Some Newcastle United fans have taken to social media to voice their displeasure at what they feel is a lack of upkeep of St James’ Park.

Pictures posted on Twitter included dirty and water stained walls. So ChronicleLive’s Andrew Musgrove put the concerns of the fans to the club’s head of facilities Eddie Rutherford.

“Imagine letting 52,000 people walk through your front door,” Eddie Rutherford tells me when I ask him about criticism from fans about the upkeep of St James’s Park.

Flanked by files and projects past and present Rutherford, who has been facilities manager at Newcastle for the last 17 years, is talking about pictures on social media of marked walls and dirty toilets which have been used to suggest that the ground is in a state of disrepair.

We put those criticisms to the club and they invited us to talk to Rutherford and see for ourselves what goes into the upkeep of St James’ Park. And Rutherford, who is a former season ticket holder who first attended a game at the age of four, he understands some of the fans’ concerns. He and his staff, he says, take pride in what they do.

“Anyone can find a fault anywhere. (If) you go to the shopping centres you will see something at some point,” he says.

“But if you show us something that isn’t right, we will fix it because we do that as a matter of course. I do not want anyone to think we do not maintain the stadium properly, because the guys (who work for me) take it personally. They take pride in what they do every day and the scale of what we do.”

Show Player

I show him some of the pictures circulating on social media. “With those toilets,” he later explains – as he shows me the repair work – “the thermostat above the roof had blown, water had come down the wall and it was turned off. We knew about it in the morning but the reason we couldn’t do anything is that you can’t paint when it’s wet.

"But with anything, just tell us. It's not about us not wanting to do something - saying we won't do something because it'll save us money. We want it to look right and in between every game, we do what needs to be done."

Brought in by Sir Bobby Robson in 2003 to originally build the training ground, Rutherford has never left. He oversees the maintenance and upgrading of the stadium and the club’s training base and is in charge of the club’s biggest team of staff apart from the playing side of things.

He says the work carried out by his team, from the little things like picking up the rubbish to the bigger projects such painting the East Stand roof, is never-ending.

“The cleaning department are out every morning going around the stadium. We maintain the stadium. The groundstaff keep the shrubs and trees cut. We want people to be proud of the area and we think it’s the best stadium: it’s our home.

“On any one given match day before the fans come in we check every single area. At the end of the game, I can go around and say ‘Yeah it looks rough’ but that’s because you’ve had 52,000 people through the doors.

“But the following day, it’s cleaned again. I get that people have walked around and taken a picture, and people have taken an assumption from one picture but it’s not true.

“We take pride in what we do. We are constantly upgrading and constantly trying to make sure people come here and go ‘Wow’ at the stadium.”

The stadium retains that ability to impress. St James’ Park has, in recent years, been home to Olympic football, the Magic Weekend and a three day sell-out of Ed Sheeran concerts. Within the next year The Heineken Challenge Cup Final will take place at the stadium and an England test match against Italy too.

(Image: Newcastle Chronicle)

“It’s a testament to our work that all these events in the city are coming here. They’re coming here because the stadium is good,” Rutherford said.

“The Heineken Champions Cup final is coming here next year - we worked with Newcastle United fans to try and get it to come here [last year] and it went to Bilbao. They came to see us, and said ‘It’s only a one-year gig’.

“It was in Scotland that year and that it was always going to go back across to Europe, they then came back and said they were so impressed with what we did they want to do it in 2019.

“We made an impression, which changed their goalposts to say we’re going there and then coming here and that stands as testament to what we do here.

“People are now coming back [after the Rugby World Cup] because the feedback from people outside of London was that Newcastle was absolutely fantastic, the fanzone, the city, it was incredible.

“We should all be proud that they want to come back here. Everyone knows that Newcastle is a great city to come and visit but also they say it’s a great stadium. We want to hear all that. We want people to say we want to come here and do this.”

Football remains the priority

Of course before all that, and as Rutherford points out, the football will also remain the priority. To keep the standards high for the fans who pay their hard earned money to see Rafa Benitez and his side walk out onto the pitch is key.

The wish for the majority is that Benitez can bring success to United and take the club further than the men who have gone before him - including that of Sir Bobby Robson , whose statue lies at the south-west corner of the stadium.

While fans welcome the extra events that come to the city, the worry for some is the first impression served walking up to stadium, the windows or ironically, the sandstone wall behind the statue of Sir Bobby, looks untidy.

Rutherford responds to that last charge. “On a sandstone wall - we will power wash those walls and they were probably done about two years ago now. It’s a cherry picker job, with a jet wash and they’ll be done.

“It’s cosmetic, and we’ll do it but because of that corner of where it is, it doesn’t get much sun in the winter time, you’ll get that build up. It’ll happen.

“It’s a snap shot though - the windows for example. We’re cleaning these windows once a month. You clean your windows, it’ll cost you £10. I’ve got to get a cherry picker which is £2,500 for a day to clean the windows.

“All these things get done and we maintain it because you can’t go into a room downstairs and have dirty windows. There’s a cycle for all these things.

“There’s snap shots of some things - the windows above the south stand at the Gallowgate - the top of there. Someone says ‘That looks dirty’. Well yes I agree but it only gets cleaned once a year as the cost of cleaning that window is £2,500 a day for the machine, nevermind the abseilers on top of that.

“What I’m trying to say is, yes (we) maintain it but it has to be balanced. I can’t say to you that I’ll clean those windows once a week, it’s just too much money. I’d be spending half a million pounds on cleaning one set of windows and that would be silly.

“Everything in life has a budget. At the start of the season, Lee Charnley and I will sit down and I will say ‘I need X,Y and Z’ for the projects we want to try and do. This is the priority and I’m going to go as far down that list as I can get and if I can keep on going down that list, then I’ll keep on going.

“I try to get as much as I can done but I also know there is a limit on what we can spend each year - if want to do other thing as well, it’s not just my department, we all get a fair crack at it.

“In the last 10 years we’ve always worked with the principle that we want to spend a sensible amount of money each year to keep on top of the stadium rather than let it go into rack and ruin and knock on the door and say we need X amount to put it right - because that is what will happen.

“If you don’t maintain and look after it, it ends up being a massive cost rather than just an upkeep cost - and people will not use it.”

Making the stadium energy efficient

Over the last few years, Rutherford has overseen several projects that have not only improved the experience of match-day for fans but also the efficiency of the stadium.

From energy saving bulbs, being able to produce their own engery and carbon reducing schemes, St James’ Park is leading the way in helping reduce waste and project the enviroment. In 2013, it came top of the energy efficiency table calculated by the Environment Agency.

While Rutherford concedes that these projects or strategies - some which have cost the club more than what they replaced - aren’t ‘glossy’, he’s proud of the work carried out - pointing out that isn’t all about the money but ‘doing the right thing.’

“It’s not just the glossy bits. Every summer we do a structural survey to make sure when the council give us a safety certificate that everything’s the way it should be,” he said.

(Image: Newcastle United)

“On there, we’re doing a sort of four-year programme to paint the Milburn roof - the steel on it is enormous. And we’re three quarters of the way through that, the East Stand has just been finished; it’s been cleaned and painted, so it looks brand new - it’s 50 years old.

“It’s things people don’t see. There’s lads on the south-west corner, relining the gutters - that’s the last of a three-year project, so the guttering on the south, south west corner and east stand have all been replaced.

“On Carbon, you can do nothing whatsoever. But we would rather invest in doing the right thing, bring the carbon down long term and it pays for itself.”

Rutherford is determine to make everyone welcome at St James’ Park and this summer he and his team set about raising the platforms for those using wheelchairs or the disabled sections.

Look around the stadium and you will now see silver platforms, which now mean those sitting there will be able to see the action, even if those in-front stand up. There’s also been a censory room built and a specially designed disabled use toilet and wet room put on level 7 (You can read more about this in PART TWO of our feature later this week).

For Rutherford it is all about making the club inclusive, making sure those who suffer from a disability or a condition like autism can still come to St James’ Park and enjoy the match without the worry of having the right facilities.

After 17 years, the aim for Rutherford remains the same - to continue to have a stadium which fans can be proud to call home.

Show more

“When I first came here to work, you come here all your life as a fan, and now it’s second nature to me because I’ve been here such a long time and you feel part of it. The most important thing is; everyone who works here is the same, we feel proud of where we work.

“We are proud of where we work and we want people to say the same - we want the fans to be proud of it too.”