Mort Interview - Independent.

http://sport.independent.co.uk/football/premiership/article2851384.ece

Mort brings sea change to tone of business on the Tyne

In his first interview as Newcastle chairman the lawyer tells of his big plans for the club to Michael Walker

Published: 10 August 2007

Shearer's Bar, St. James' Park, 10 days ago: Sam Allardyce addresses around 1,000 Newcastle United fans. The evening is bubbly, loud, optimistic. Fast forward seven days and Shearer's Bar is rather less busy. But there is another gathering. This time it is Newcastle's new chairman Chris Mort, a London lawyer by geography and profession, sitting down with half a dozen Newcastle diehards, supporters who write fanzines and run websites dedicated to the club.

There have been many changes at St. James' since the end of last season, Allardyce and Mort being two of the biggest, but Tuesday night's chat was illustrative of another, just as notable to seasoned Newcastle observers, a change in tone.

"It's no accident that we now have a lawyer who is chairman of the club, " Mort said. "We want things to be run in the proper way." The 41 year-old Mort tends to supply such answers – short, dry, sometimes sweet – but a point is made. There was weight behind the use of " proper", funnily enough one of Graeme Souness's favourite words.

And it is the contrast with what went before that strikes hardest: Chris Mort is not Freddy Shepherd, Allardyce is not Souness, and to the six lads gathered round a table while Mort supped a couple of pints of Guinness, that is reason enough for cheer. This dialogue was not part of the previous regime.

Tomorrow at Bolton, for the first time in 15 years, there will be no member of the Shepherd or Hall families leading Newcastle's delegation into a rival Premier League boardroom. Newcastle's new owner, Mike Ashley, will not be at Bolton as he is on holiday, and anyway, it is Mort who is the new face at the top of the club. He has left his wife and family behind in north London to take this post, which some might view as a strange trajectory in career terms, but Mort said his wife was understanding when the original call came from Ashley. "It wasn't: 'I'm going to become deputy chairman of Newcastle United'," Mort explained. "It was: 'I've been offered the position, let's talk about it'. I didn't present it as done.

"My wife is interested in football, is aware of the position I have at Freshfields [the law firm]. She's used to me doing high-profile things there, though not as high-profile as this. She's aware this would be a challenging, exciting position. It wasn't a difficult decision for her or me to conclude this was a good thing to do." But for how long? Some refer to Mort as "interim" chairman? "I've not had that conversation." Friends, did they not think this was a peculiar career move? "I don't think anyone has said 'you're mad'. I've had a few thousand requests for tickets.

"I'm excited. It has been a fast-moving time, hectic, but I expected it to be. In buying the club we have clearly taken a lot on. We appreciate that. But if you work in Freshfields, a big law firm in the City, that's obviously a demanding environment, you're doing big transactions with clients with big expectations. So in terms of taking on a heavy workload that is not new to me, but it is a different role to the business advisory role I've done traditionally. It's exciting, taking on the whole player transaction side of life, running a football club side of life is obviously different. But not in pace of life."

When he returns to his desk on Monday, Mort will know that while a fresh era is upon Tyne, the past hovers. It is just 45 days since his appointment and, aside from supplanting Shepherd and the Halls, three of the other issues to arise are raids by the City of London police, Kieron Dyer's on-off transfer to West Ham and a daily look at the books that has revealed Newcastle's debt is beyond Ashley's estimate when he first bought shares in the club on 23 May. The most commonly reported figure for Newcastle's debt is £80m – to go on top of the £133m Ashley paid for the club. Is that accurate?

"It's a bit more complicated than saying there's a debt figure of £x. In terms of money being spent by the club it is more convoluted than that. It's not that debt has been squirrelled away, it's spending some of the money before it comes in, which frankly, is not necessarily debt, it's just a means of investing money before you've actually got it. There's been a bit of that, the club has done that."

So there is something in the rumour that Newcastle spent their Northern Rock sponsorship money up front? "I'd rather keep it broad. I just think the financial position of the club is not as strong as we hoped it might be. But that in itself has not held back our investment on the playing squad and it's something that we'll deal with. We did the typical due diligence one would do on a public takeover. There is no sense that anyone has tried to mislead us."

Nor will Newcastle seek to do anything but aid the City of London police. " They made it clear their raids were not related to the Quest report but I know that there are areas of concern within football and I share their concern. We have no interest in doing anything untoward."

The raids did not add misgivings to Mort's perception of football from the outside. "The impression I had was that football has gone through an incredible transition. A number of clubs have changed the way they have been run, moved from the way they developed through the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s, when they were normally run by local businessmen, to professionally run organisations. Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham, they have all made the transition into incredibly commercial organisations. That is certainly what we aspire to: to make it as professionally run an organisation as possible."

One imagines being unprofessional constitutes a serious misdemeanour in Mort's world-view and it is apparent West Ham's attempt to sign Dyer offended him, perhaps personally as well as professionally. That became more evident last night when, after pressure from Mort, the West Ham chairman Eggert Magnusson retracted the word "embarrassing" – relating to Newcastle's handling of the Dyer deal – from an interview.

Mort means business. "Dyer is a player who's played for England. He's a very strong, valuable player for the club," he said.

"Clearly his wife and children would prefer to move south and that's something he's talked to West Ham about. It got uncomfortable the way West Ham went about trying to do the transfer. Therefore we felt we'd be happy for Kieron to stay and they would have to pay more to acquire him. I'm not going to elaborate. But they went about their business the wrong way, to my mind."

Comings and goings: Changing of the guard at St James' Park

Players In:

Jose Enrique (Villarreal, £6.3m)

Alan Smith (Man Utd, £6m, right)

Joey Barton (Man City £5.8m)

David Rozehnal (PSG, £2.9m)

Mark Viduka (Middlesbro', free)

Geremi (Chelsea, free)

Claudio Cacapa (Lyon, free)

Players out:

Scott Parker (West Ham, £7m)

Hugo Viana (Valencia, £1.2m)

Titus Bramble (Wigan, free)

Antoine Sibierski (Wigan, free)

Andy O'Brien (Hibs, tribunal)

Olivier Bernard, Pavel Srnicek, Kris Gate, Craig Moore, (released)

A positive encouraging article about Newcastle in a national paper.  Hell freezes & pigs fly.

I really like what Chris Mort has to say.  Quiet, professional and business like.  Also very interesting to hear him all but confirm that the Northern Rock money was spent up front.  That would explain the 50 mil spending that summer.  At least it isn't all debt. 

He's got something on Magnusson by the sounds of things.

  Very nice to have such practical person to be in charge of our football club. We will see the benefits in the future these kind of people will laid the foundation first to get the results.

so we've sold Hugo Vianna and Andy O'Brien this summer have we?

dickheads

didnt elaborate to much on the meeting with the fanzines guys, anyone from here invited and told to keep sthum.

   Very nice to have such practical person to be in charge of our football club. We will see the benefits in the future these kind of people will laid the foundation first to get the results.

Agree.

Not really relevant to this thread but I noticed a lot of new members around the forum using thier photoshop skills for their sigs.. it's something I always felt was missed around here 

Sorry was just looking at VegasToon's sig

Nice to see an article with quotes in, not the usual garbage from:

http://www.skunkers.net/reunited/image.php?u=1279&dateline=1186697801

Unashamedly stolen from Y_o_Y

Its just nice to see that the new chairman does not have the temptation to indulge in childish comments or sound bites.

didnt elaborate to much on the meeting with the fanzines guys, anyone from here invited and told to keep sthum.

Nice to see that Mort has met with them at least.  The lack of direct communication with supporters by the previous board was disgraceful IMO especially considering we are supposed to be the club's main asset.