gipetto
Striker
He sounds like a charver. He's basically walked into corporate expecting to use the lift to get to his seat in the ground
thicko.
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Newcastle fc
- Thread starter Fulwellmackem
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He sounds like a charver. He's basically walked into corporate expecting to use the lift to get to his seat in the ground
thicko.
R
Reiver
Guest
They somehow fail to see the link between that kind of comment and the total lack of interest from prospective buyers
Father Jack Hackett
Striker
They want marble floors like the Dallas Cowboys stadium
They never fail to amuse. Another game without a gerl but look at wa fluwa.
D
Deleted member 31333
Guest
I get their point and agree about how these modern stadiums should be better than they are.
At our ground under the West stand it's a nice vibe & is well kitted out but then you go round to the East stand & its grey and soulless. Haven't even got a ceiling just open to the top of the stand. Looks manky as fuck. I know it ultimately doesn't matter but just looks shite.
At our ground under the West stand it's a nice vibe & is well kitted out but then you go round to the East stand & its grey and soulless. Haven't even got a ceiling just open to the top of the stand. Looks manky as fuck. I know it ultimately doesn't matter but just looks shite.
hank evans
Striker
The miserable fucker,when you are being served up tactical masterclasses by Rafas boys every week the rest doesn’t matter surely?
Edit.seb.On the other hand our red seats have really rattled their cages
Scroll around the pics on the forum and it isnt.
Tony Jimenez quotes from The Times via nufc.com.
Following their two-part preview of Kevin Keegan's forthcoming book, the Times newspaper have now published an interview with former Newcastle United official Tony Jimenez:
An hour in the company of the wise-cracking Tony Jimenez provides a fascinating insight into the nature of modern football for good and ill. Particularly his stormy nine-month spell at Newcastle United and bruising battles with Kevin Keegan.
Among the businessman's more eye-catching anecdotes are his claims that Mike Ashley never wanted to buy Newcastle and rejected the chance to sell the club to Sheikh Mansour before the Abu Dhabi takeover of Manchester City. There is also a litany of allegedly botched transfer deals that raise questions about Keegan's judgment.
Jimenez jokes that he is happy to help Keegan sell more copies of his autobiography, My Life in Football, but also wants to give his side of a story that caused uproar when serialised in The Times last weekend.
It is claimed that, in his role as a vice-president of Newcastle, Jimenez rejected the chance to sign Luka Modric in 2008 on the grounds that the Croatia midfielder was "too lightweight".
The 55-year-old's recollection of the Modric transfer negotiations is very different, while his list of young players whom Keegan allegedly rejected as not good enough would make quite a fantasy football team.
Jimenez told The Times that Keegan did not attend the meeting with Modric and his agent at St James' Park on April 22, 2008, nor was he present during the negotiations for any players signed during his eight-month return to the club.
Modric met Keegan at the training ground that day but Jimenez insists that the deal collapsed when Mike Ashley, the Newcastle owner, baulked at Dynamo Zagreb's asking price. Tottenham Hotspur accepted it five days later.
Jimenez said: "We flew Modric over to Newcastle, got him to the training ground. Everything was pretty much agreed but it was down to Mike. He was given the numbers - a £16 million fee and £2 million commission for the agent - and decided he didn't want to take the risk.
"We had a gentleman's agreement with Tottenham that we wouldn't compete for the same players. We let Jonathan Woodgate go to Spurs on the basis that we would get Modric, but Mike didn't want to pay. In the end I told Daniel Levy that we had pulled out and that Tottenham should sign him."
Keegan stood by the claim made in his autobiography, My Life in Football, when contacted by The Times yesterday. "Tony is entitled to his opinion, but the truth is in the book," he said.
Almost the only thing that the pair can agree on is the toxic nature of the relationship between Keegan and the Newcastle hierarchy that appointed him - Ashley, Jimenez and the director of football Dennis Wise.
Jimenez portrays Keegan as a diva-esque figure who signed up to the club's business plan of targeting young players before making impossible demands to sign household names. He allegedly threatened to resign when he did not get his own way, even walking out during his job interview, which he says was the result of being offered a contract with a 12-month break clause.
Although maligned by Keegan as "a former Chelsea steward" - a job he had as a teenager - Jimenez has quietly worked in the background in football for two decades alongside his property and technology businesses, advising clubs in Italy, Spain and England, before coming to public prominence at Newcastle and going on to buy Charlton Athletic.
"Kevin was told at the interview that this is the job, these are the financial constraints - don't take it if you don't want it," Jimenez says. "Go back to Glasgow and run your Soccer Circus rather than creating a circus in Newcastle, which is what he did. He just said yes to get the job.
"Kevin was a great player but lives in a time-warp. He played in an era when the top managers ran every aspect of football clubs and thinks his status in the game means he should have the same control. He didn't understand that it doesn't work like that anymore.
Perhaps God had given him so much talent in his feet that he'd taken something else away?"
The seemingly endless rows, beginning at their first meeting in Mayfair, central London, would make a fine black comedy if it were not for the misery they caused to Newcastle fans. "Things seemed to be going well as we explained our business plan, but after an hour he decided he wanted to go and talk to his wife, who'd come down to London from Glasgow with him," Jimenez says. "He left the room, but the ten minutes turned into 20, 30, then 40 minutes so we went looking for him.
"We couldn't find him in the building and it turned out he was driving back to Scotland without having said anything! That was his first tantrum, and he didn't even have the job."
Keegan does not dispute rejecting players proposed by the club after he joined in January 2008, as his priority was signing experienced centre halves such as Sami Hyypia or Jonathan Woodgate, although he doubts that some of the targets on what now looks like a stellar list were really attainable.
"The minute you questioned him he lost the plot," Jimenez says. "During that window we offered him the players that we were working on when we thought Harry Redknapp was coming as manager - Jermain Defoe, Peter Crouch, Lassana Diarra - and he said none of them were good enough. The other player we were really keen on was Daniel Sturridge. He said he'd had him as a kid at Man City and that he wasn't good enough for League One.
"He didn't want Hatem Ben Arfa or Karim Benzema either. We asked Kevin for a list of players for every position, bearing in mind he had £25 million to spend. Our list included Benzema and Ben Arfa who were young players at Lyons, as well as Samir Nasri.
"Kevin took one look and called them all chancers. His list was David Beckham, Frank Lampard, Ronaldinho, Kaka among others. We added their transfer value up and it was £399 million, plus £100 million in wages."
There were other wrangles of contract negotiations, with Newcastle unwilling to meet Michael Owen's wage demands and Keegan eager to sell the then 19-year-old Andy Carroll to Norwich City for £300,000, less than 1 per cent of the fee that they received from Liverpool for him three years later. "Kevin wanted to give him [Owen] a new five-year deal on £140,000 a week,"
Jimenez says. "We made a counter offer of £80,000 which would reach £120,000 if he played 65 minutes per game. Keegan went ballistic.
"He also went mad when we gave a new contract to Carroll, whom he said would never make it as a professional. He said £300,000 was a fantastic price. We couldn't trust his judgment."
The final straw for Keegan came when Newcastle signed Xisco and Ignacio González in August 2008, as detailed in his book extracts this week, but Jimenez suspects that he had been looking for a way out for some time and that the sale of James Milner to Aston Villa that month was just as significant.
The next year Keegan was awarded £2 million after an independent arbitration panel ruled that he had been constructively dismissed, but he had lodged a claim for £25 million and previously rejected a settlement offer of £4 million, so it was a pyrrhic victory.
"He has made a lot out of Xisco and González, but they were part of deals to sign Fabricio Coloccini and Jonás Gutiérrez, who were also players he didn't want who did well for Newcastle," Jimenez says. "Sometimes you have to take a player to get the one you really want. He's made a lot of only being given YouTube clips, but he didn't go and watch Coloccini and Gutiérrez.
"Kevin was looking for an excuse to go and could have walked out at any point from the moment he joined."
Jimenez also said that he was only brought in to help Ashley sell the club. "Mike wanted me to sell the club on the basis of my relationships in the Middle East so I came in under the cover story of working in player recruitment," Jimenez said. "If he had played his cards right Mike could have sold Newcastle to Abu Dhabi before they bought Manchester City."
Interesting stuff. Looks like the rumours of Ashley being able to sell to Mansour may actually be true. If that's true about Keegan saying Defoe and Sturridge were not good enough then his judgement isn't great. Benzema as well, ridiculous. Although had Benzema came to Newcastle he'd have been terrible.
Following their two-part preview of Kevin Keegan's forthcoming book, the Times newspaper have now published an interview with former Newcastle United official Tony Jimenez:
An hour in the company of the wise-cracking Tony Jimenez provides a fascinating insight into the nature of modern football for good and ill. Particularly his stormy nine-month spell at Newcastle United and bruising battles with Kevin Keegan.
Among the businessman's more eye-catching anecdotes are his claims that Mike Ashley never wanted to buy Newcastle and rejected the chance to sell the club to Sheikh Mansour before the Abu Dhabi takeover of Manchester City. There is also a litany of allegedly botched transfer deals that raise questions about Keegan's judgment.
Jimenez jokes that he is happy to help Keegan sell more copies of his autobiography, My Life in Football, but also wants to give his side of a story that caused uproar when serialised in The Times last weekend.
It is claimed that, in his role as a vice-president of Newcastle, Jimenez rejected the chance to sign Luka Modric in 2008 on the grounds that the Croatia midfielder was "too lightweight".
The 55-year-old's recollection of the Modric transfer negotiations is very different, while his list of young players whom Keegan allegedly rejected as not good enough would make quite a fantasy football team.
Jimenez told The Times that Keegan did not attend the meeting with Modric and his agent at St James' Park on April 22, 2008, nor was he present during the negotiations for any players signed during his eight-month return to the club.
Modric met Keegan at the training ground that day but Jimenez insists that the deal collapsed when Mike Ashley, the Newcastle owner, baulked at Dynamo Zagreb's asking price. Tottenham Hotspur accepted it five days later.
Jimenez said: "We flew Modric over to Newcastle, got him to the training ground. Everything was pretty much agreed but it was down to Mike. He was given the numbers - a £16 million fee and £2 million commission for the agent - and decided he didn't want to take the risk.
"We had a gentleman's agreement with Tottenham that we wouldn't compete for the same players. We let Jonathan Woodgate go to Spurs on the basis that we would get Modric, but Mike didn't want to pay. In the end I told Daniel Levy that we had pulled out and that Tottenham should sign him."
Keegan stood by the claim made in his autobiography, My Life in Football, when contacted by The Times yesterday. "Tony is entitled to his opinion, but the truth is in the book," he said.
Almost the only thing that the pair can agree on is the toxic nature of the relationship between Keegan and the Newcastle hierarchy that appointed him - Ashley, Jimenez and the director of football Dennis Wise.
Jimenez portrays Keegan as a diva-esque figure who signed up to the club's business plan of targeting young players before making impossible demands to sign household names. He allegedly threatened to resign when he did not get his own way, even walking out during his job interview, which he says was the result of being offered a contract with a 12-month break clause.
Although maligned by Keegan as "a former Chelsea steward" - a job he had as a teenager - Jimenez has quietly worked in the background in football for two decades alongside his property and technology businesses, advising clubs in Italy, Spain and England, before coming to public prominence at Newcastle and going on to buy Charlton Athletic.
"Kevin was told at the interview that this is the job, these are the financial constraints - don't take it if you don't want it," Jimenez says. "Go back to Glasgow and run your Soccer Circus rather than creating a circus in Newcastle, which is what he did. He just said yes to get the job.
"Kevin was a great player but lives in a time-warp. He played in an era when the top managers ran every aspect of football clubs and thinks his status in the game means he should have the same control. He didn't understand that it doesn't work like that anymore.
Perhaps God had given him so much talent in his feet that he'd taken something else away?"
The seemingly endless rows, beginning at their first meeting in Mayfair, central London, would make a fine black comedy if it were not for the misery they caused to Newcastle fans. "Things seemed to be going well as we explained our business plan, but after an hour he decided he wanted to go and talk to his wife, who'd come down to London from Glasgow with him," Jimenez says. "He left the room, but the ten minutes turned into 20, 30, then 40 minutes so we went looking for him.
"We couldn't find him in the building and it turned out he was driving back to Scotland without having said anything! That was his first tantrum, and he didn't even have the job."
Keegan does not dispute rejecting players proposed by the club after he joined in January 2008, as his priority was signing experienced centre halves such as Sami Hyypia or Jonathan Woodgate, although he doubts that some of the targets on what now looks like a stellar list were really attainable.
"The minute you questioned him he lost the plot," Jimenez says. "During that window we offered him the players that we were working on when we thought Harry Redknapp was coming as manager - Jermain Defoe, Peter Crouch, Lassana Diarra - and he said none of them were good enough. The other player we were really keen on was Daniel Sturridge. He said he'd had him as a kid at Man City and that he wasn't good enough for League One.
"He didn't want Hatem Ben Arfa or Karim Benzema either. We asked Kevin for a list of players for every position, bearing in mind he had £25 million to spend. Our list included Benzema and Ben Arfa who were young players at Lyons, as well as Samir Nasri.
"Kevin took one look and called them all chancers. His list was David Beckham, Frank Lampard, Ronaldinho, Kaka among others. We added their transfer value up and it was £399 million, plus £100 million in wages."
There were other wrangles of contract negotiations, with Newcastle unwilling to meet Michael Owen's wage demands and Keegan eager to sell the then 19-year-old Andy Carroll to Norwich City for £300,000, less than 1 per cent of the fee that they received from Liverpool for him three years later. "Kevin wanted to give him [Owen] a new five-year deal on £140,000 a week,"
Jimenez says. "We made a counter offer of £80,000 which would reach £120,000 if he played 65 minutes per game. Keegan went ballistic.
"He also went mad when we gave a new contract to Carroll, whom he said would never make it as a professional. He said £300,000 was a fantastic price. We couldn't trust his judgment."
The final straw for Keegan came when Newcastle signed Xisco and Ignacio González in August 2008, as detailed in his book extracts this week, but Jimenez suspects that he had been looking for a way out for some time and that the sale of James Milner to Aston Villa that month was just as significant.
The next year Keegan was awarded £2 million after an independent arbitration panel ruled that he had been constructively dismissed, but he had lodged a claim for £25 million and previously rejected a settlement offer of £4 million, so it was a pyrrhic victory.
"He has made a lot out of Xisco and González, but they were part of deals to sign Fabricio Coloccini and Jonás Gutiérrez, who were also players he didn't want who did well for Newcastle," Jimenez says. "Sometimes you have to take a player to get the one you really want. He's made a lot of only being given YouTube clips, but he didn't go and watch Coloccini and Gutiérrez.
"Kevin was looking for an excuse to go and could have walked out at any point from the moment he joined."
Jimenez also said that he was only brought in to help Ashley sell the club. "Mike wanted me to sell the club on the basis of my relationships in the Middle East so I came in under the cover story of working in player recruitment," Jimenez said. "If he had played his cards right Mike could have sold Newcastle to Abu Dhabi before they bought Manchester City."
Interesting stuff. Looks like the rumours of Ashley being able to sell to Mansour may actually be true. If that's true about Keegan saying Defoe and Sturridge were not good enough then his judgement isn't great. Benzema as well, ridiculous. Although had Benzema came to Newcastle he'd have been terrible.
S
Slow joe
Guest
I'm not getting into a debate about it because it's the mags ground and I really don't give a shit but you can't tell me my opinion is wrong
prideofhylton
Winger
The Gift that keeps on giving
He sounds like a twat. I'm with the bouncer on this.
Randy Savage
Striker
My little lad wanted to do a tour up there a while back so we all went as a family (he’s done the SSOL tour as well before anyone says owt, and he’s now a ST holder at SAFC).
I thought that generally, it was better maintained than our place from the limited bits I saw. The corporate areas and boxes were more modern than our place, where I think the boxes in particular are very dated. The dressing rooms are much of a muchness. The fact they have grey seats is a help to them as they don’t fade.
Aye, tin hat on etc.
T
Teed
Guest
It's more than good enough for those smelly dole thieving bastards.
I just wish they'd put a little less gravy in the pies.
samaistonsrightfoot
Striker
I read part of what Keegan said yesterday and thought then he came off as a bitter little bellend looking to cash in on your fans hatred of Ashley and sell books.
MEEKLANGLEYFTM
Striker
Ffs man that sums up them arseholes wadnt be happy with a lick of paint or bit of anti slip lino nar the fuckers want a 3 million or billion (can't remember the op exactly) pund floor
Probably with golden brown baked steak bakes the set of complete wankpuffins
Probably with golden brown baked steak bakes the set of complete wankpuffins
Al Bundy
Striker
They want marble floors like the Dallas Cowboys stadium
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Napoleon Dynamite
Striker
Delivering Chinese food?
D
Deleted member 7101
Guest
And suitable for their garbage management, players and, most importantly, their garbage fans!
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