By groundhogdaze
December 12 2004

Message board regular GHD offers his opinion on the fat one, Freddy Shepherd. An interesting piece if ever I saw one! Couldn't agree more...

Is Freddy Shepherd a man of his word?

The reason I ask the question is because I'm sure he said when he appointed Souness as manager that it was pretty much his last chance as chairman to get it right, therefore Souness' failure would also be deemed as his failure if it happened that way and he would also have to pay the price for failure.

The Fat man has let us down with increasing regularity over the years. Whilst I still think it is too early to judge Souness as a NUFC manager I honestly feel that unless there is a rapid improvement then he may very well be looking for a new job next summer without being given a chance by the fans and being sacrificed by an increasingly worried Chairman. Certainly the Chairman of any other leading PLC would have long since been given a golden handshake for the continued raising of expectations whilst delivering nothing more but unfulfilled promises of the success to come.

His continuous self promotion sullies the name of this club. His ludicrous outbursts in the press - "The Rudderless Manure", "We are going to buy Rooney" etc are prime examples of the man's buffoonery. He has systematically hired and fired successive manager's with no adequate plan in place. His continued "Shearer for Manager" campaign undermines the current encumbent. Publicly branding his own players "overpaid prima-donnas" who should think long and hard about wether or not they earn their money - money he agreed to in their contracts ffs whilst allowing the likes of Bernard to walk on a bosman because he won't pay him the going rate.

The Fat bloater should look in the mirror, after all it's not so long ago since he paid himself and Douglas Hall record bonuses for failing to achieve Champions League status whilst denying his then manager much needed funds to improve the team. Finally he publicly announced 3 weeks into a season that he would not be renewing his then manager's contract, having forgotten to tell the then manager first. That act of treachery brings us round to Mr Souness. I don't believe that Souey will last much past the summer, not because of a lack of managerial skill on his part, purely because he wasn't the fans or the boards first choice. I think the Fat Man will release limited funds in January and will panic again in the summer and short of winning a cup or by some miracle qualifying for europe then Souey will be gone probably through no fault of his own.

The fat man will crow that we have excellent stadium, facilities, funding etc and promise us the earth for the next manager whilst again pocketing huge bonuses for his failure. I hope Souey succeeds, I honestly do, however if he fails I hope the that either the Fat Man is a man of his word and resigns or the PLC board have the balls to sack this embarrasing excuse for a chairman.