Obi, I admire you defence of Souness, though I don't relish your task of convincing anybody that your position is legitimate.
I was practically the only person on HTT's original forum defending Bobby Robson when the majority of posters wanted his head on a spike during his last full season in charge and beyond.
You are right, the position of manager should not be decided by those that shout the loudest.
However, Souness' appointment was the wrong one. He took a team that had finished top 4th, 3rd, 5th (the only time that Newcastle have been consistently in the top 5 in 50 years!) to their worst season in the premiership EVER !
He then spent around the same amount of money in 9 months as the last manager spent in 5 years.
Referees, Injuries, the training ground, all excuses - the last manager had to cope with all those and more - he had no support from his Chairman. Have referees suddenly got worse since Souness took over, and in terms of injuries, do you recall the club trying to bring in loaned out players for the UEFA (Caldwell came back from Leeds, Lua Lua refused to come back etc) under the last manager ?
You mention troublesome and stroppy players - well the last manager seemed to still get the best out of them. The only one who wounded the last manager was Dyer and if you recall, the SBR tried to keep the spat inhouse.
So, instead of Dyer gettingf the boot< under Souness, he gets a much improved contract for doing little to nothing to help our cause. No wonder Olivier Bernard, evert present in the Newcastle team was pissed off that there was nothing extra in the budget for him. Never mind, we have another sicknote, Babayaro to replace him on more than dfouble what he was being paid. Good management ?
Squandering our assets - is Bellamy really only worth 3m? Robert nothing? Hughes 1.5m ?
To close, Souness doesn't have the required intelligence or interpersonal skills to do what is required in top level football management.
Compare him to someone like Gus Hiddink who I hoped would replace Robson (though I never wanted Robson to leave). He took PSV to the final stages of the Champions League last season despite the board selling all his best players prior to his arrival, and this year he is doing great things with PSV in the League and in Europe, oh, and he has taken a part time job, manager of Australia and has got them qualified for the world cup.
We need to look to someone of that stature as our next manager, sooner rather than later, because the brave thing to do is make a change now, so the new manager can assess what is required prior to the transfer window opening.
You say that Souness has brought good players to the club. If thats so, then isn't our League position all that more disappointing ?
There are 5 points between us and Everton and Everton were in a relegation position last week. Time has run out......
Holy sh*t Bats, I thought you were dead! Good to see you and glad to see the posts are still up to the usual standard! bluebiggrin.gif
