Isegrim

The press conference from his time at Salzburg where he is ranting against bad press coverage isn't any better. To be found on youtube as well, just without subtitles (which doesn't matter as it doesn't make much sense anyway).

? He's their head coach/manager (that's why they sacked Matthäus who didn't want to be just Trap's assistant). I agree with the rest of your post though.

Headless chicken movement.

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/7670/918902gazzacrying150bs3.jpg http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/9246/41359200southgate416paly5.jpg

His credentials are all the great foreign players Charlton signed. Aye, but Real Madrid got some canny players. He was only with them a few months his impact there is non existent to negligible at best . He was at Charlton for years though. Do Real Madrid typically hire no-hopers? They bought Owen and Woodgate...

The difference in regard to pace and skill today to the Arsenal players was pretty obvious today.

Keegan had to be either a brilliant coach or a brain surgeon to do this. But he is neither. Anyway, are the people saying that Martins can learn to resolve his obvious deficits by good coaching the same who thought Bramble could overcome his concentration blackouts? The usual I-support-a-17Million£-super-goal-machine-which-is-always-injured-and-a-f******-mercenary comment. Bored with them... Your problem. I am not actually supporting Owen with my comment, but rather questioning where the belief that Martins can improve his game is coming from, because all this leg-humping is really boring me as well. Btw - It's the transfer window, shouldn't you make up fake transfer news for "entertainment"? Fake transfer news? Ah, seems that I have mistaken you for Swissmagpie who was the source for the dodgy Roeder to Zürich, Behrami signing etc. rumours. I am sorry for that. Who said Roeder to Zurich? What a joke! Wouldn't believe it for a second... No problem. I am kind of "un-nice". It's not my day today, sorry. No problem, just to cheer you up some entertainment from your (nearly) namesake... http://www.newcastle-online.com/nufcforum/index.php?topic=42213.0

Keegan had to be either a brilliant coach or a brain surgeon to do this. But he is neither. Anyway, are the people saying that Martins can learn to resolve his obvious deficits by good coaching the same who thought Bramble could overcome his concentration blackouts? The usual I-support-a-17Million£-super-goal-machine-which-is-always-injured-and-a-f******-mercenary comment. Bored with them... Your problem. I am not actually supporting Owen with my comment, but rather questioning where the belief that Martins can improve his game is coming from, because all this leg-humping is really boring me as well. Btw - It's the transfer window, shouldn't you make up fake transfer news for "entertainment"? Fake transfer news? Ah, seems that I have mistaken you for Swissmagpie who was the source for the dodgy Roeder to Zürich, Behrami signing etc. rumours. I am sorry for that.

Keegan had to be either a brilliant coach or a brain surgeon to do this. But he is neither. Anyway, are the people saying that Martins can learn to resolve his obvious deficits by good coaching the same who thought Bramble could overcome his concentration blackouts? The usual I-support-a-17Million£-super-goal-machine-which-is-always-injured-and-a-f******-mercenary comment. Bored with them... Your problem. I am not actually supporting Owen with my comment, but rather questioning where the belief that Martins can improve his game is coming from, because all this leg-humping is really boring me as well. Btw - It's the transfer window, shouldn't you make up fake transfer news for "entertainment"? I was as anti Bramble as they come and can't believe we stuck with him so long. Its completely different with Martins, he (after a slow start) hit some form and scored what 17 under Roeder as a striker. Sam comes in drops him for Owen at most oppourtunaties and makes him more a right winger in his 433 and then some cretins on here wonder why he's stopped scoring and looks a little short of confidence. I could compare it to Zoggy being s**** under Roeder, we knew he wasn't a bad player but he was playing abysmaly, why, because he had done nothing wrong and had actually been playing well, roeder dopped him and bought Duff to play his position. Was zoggy suddenly s****? NO he was demorolised something Sam actually changed. The thing is that Martins even when playing "well" (his 11 league goals were still an average record) had obvious deficits. His movement is appalling, he doesn't know when to make runs. He just reacts by instinct. So he isn't making any use of his pace. His decisions are erratic, as is his touch. This is even when he is full of confidence. He has moments of absolute brilliance where he looks like a top player, but they are just flashes and I don't think he will ever be able to constantly make use of his skills. When he wasn't able to learn an understanding of the game during his time at Italy where they are obsessed with tactical teaching, how does anyone real can believe that it will happen here, especially as Martins isn't getting any younger (ok, he probably is).

Keegan had to be either a brilliant coach or a brain surgeon to do this. But he is neither. Anyway, are the people saying that Martins can learn to resolve his obvious deficits by good coaching the same who thought Bramble could overcome his concentration blackouts? The usual I-support-a-17Million£-super-goal-machine-which-is-always-injured-and-a-f******-mercenary comment. Bored with them... Your problem. I am not actually supporting Owen with my comment, but rather questioning where the belief that Martins can improve his game is coming from, because all this leg-humping is really boring me as well. Btw - It's the transfer window, shouldn't you make up fake transfer news for "entertainment"?

Keegan had to be either a brilliant coach or a brain surgeon to do this. But he is neither. Anyway, are the people saying that Martins can learn to resolve his obvious deficits by good coaching the same who thought Bramble could overcome his concentration blackouts?

Dirty c**ts tbh. I've no problems with Spurs though...

I can see the minimum number of posts before you can start topics getting increased to 1,000 now...

He has his shakey moments and is therefore not held in that high regards at Munich and they might happily cash in on him (2nd choice to Lucio and Demichelis and probably now Breno). He was a class act at Hamburg though.

They need to be careful on that front, but I think it's commonly accepted (by the board and the fans) that winning is first and foremost. ... and that Newcastle are not soon to be a team that can expect to win all games, hence a "style" of football where at least those kind of inevitable losses are at least in some kind bearable and not resulting in booing-orgies again.

French football in general is pretty scrappy. He got the best out of Cris, the clown who made Ameobi look like Eto'o when he was at Bayer Leverkusen, so that gives me hope for Cacapa (who was his captain) & Rozehnal. There wasn't anything spectacular about it but he was by no means "negative". Wasn't held in as high regards as his predecessors though, was he? Cris already established himself at Lyon under Le Guen IIRC.

What part of "Hitzfeld is only interested in the Swiss job" do people not understand?

Yep, Ranieri would definitely leave Juventus for Newcastle. Maybe he can flatshare with Mancini...

I very much agree. Appointing a manager is always a risk. There is never a guarantee that it will work out. There are very few managers who imho could walk into every club and be successful. An experieced manager with a good track record can fail whereas even a totally untried newbie (as Keegan for example) can be a huge success. Club and manager just have to fit together. Unfortunately something that wasn't the case with the last three Newcastle appointments. You are right about Klinsmann. Imho he is very much of the same mentality as Keegan and could lift the club with his positive approach to things and his ideas - then again he easily could fail as spectacularly as Gullit (with whom he probably also shares many similarities). I still would give it a try. I can't think of any managers in the lower leagues who have stood out for me in recent years. I always liked Burley who I thought would be up for greater things but seems to have stalled in recent years. People should definitely forget about Hitzfeld. Next he is either going to take the Swiss national job in the summer or going back to work as a pundit. He made it clear that Bayern is very likely to be his last club job. can you tell us a bit more about Klinsmann? what kind of ideas he'd bring, sort of players he likes and so on. surely his part-time approach to the german national team wouldn't bode well for a club job, not least such a 24/7 job like newcastle where you can never escape the 'goldfish bowl'. I'd say from his ideas he is very much like Allardyce (sports science, fitness regimes, analytics etc.- so I think Klinsmann would be happy with the foundations of Fat Sam) just that he has a very positive approach to football. He thinks football should be fun (for players and fans) and that a team should play to score goals and win games. Though, when people are judging him on his achievements with the German national team they easily forget that Klinsmann was not on his own. He knew he could not just walk into a managment job and therefore made sure he got an experienced manager who shared his ideas as his assistant. This was Löw - who then took over. So I guess Klinsmann would try to have a similar (probably English) person next to him in a club job as well.

I very much agree. Appointing a manager is always a risk. There is never a guarantee that it will work out. There are very few managers who imho could walk into every club and be successful. An experieced manager with a good track record can fail whereas even a totally untried newbie (as Keegan for example) can be a huge success. Club and manager just have to fit together. Unfortunately something that wasn't the case with the last three Newcastle appointments. You are right about Klinsmann. Imho he is very much of the same mentality as Keegan and could lift the club with his positive approach to things and his ideas - then again he easily could fail as spectacularly as Gullit (with whom he probably also shares many similarities). I still would give it a try. I can't think of any managers in the lower leagues who have stood out for me in recent years. I always liked Burley who I thought would be up for greater things but seems to have stalled in recent years. People should definitely forget about Hitzfeld. Next he is either going to take the Swiss national job in the summer or going back to work as a pundit. He made it clear that Bayern is very likely to be his last club job.

Didn't he lose his source due to the board changes? I remember him saying that.

I doubt Bremen are the type of club who can hang onto him. They were still able to get him extending his contract in September when Real Madrid were openly sniffing around...

I agree. People who say we lack the quality players to at least be competitive in major tournaments are looking for excuses and wallowing in their own self-pity. Germany were awful a few years back, and they only got to the final in 2002 through the easiest run you could ask for. Paraguay, USA, and S.Korea were all that stood between them and the final in the knockout stages and it papered over the cracks. Two years later in Euro 2004 Germany failed to get out of the group stage or even register a win. As my German friend said, he'd rather they hadn't qualified for Euro 2004 than embarrass themselves. And yet by 2006, in just two short years, Germany were gaining widespread praise for the way they went about their football. Far too much has been said about the individuals, and how we have a deep-rooted problem with football in this country. Bollocks. We've got people talking about the lack of technique, the pace of our game and the size of 10-year old's pitches. The current European champions are Greece for christ sake. In recent history we have only come up a bit short of our potential IMO, we are not the best footballing nation in the world, not even the second or third best, so you have to say that anything beyond the quarter finals of a world cup is an achievement. We got there in 2002 and lost to Brazil, the winners. We reached the quarters of Euro 2004 but lost to the hosts and finalists, Portugal, on penalties. In 1998 we fell just short of the quarters on penalties to Argentina. These are not poor teams. 1994 was an embarrassment as was 2000 and as 2008 will be, but Germany have shown things can be turned around reasonably quickly with the right man at the helm and the desire for change. The talk about deep-rooted problems with football in England are just melodramatics from overzealous journalists, it's easy to spout that sort of crap after a setback. The problem for me lie with tactics and team selection, not the quality of our footballers. Football is a team game and the team hasn't been performing, but it seems a lot of people are having a tantrum and saying none of our players are good enough to compete with the likes of Croatia. 2 good posts, and bobyule's as well. However, the point - that I made anyway - is that if we want to improve from beyond being almost perennial quarter finalists, this is the area where we need to improve. Thats all. And it does start with smaller pitches, less space to work in, and developing the close balls skills, instant control etc etc. The point about Germany is correct, we in England have always been capable of matching the Germans for physical strength, athleticism and organisation - in fact we invariably do - but the Germans have had players over the vast majority of the last 40 years who ally these things with the instant technique, and the confidence in their ability which comes from knowing they are in control of the ball - the point that was made by Meenzer, I think. It can't change overnight. It will take time but I just cannot see it being done by the powers that be. As for being deep rooted, well it need not be, it wouldn't be if the changes were made to attempt to improve !!!! Point to think about. This is now the 3rd time in recent memory England haven't qualified for a major tournament. When is the last time that Germany didn't qualify ? Re: the last question: 1968 (and I had to look it up as it never came to my mind that there probably was a tournament we didn't qualify) But after some awful performances at tournaments I always thought it actually might be for the better if Germany finally fail to qualify. German football was very much stuck in the 80s. I thought the only way to overcome this kind of traditionalism was a real failure. In the end we have to thank Hitzfeld for not taking the job and the German FA therefore going for a progressive solution. Klinsmann was a revelation. He brought in some new ideas, not too few stemming from his time in England actually. And although he got hunted out by the German tabloids int, the FA made sure to stick by his approach.

Hmm, I don't think many people here would say that tactical sense is a strength of German footballers tbh. I'd say that the general consensus would rather be that tactically most players are far behind other countries, especially Italy. The discussion about the need for much more tactical training in Germany crops up every other month tbh. Germany's record hasn't been too good tbh. After 1990 and before 2006 most tournaments were rather embarrassing. 1996 and 2002 were (lucky) exceptions, but not the rule. The thing that German football is (in terms of the national team) is looking brighter at the moment is because of a total change in philosophy after 2004. Klinsmann changed more or less everything in terms of "traditional" German football, from the bottom to the top. On and off the pitch. One major point is playing players to their strengths and only selecting players who fit into the current philosophy of an attacking style of football. So versatility isn't really the point. I don't think there is any difference between German and English players in terms of quality. What English football needs imho is a modernisation at national team level. That kind of modernisation that already took place at club level by foreign influx of managers and players. All you need is the right revolutionary manager who is able to shake things up and gets players performing to their ability.

I think it's far too early to judge most of the acquisitions. E.g. we basically got a (much needed) totally new back four. They are not the first players to need time to adapt to Premierleague football (individual players like Evra, Vidic etc. looked really shit in their first months). On the other hand each of the players has shown glimpses of promise. Other players like Barton are either short of match fitness or of understanding each other. Imho the job in the summer was to build a squad with sufficient depth to deal with this sort of problems unlike in recent years. The squad now has to start to learn to work together. Improving it with the necessary element of quality is what should happen in the next transfer windows though.