Freddy Shepherd: Sacking Newcastle legend Sir Bobby Robson was like shooting Bambi

Exclusive extract: Secret player visits, a manager too popular to be dismissed, a public and media outraged. Freddy Shepherd had the Leicester feeling back in 2004, probably worse in actuality, when he sacked Sir Bobby Robson, as he recalls in Martin Hardy’s book, Tunnel of Love

Robson's job at Newcastle was to be his last in football management (Getty)

The boardroom inside St James’ Park, on the fifth floor was lavish, airy and expansive, its table, firm, sturdy, with seating for around 12 and a freshly polished mahogany finish.

Freddy Shepherd was not worrying about the room or its furniture, instead he was staring down at a picture. Things were not good.

The season had ended disappointingly. There would be no Champions League football for the first time in three years. The support was restless.

And now this. A picture of a Newcastle United player, one of his Newcastle United players, an international, on the training ground at Benton, sticking two fingers up behind the back of an unsuspecting Sir Bobby Robson.

It was there in full colour, in front of him.

Robson lost the dressing room towards the end of his time at Newcastle (Getty)

He had already been visited by two first team players. It was a private meeting. They told Shepherd of their concerns that Robson had lost the dressing room.

Things were mounting up.

There had been the failure in Marseille, a league season that had never been able to follow the highs of the previous two. Robson had been caught criticising the fans after the final game of the campaign at St James Park, senior players were that concerned they were coming to see him.

Newcastle had not won a game in the new season, and now this, a picture of Robson being undermined in the extreme by one of his players. Shepherd decided the picture could never come to print.

A Didier Drogba double ended Newcastle's Uefa Cup dream (Getty)

He agreed a deal to buy the negative. He would not say how much but the figure is believed to have been around £10,000.

‘Can I write a player was photographed putting two fingers up behind Bobby Robson?’ I asked Shepherd.

‘There was,’ he said. ‘You can write that.’

‘Can I say who it was?’

‘No, don’t mention who it was. There was a player and I had to buy the negative, the whole thing off a certain photographer.’

‘It was definitely a picture?’

‘I don’t want to get into it too much and I don’t want you to print who it is because that person is still alive and I don’t want to get his character.’

Things were spiralling quickly.

£10,000 was the price of protecting Robson's reputation (Getty)

During the summer, after Newcastle had finished fifth, Shepherd had drawn up a plan to ease the 71-year-old Robson from the direct firing line into a more senior role at the club, like the one he had taken at Barcelona.

‘We asked him to come upstairs that summer, but he didn’t want to,’ added Shepherd. ‘We wanted Shearer to be involved. We didn’t approach Alan. It would have been wrong to have gone to him first. We wanted Bobby’s clearance so we spoke to him.

‘We wanted him to take Shearer as his number two and he wouldn’t do that. He didn’t give a reason why. He just said he wanted to do it himself.

‘I think he thought perhaps Shearer might be poking his nose in too much but it didn’t happen.’

It was not going to be easy.

Robson did not want Shearer as his number two (Getty)

‘Two players came to see me and they said, “He is losing the team.” It wasn’t a case of control, the words they used were losing the team.

‘I think at the time some of the players there were a bit hard too handle. There wasn’t any shrinking violets.

‘You had the Brambles and the Dyers and they were a handful for anyone to handle. All that got on top of Bobby. He was 71. He was feeling the pressure. He was successful. The crowds loved him and all that, but at the end he got a bit tired of it, as they all do.

‘All the fans walked out at the Wolves game. They all went.’

Robson was asked to stay on as a director (Getty)

By Sunday, August 29, Newcastle had drawn two and lost two of their opening four games of the season. Shepherd called Robson to his office.

Robson insisted he had gone to St James’ Park the following day believing he would be discussing new signings with the Newcastle chairman.

‘We did offer him to stay on as director and he refused that,’ said Shepherd.

‘We wanted him to stay on as director of football because we had to pay him anyway. We had to pay his contract anyway so we wanted him to stay. The rest is history.

Robson's legacy at Newcastle remains untarnished (Getty)

‘Somebody has to do it. You can’t get Lee Charnley or Russell Cushing to do it for you.

‘You couldn’t get them to do it. That wasn’t acceptable. I had to do it myself. ‘Douglas lived in Gibraltar then. He went there in 2000. It was left to me to sort them all out. Keegan I had to sort out, then Kenny, then Gullit, then Bobby.

‘In some ways he was relieved of handing over. To be fair when he did go I think he understood. He was near the bottom of the league, and we had gone four without a win.

‘We got hammered for it, or rather I got hammered for it, for sacking him.

‘I always said it was like shooting Bambi.

‘It was very emotional.’

Tunnel of Love, by Martin Hardy, published by deCoubertin Books, is priced £18.99.