenham or even Ken Bates. Clubs who spent a lot less money than Newcastle won things. Wimbledon, Luton got a few finals, so while McKeag may have got the brunt of the criticism, maybe some of his biggest mistakes were not finding someone with vast funds to pump in (rare in those days), and poor managerial appointments. At the end of the day we as fans thought we deserved better, but we had 25,000 loyal fans, and irrespective of what anyone says we just didn't get the rub of the green. Other big clubs were shit. Arsenal were terrible for the majority of the 80's they averaged just 22,000 one of the years. In terms of player purchases, you'd probably say Newcastle were 6th or 7th. There was a recognised big 5 of Tottenham, Man Utd, Liverpool, Everton and Arsenal. We in everything but league position were just outside of it, but were passed by Nottingham Forest, Leeds, Sheffield Wednesday and Villa amongst others, in an era where football was pretty fair, illustrated by the fact Man Utd, the biggest club even then, came 13th in SAF's second full season. My point is McKeag did his best, it wasn't good enough.

 

The back end of the McKeag years overlapped Sir John Hall's involvement in the club. From being a depressed club, all of a sudden Keegan was in, and the black and white tiger as people used to call it was off and running. They were the best days of all to be honest. SJH was a millionaire, McKeag wasn't, at the beginning Hall was a bit reluctant to spunk millions on players because he wasn't sure if he'd ever get it back. Keegan had clearly been sold the dream by The Magpie Group, and when he was only allowed to spend £200,000 on Brian Kilcline and Darron McDonough (he was total pony), he and Terry Mac left the club as they believed they'd been sold lies by Hall. They were talked back up the motorway, literally, with the understanding if they kept us from Division 3, there'd be substantial investment the following season, but should they fail then the very future of the club would be in grave danger.

 

In the end we stopped up by 4 points. What summed the difference that summer made to the future of NUFC, could be seen in two games away at Derby County in less than four months. The first a 4-1 defeat (we had three players sent off) in April, and the second a 2-1 win in the August. We got four players in, they were absolutely class, and from being a club which was on its' knees, after 11 games we'd won the lot. 11 out of 11. It just got better and better, we added Robert Lee, Andy Cole came in a bit later, and for someone my age it was amazing, Newcastle felt like somebodies. We felt great. We were geordie owned. Our manager loved the club as much as any supporter, we felt like we could do anything. We kept growing at a rate that no other English club has in such a short space of time. Our turnover in 1992 was £4m, six years later it was £49m, we were the FIFTH richest club in Europe at that time. People find it staggering to see that but that's where we were in 1998. We had such self esteem as a club, other fans used to say we were getting cocky, but I loved it because we had something to be cocky about. You had players like Hristo Stoichkov coming out with statements like "I would love to play for a club like Newcastle." From a position where big donkeys like Ian Ormondroyd from Bradford City were turning us down in the early 90s, we had all time world greats saying they'd love to play for us! Berbatov is a Newcastle fan from childhood, I remember reading an interview by him saying everyone in his part of Bulgaria loved Newcastle because the people were the same, and the team had the same spirit. I don't even know what that means, but what it shows me is how well Hall, Freddie Fletcher and Freddie Shepherd did for the club in the 1990s, that some shithole know one has ever heard of in Bulgaria had people walking the streets wearing Newcastle tops. They got the message out there, and with that our ticket prices went up, everything went up, but you didn't mind because we were growing as a club. Even the Gullit and Dalglish eras showed me the club weren't going to settle for second best. Dalglish was sacked after a 1-1 draw at Chelsea!

 

Sir Bobby Robson did wonders for the club, and although many people have nothing but bad to say about Shepherd the club was making significant profits right up to 2004. In fact you often used to hear "Shepherd is a good businessman" to that point. He lost it a bit with Souness, and it's a shame FFS is thought of as a disaster because apart from the "geordie women are dogs" comment he did well for NUFC up to the point of Souness. He never reigned the fans aspirations in, he never said we were far behind Man Utd and Arsenal, the truth is when we came 3rd in 2003, we were equally as wealthy as Chelsea and Liverpool, with the aspirations to kick on further.

 

Mike Ashley came in and we all thought we'd hit the jackpot. Here was our English Abramovic.....

 

Nice read that Stevie.

 

Interesting reading all the kill Mckeag graffiti stuff etc. As a toon fan living on the very borders of Sunderland I never really got much of that. My earliest memories of supporting Newcastle are being thoroughly pissed off as an 8 year old in May 73. A trip to Newcastle was like Dick Wittington heading to London. The passion I had for supporting football was not really shared by anyone else, father or brothers so the politics of it all were not discussed at home.

 

I remember utter sadness when Beardsley went.

 

While you used to go with Family, I recall us hanging around outside and waiting for the big sliding gates to be opened about 15 minutes before the end. Thats when the ragamuffins would flood in.

 

Out in the sticks we used to sit around a radio waiting for an update. No live commentary, just the Its a goal show.

 

Theres something about Newcastle that is just so special which outsiders sum up as a soap opera or deluded fans etc etc, but down the years we have been spoilt whether its the like of Beardsley, Gazza or Waddle or Mirindhina. We always had interesting things associated with us. Good or bad but never dull.

 

The Keegan / Hall revolution of course was a magical ride the like I never thought would be repeated, but the climb since relegation (This season excluded) was a similar fall and rise. I thought we had really arrived when we used to have all those TV ads going out

 

Finally when I was working with a local ad agency a few years ago they produced a nice TV ad which I'll go and hunt for now and hopefully stick below.

 

http://www.hedleymcewan.co.uk/index_039.html

[McFaul 35]

Nice read that Stevie.

 

Interesting reading all the kill Mckeag graffiti stuff etc. As a toon fan living on the very borders of Sunderland I never really got much of that. My earliest memories of supporting Newcastle are being thoroughly pissed off as an 8 year old in May 73. A trip to Newcastle was like Dick Wittington heading to London. The passion I had for supporting football was not really shared by anyone else, father or brothers so the politics of it all were not discussed at home.

 

I remember utter sadness when Beardsley went.

 

While you used to go with Family, I recall us hanging around outside and waiting for the big sliding gates to be opened about 15 minutes before the end. Thats when the ragamuffins would flood in.

 

Out in the sticks we used to sit around a radio waiting for an update. No live commentary, just the Its a goal show.

 

Theres something about Newcastle that is just so special which outsiders sum up as a soap opera or deluded fans etc etc, but down the years we have been spoilt whether its the like of Beardsley, Gazza or Waddle or Mirindhina. We always had interesting things associated with us. Good or bad but never dull.

 

The Keegan / Hall revolution of course was a magical ride the like I never thought would be repeated, but the climb since relegation (This season excluded) was a similar fall and rise. I thought we had really arrived when we used to have all those TV ads going out

 

Finally when I was working with a local ad agency a few years ago they produced a nice TV ad which I'll go and hunt for now and hopefully stick below.

 

http://www.hedleymce.../index_039.html

I'd agree but it's been massively eroded by Mike Ashley, I'll do part two tomorrow and see if you can relate to some of the things I say. To be fair not just Ashley. I think Newcastle are like the polar ice caps, we're losing everything that makes us NUFC and every summer we seem to be melting.

[Toonpack 9940]

 

I'd agree but it's been massively eroded by Mike Ashley, I'll do part two tomorrow and see if you can relate to some of the things I say. To be fair not just Ashley. I think Newcastle are like the polar ice caps, we're losing everything that makes us NUFC and every summer we seem to be melting.

 

I'd agree but it's been massively eroded by Mike Ashley, I'll do part two tomorrow and see if you can relate to some of the things I say. To be fair not just Ashley. I think Newcastle are like the polar ice caps, we're losing everything that makes us NUFC and every summer we seem to be melting.

 

It's not just Ashley and Newcastle that's melting away from what it was, it's football in general

 

[Gemmill 46027]

Good read Stevie. Smaller para's is better. Think I first clapped eyes on Gazza (live) away at Palace - he came on for the last 10min. I turned to me mate Alan and said, "This is the one".

 

So you were already talking like Dungeon Master pre-teens?

[McFaul 35]

Good read Stevie. Smaller para's is better. Think I first clapped eyes on Gazza (live) away at Palace - he came on for the last 10min. I turned to me mate Alan and said, "This is the one".

Were you a Tottenham fan as a kid like Parky? Gazza never played at Selhurst Park for Newcastle.

[Ayatollah Hermione 14051]

Nowt gets past you with the Toon like