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Club sacks 120


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The bitter reality of Newcastle United's relegation from the Barclays Premier League struck home in brutal fashion yesterday, when it emerged that 120 members of the club's administrative and commercial staff are set to lose their jobs.

 

More than one third of Newcastle's non-footballing employees will leave St James' Park as a consequence of the severe cost-cutting programme initiated by Mike Ashley.

 

The redundancies are a painful illustration of the club's demise under Ashley's ownership. While there is optimism that Alan Shearer will agree to lead his home-town team in the Coca-Cola Championship next season, the context is of a club in the throes of contraction.

 

It offers a partial explanation for the painstaking nature of discussions between Shearer, Ashley and Derek Llambias, the Newcastle managing director. According to their last published financial report, the club's annual turnover of £100 million includes a wage-bill of £74 million, figures that were viewed as close to unsustainable in the Premier League, never mind the division below.

 

Shearer will be expected to preside over a mass exodus of high-earning players - Michael Owen and Mark Viduka are out of contract and will leave, while Joey Barton will surely follow - but he is fighting to retain a backbone of established players.

 

Understandably, the negotiations have been intense, but Ashley must realise that support for Newcastle will haemorrhage if Shearer is permitted to leave the club. Disillusion with the sportswear retailer is already entrenched and the prospect of further job losses in a city suffering from the economic downturn will not add to his popularity.

 

With Newcastle's first-team squad due to return for pre-season training on July 1, time is of the essence and Shearer is eager to set about his task.

 

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From The Times/Caulkin

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A fair few of them could have been kept on if he'd just sacked Llambias instead (what's that useless twat done to keep his job by the way?), and not paid Wise's contract up for another year to ensure the poisonous little cockney cunt backs him in the legal battle with Keegan.

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In a just and fair universe the players would contribute to the redundancy settlements. A month of little Mickey's wages would help for starters

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Newcastle United yesterday delayed the expected announcement of Alan Shearer's appointment as manager in order to deal with up to as many as 100 redundancies at St James' Park, the administrative cost of the team's relegation from the Premier League. With speculation regarding a takeover ongoing it has emerged that the investment banker Keith Harris visited Newcastle's training ground on his visit to Tyneside this week. That will fuel the belief that owner Mike Ashley is preparing to sell the club.

 

Newcastle's last accounts showed that the club has 307 full and part-time non-football staff and it appears that the owner, Mike Ashley, has ordered a cut of one third. The recently hired chief operations officer, David Williamson, is the most high-profile departure, but there have been redundancies across several departments as the club anticipates a potential £50m decrease in revenue.

 

Newcastle's greatest expense is their playing-staff wage bill and a reduction is anticipated. One of Shearer's first tasks will be to release players and Newcastle are encouraging interest in Joey Barton as an initial step in that process, though his agent has said repeatedly that he will not be forced out. Shearer is now expected to be confirmed as manager next week.

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Horrible that anyone gets made redundant, but if the club can run minus 120 staff you have to wonder if they were needed in the first place. Its not like we have a super efficient box office that requires 100 people to make it tick. WHat exactly did all these people do?

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Horrible that anyone gets made redundant, but if the club can run minus 120 staff you have to wonder if they were needed in the first place. Its not like we have a super efficient box office that requires 100 people to make it tick. WHat exactly did all these people do?

 

Aye it does beg a massive question. More to the point, what admistrative & commercial staff can they actually dispose of? They'll still need people to sell tickets, programmes, work the club shops, catering, etc...

 

I bet we never find out though.

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Not sure if the press have jumped on this and made some dodgy presumptions on this to be honest. To make that amount of 'employees' redundant they would have needed a consultation period of 90 days, obviously it hasnt been 90 days since we got relegated. That says to me that either the have been prepared for relegation for the past three months (despite the statements that they werent considering relegation), these werent directly attributed to the relegation and it was a re-organisation of the workforce regardless of relegation, these people were only on short/fixed term contracts and werent full time employees or finally the club have fucked up and will have one hell of an employment tribunal to look forward to....dont think any company is that stupid....

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Shame this has to happen when a club goes down. Like others have said, its because one branch of the team fails (i.e. the players, and 2 or 3 of your managers), another part has to take the hit. Hope they can find some sort of job in the recession.

 

The likes of Owen, Barton and Smith should lob some of their wages in the direction of the 120.

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Shame this has to happen when a club goes down. Like others have said, its because one branch of the team fails (i.e. the players, and 2 or 3 of your managers), another part has to take the hit. Hope they can find some sort of job in the recession.

 

The likes of Owen, Barton and Smith should lob some of their wages in the direction of the 120.

 

 

I'd put money on that they would have been got shot of in any event. No way does it take 120 less permanent staff to run the club now were in the Championship. Everything was going to be contracted out iirc.

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Not sure if the press have jumped on this and made some dodgy presumptions on this to be honest. To make that amount of 'employees' redundant they would have needed a consultation period of 90 days, obviously it hasnt been 90 days since we got relegated. That says to me that either the have been prepared for relegation for the past three months (despite the statements that they werent considering relegation), these werent directly attributed to the relegation and it was a re-organisation of the workforce regardless of relegation, these people were only on short/fixed term contracts and werent full time employees or finally the club have fucked up and will have one hell of an employment tribunal to look forward to....dont think any company is that stupid....

 

Press reports of 'redundancy' will be notice of consultation. What that means is that "sorry mate, your job is no longer but we'll spend the next xx days trying to find you something else in the company..."

 

They're making people redundant to reduce overheads, there'll be no shifting of jobs. So long as they pay them a notice period (which they will) they'll not be in for any grief.

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