Cronky

It's a cheek, isn't it. The guy isn't actually any better informed or insightful than the rest of us.

If I were to post 'I'd like Bill Gates to take over at Newcastle', that could provoke the headline 'Bill Gates linked with Newcastle takeover'. 'Linked' covers all eventualities.

I can't imagine that it's Shearer's salary that's the issue. It's pretty clear he wants substantial funds for re-building, or at least guarantees that the cost-cutting won't be too severe, and won't take the job under any other conditions. Ashley was probably fed up of a manager trying to put him over a barrel and decided to get out. It's inevitable that Shearer's stand will be popular, because we all want good players to come / remain at the club. Longer term though, I don't think it's healthy for the manager to use his popularity with the fans to wield this kind of power. We've paid the price for this in the past, with Shearer as a player and Keegan as a manager second time round. I don't really want another 'untouchable'. Shearer is tempting as the unity candidate, but there is a downside to appointing the local hero, the more I think about it. Beating the Geordie patriotic drum can be a distraction and a pressure on the players. Someone has just got Burnley promoted under less favourable conditions, and if Shearer is reluctant to take the job, there are other candidates out there.

same story for Butt really. Souness didn't rate him, Roeder brought him back, Allardyce brough in replacments but then lost his job, Keegan tried to get replacments, but failed, then in came Joe 'fucking best of 1998' Kinnear who rated him as our best midfielder With different managers, opinions are always going to differ about certain players, and Butt is a good example. But if the players get the sense that the manager actually isn't strong enough to back his judgement and pick on merit, then you've got a problem. That really is corrosive to the morale of the manager as well as the team. Or to put it another way, if a manager proves that he has no favourites and isn't afraid to drop anyone, then that gives everyone a lift, because they know they'll be treated fairly. Well, too late now.

I think a big problem over the last two years has been that certain managers haven't had the nerve to drop him, because of his reputation. I don't think Allardyce rated him, but never felt secure enough to dump him and face the inevitable outcry. There was a point with Kinnear, where Owen had recovered from an injury, but Shola and Martins had been doing pretty well together. Kinnear was reluctant to put Owen in, but used the excuse that he lacked match fitness, when in fact I don't think he was convinced he was the best option. He used him as a sub for as long as he dared, before finally picking him for the Chelsea game. I can't help but feel that a little bit of momentum that was building up at that point, got lost.

That programme has a lovely, relaxed format. I've enjoyed watching the programmes on other teams as well. I'd agree that Ginola stole the show. I could have done with more of him. They confirmed what I'd felt for a long time now - that it was our lack of a Plan B that did for us. There are times when you have to shut up shop, but the team wasn't mentally prepared for that. The pain and frustration of failure was still very apparent. You wonder whether that influenced Keegan's decision to quit - like he couldn't bear to go through it again.

What do you think is going to happen if Ashley fails to sell the club again? How is he going to balance the books? Hed have to find at least £50m to avoid administration, and thats assuming attendances hold up. Wheres the money going to come from if it isnt from flogging off our few remaining assets? Given that the guy already seems to be shouldering more than his share of the blame, can we not refrain from blaming him for things that he hasn't actually done yet?

It just seems that Shearer and Ashley were unable to come to an agreement, and that was Ashley's last hope for taking things forward. The idea of then turning to another manager and dealing with the furore that would result was too much to contemplate. The new man would always be Ashley's stooge in the eyes of fans, and particularly when the first team might continue to struggle, the atmosphere would deteriorate. It's a similar set of circumstances that made him decide to bail out before when Keegan went. I just hope that this time it is a quick sale. I'm not sure how attractive a proposition we are, because the club must look ungovernable at the moment.

I assume that there's already some interest around - or at least I hope so. We can't be doing with too much further instability. I can understand the decision, because there's so much ill-feeling surrounding him that the atmosphere is far from ideal for the rebuilding job ahead. It also sounds like he and Shearer haven't reached an agreement and understandably it's hard for him to carry on. I won't condemn the guy. He made mistakes, but Keegan let him down badly. And us.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/may/29/joey-barton-newcastle-united-alan-shearer Who said its up to him? Little cunt can fuck off He dragged his heels a bit when it came to leaving Man City, despite the problems he'd caused there. He feels this need to put himself in the victim role. He ought to be grateful that there's someone else prepared to give him a chance, but he's just too self-centred to see what he's done.

He struggled against Barca, but there again the whole team did. Barca are very good at shutting down space and the Man U midfield struggled. Normally, the great man gets his selections bang on, but in this case I think he should have played Scholes, who can operate in confined spaces very well and who always keeps his nerve. I've seen Rooney play some brilliant games from that wider position, and of course Man U have had a very successful season, so it's hard to criticise. Rooney has less opportunity to hit those long-range shots that were his trademark, but at the same time he gets plenty of the ball out wide. The danger of moving someone out wide is that they become more peripheral, but that doesn't seem to happen with Rooney.

Not a clue, really. Sometimes I think the time it's taking is a bad sign, sometimes a good sign. It should be simple. You appoint a manager, give him what he wants that the club can afford and you let him run it the way he wants to run it. You give him total control over the playing, coaching and medical side of things, who goes and who comes in. That's why you appoint a manager imo. These things shouldn't even be up for discussion. I agree with this from Mowen... In practice, it can't work like that. The manager and the owner / chief exec have to be working together, because which player comes in and out is determined by financial considerations as well as football ones. In the days when salaries were relatively small compared to transfer fees, it was a bit easier to say to a manager that there's x amount in the transfer budget, but it's not so simple now, particularly in a situation where the salary budget has to be slashed. A manager can make his views known, but 'total control' is a myth. We're in a situation now where, more than ever, it's important that the manager and the owner have a good working relationship. With Keegan, we've seen the cost of the opposite scenario. Now I know that many people will take the view that the bad relationship was all Ashley / Wise / Llambias's fault. Ashley may have made mistakes, but to lay all the blame on him is to be blind to Keegan's faults and the agenda that he was bringing to the table. I'd like to see Shearer given the job (assuming he really does want it), and I'd like to see him given money to spend. But this has got to be a long-term arrangement which all parties are genuinely happy with, otherwise it'll unravel very quickly.

I am sure there are a lot of legal implications to draft as AS would want watertight guarantees. If these guarantees are about money to spend on transfers and / or how many top earners have to be axed, I can't see what Ashley can do at this point. It's all going to depend on who is wanted by other clubs, who is available, what salaries they want, and what transfer fees they attract or demand. If there's cost cutting to be done, I don't see how Ashley at this stage can say yes, players a, b and c can definitely stay, and you'll have x amount of money to spend. It boils down to trust, and if Shearer doesn't trust Ashley, then they can't work together and he should go. It worries me that we're going down the Keegan road again, with a patched-up agreement which each one will interpret in their own way. It also worries me that so many seem to be falling into the syndrome that Matthew Syed was talking about in that article (not that I agree with absolutely everything he said) ie an unquestioning loyalty to the local hero and demonising anyone who doesn't meet their demands. I'd like Shearer to have the job, but not at any price. At the end of the day, it's the owner / board who is responsible for the financial side.

Geordies need tough love not another hero Matthew Syed (The Times) "Newcastle United needs to be filled with people who love this club”, Alan Shearer said on Sunday and in that one, endlessly banal, hopelessly misguided sentence the latest would-be Messiah laid his finger on everything that has gone wrong with Newcastle’s football club and why it would be madness for Mike Ashley to appoint the former centre forward as full-time manager. This is a club that have had far too much love: the love of the fans, the love of their various managers, the love of other supporters who, until now, have been happy to rally behind Newcastle as their second team. This is a club that have basked in an orgy of self-infatuation, living on myths, dreams, brown ale and anything else that could numb the senses to the catastrophe that has been ticking like a time-bomb all season. And now they want to turn to a man who has an excess of love but who has no qualifications to lead the club out of the mire into which they have jumped, feet first, except an ironed shirt and an occasional turn of phrase. A man who ticks no boxes whatsoever except possession of a Geordie accent and a legendary status on Gallowgate that is so patently irrelevant to the club’s present predicament as to be almost laughable. This club do not need love; they need to be stripped clean of all sentimentality. They need a man who feels nothing but contempt for the position Newcastle now find themselves in and who is prepared to ignore the mass of fans and their hare-brained schemes. They need a man who can state the truths the supporters do not want to hear; who can perform reconstructive surgery on a team that have lost all semblance of unity and coherence; a man who is hard-headed, hard-nosed and has spent hardly any time on Tyneside and is thus untainted by the delirium. They need a man with a proven track record of management; a man who can finesse an understandably panicky owner; above all they need a man with the deep and long experience capable of persuading the good players to stay (and, let’s be honest, there are not many of those), who can get rid of the dross without the whole thing descending into a fire sale, and who can go into an infinitely complex global marketplace, identify a new crop of talented youngsters and persuade them that Newcastle are not a busted flush, but a club that can ride high once again. And the new manager needs to do this with a close eye on the rapidly deteriorating finances, a deep awareness of the long-term contractual implications of his manoeuvrings in the transfer market and with a nose for how his string of new signings will cope with the unique demands of the Coca-Cola Championship, a league that is different in style, pace, philosophy and tempo from the Barclays Premier League. Shearer, it hardly needs stating, is qualified for none of these tasks and it is symptomatic of the delusional contagion in the North East that so many supporters think he is. Perhaps the most darkly comic aspect of Shearer’s initial appointment was how often we heard the phrase “the mood on Tyneside has been transformed”, as if the fans might be able to emote an awful team out of the relegation zone; as if the level of intoxication inspired by the great man’s appointment was a good thing rather than a distraction from what was, even then, a formidable challenge; as if sentiment has any bearing on success and failure when a team are plummeting towards calamity like a man in a concrete overcoat. I sat in that opening press conference, heard Shearer’s repeated protestations of devotion to “the football club” (as if we doubted that), watched the fans outside taking off their shoes in an apparent show of fealty to their new saviour, and then got the train home wondering if this tedious soap opera will ever end. First Kevin Keegan, then Shearer; give it a couple of seasons of failure in the Championship and they will doubtless turn to the ghost of Jackie Milburn for managerial redemption amid yet more scenes of jubilation outside St James’ Park, yet more dreams of a return to the glory days, yet more whimsy and surrealism. For the record, Shearer’s tenure has been a failure in almost every possible way, bar his ability to deflect criticism from his own inadequacies during post-match press conferences. He managed a derisory one win in eight games, executed tactical shifts and machinations that made Claudio Ranieri, the Tinkerman, seem like a rock of stability, but, most damningly of all, the St James’ Park hero failed even to inspire the passion and resolve in the players in what was the whole point of the exercise. In retrospect, Newcastle needed only a point from their last two games to retain Premier League status, but failed to manage even that; their meek, passive, antiheroic surrender in the final quarter of an hour away to Aston Villa symptomatic of a club that had expended all their reserves of emotional energy on irrelevant happenings off the pitch; a club that have, in truth, spent so long navel-gazing that they no longer had the wit or the wish to look to the fights — the real fights on the pitch — that needed so dearly to be won. As Alan Hansen said on Match of the Day (which is where Shearer should have stayed, firmly on the couch) on Sunday: “Even then, in the last ten to 15 minutes there was nothing, absolutely nothing. You know their life depends upon this and yet we spent 15 to 20 minutes waiting for some sort of effort [which never came].” Some will point to Keegan, who as a virginal manager brought Newcastle back into the top flight 16 years ago. They will dare to believe that this sets some kind of precedent. That inexperience can be some sort of blessing in club management. But what about Sir Bobby Charlton, who took Preston North End down from the old second division in his first season in charge? What about the dozens of other precedents that show that experience matters in football management just as it does in every other area of life? The reality is that, lumbered with Shearer, things are likely to get a lot worse for Newcastle, a club that face a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reinvent themselves from top to bottom. But has Ashley got the balls to ditch him, to make a decision based on the kind of hard corporate logic that has served him so well in amassing a fortune in the sports goods market? Would the fans even let him? And with that last, rhetorical question we hit the bull’s-eye of Newcastle’s travails. Until the club have an owner who can ignore the myopic short-termism of the nation’s most capricious fans, there will be no bounce for Newcastle United. I am not saying that all supporters are burdened by overinflated expectations, but can it be seriously denied that Newcastle are weighed down by a critical mass of unrealism? That this is the underlying reason for the lack of a single major trophy in 40 years? Shearer’s appointment would symbolise everything that is wrong at St James’ Park, past and present. Expect him to be unveiled by the end of the week. Matthew Syed It's over the top, but I've often had the feeling that too many decisions over the last few years have been driven by sentiment, and not by hard-nosed professionalism. Time will tell, but I don't think he's right about Shearer, who I'm banking on being more Bobby Robson than Kevin Keegan. I think Shearer made a mistake when he beat the Geordie patriotic drum before the Portsmouth game, but he seems to have a shrewd, calculating mind that can deal with difficult decisions. I'd feel happier if Dowie, with his experience and knowledge of the Championship, stayed with him.

The mention of the word 'consortium' suggests a bunch of opportunists who don't have much financial backing, hoping to get the club on the cheap. Not tempting.

That doesn't completely surprise me, but I don't know why Ashley and Mort didn't consult Sir John Hall before appointing Keegan. SJH has a lot of experience that they could have usefully drawn on. They seemed to buy into the legend of Kevin Keegan rather than the reality.

He's not the only one who should be apologising. He's trying to draw a line under the past and move forward, which is a good thing to do, but it all sounds a bit grovelly. I hope he's pretty close to getting an agreement with Shearer, because otherwise his last sentence is really going to backfire on him.

I agree very much on both players. I'd still take a punt on Campbell. We badly need leadership at the back.

I can't say I've been all that impressed, and we'll be okay for centre forwards. I'd like to see us going for a striker who could play in a more withdrawn role.

I've been very impressed with what I've seen of Fabian Delph at Leeds. He'll probably go to a Premiership club though.

Interesting set of comments from SJH. I don't agree with it 100%, but he's always struck me as one shrewd cookie and he's talking far more sense than most - FORMER Newcastle owner Sir John Hall spoke yesterday of his horror at the club's relegation to the Championship. And his disbelief at the collapse of standards at St James' Park - both on the pitch and off. "The table doesn't lie," said the local property developer who built Newcastle into a footballing power in the mid-90s. He added: "It's been desperately poor all season - and the worst thing was they didn't even appear to try on Sunday. "I'm not going to pull any punches. This current side is rubbish. Useless. "There has to be a clean sweep and the club has to be rebuilt from top to bottom. "I'm as baffled as anyone with the signings of players like Joey Barton. "Then, again, Sam Allardyce said he could put him right. "As for Michael Owen, he's had too many injuries and has never seemed to be on the ball. "Now we are saddled with a huge wage bill. The lesson here is obvious: You can't take on yesterday's men and hope to survive. That's for a club that has no ambition." Ashington-born and from an old mining family, Hall saw Newcastle challenge Manchester United during the glory years of Kevin Keegan's first spell at the club. But the dream faded and Hall sold his 41 per cent stake to Mike Ashley for £55million two years ago. Now 76, he says the only way forward is to maintain faith in Alan Shearer, despite the stand-in boss winning just one game in eight. Hall said: "Shearer must stay. Sure, he doesn't have the experience but then neither did Keegan the first time round. But, like Keegan, the fans have faith in him. "He is a dedicated professional, the club is in his blood and he is the rallying point for all the supporters. "But he has to have time and money. The question is: How much money is still there? "If I was Shearer, I would want to see it on the table." Though Hall says he has no regrets about selling to Ashley, he admits the current owner was badly advised. Hall said: "He has been let down by his own inexperience and the inexperience of others. "There were also a series of extremely poor appointments stemming from the fact Mike inherited Sam Allardyce. "And, no, I don't blame him for getting rid of Allardyce because the football was the worst we had ever seen. "Then he listened to the fans and brought Keegan back. And that was a mistake. "You can never re-tread footsteps in business. Life and circumstances change, the world and the game moves on. You have to have fresh blood. "One mistake led to another with Dennis Wise and Joe Kinnear coming on board. Two terrible appointments. Wise was trying to do the job from London and that was ridiculous. "You have to be up here, getting to know the people and their feelings for the club. "There was obviously bad blood between Keegan and Wise which I'm told went back to their England days. It was like a red rag to a bull. "As for Kinnear, you have to have people who are active in the game. "Now it's all gone wrong and Mike has to decide whether to stay or sell up - and, believe me, there are always people around who want to buy clubs like Newcastle. "If he stays he has to inject new funds. Not once but twice. "First, to build a new team to fight their way out of the Championship, then to stay up. "I know from my experience with Kevin that you have to have real battlers to get back into the Premier League. "On top of that, it's obvious they are going to struggle to attract the top quality players. "But I don't go along with the feeling Newcastle could become another Leeds or Nottingham Forest and end up in League One. "We're too strong for that. Yes, there's a huge wage bill and that has to be trimmed. And there must be no uncertainty in the close season. The club has to get on with it." And what of his own role in the demise of a club that, with average gates of 48,000, was the third best-supported in the Premier League? Hall said: "Yes, I sold the club to Mike, and, to many, it might appear to have been the wrong move. But it seemed the right thing to do. "He was the answer to people like Roman Abramovich. "I didn't go down this road lightly. But what were the alternatives?"

Viduka, Owen and Martins will be off, so there should be opportunities for Ranger. He has the raw athletic qualities of strength and speed, so it's really just a matter of how quickly he acquires the know-how that a striker needs. It's what's between his ears that will decide where he ends up, because I reckon his potential is international class. Lua Lua would probably have been given more chances already, but I don't think successive managers have wanted to risk throwing him into a struggling side. I hope he's used a lot more. The other promising youngster who I think is a bit further behind in the queue is Tavernier.

i have to say i'm reading this more and more and i hate it (not aimed at you personally). why on earth are we as a set of football fans not able to give time to a manager unless we have some previous affinity with them? we're constantly trying to refute claims that our fans have un-realistic expectations and yet at the same time it almost seems to be accepted now that as fans we wont give a manager time unless we've had their name on the back of our shirt at some point. what the fuck's wrong with us? This is something that's bothered me for a while now, though I think it only really relates to two figures - Keegan and Shearer. There may be a tendency for a club that's big on support but short on success to focus on particular heroes, but in recent years, and with those two, it's become a bit of a problem. Shearer the player was given a special status at the club, and was able to carry on for two seasons too long as a first team regular. Our decline as a team set in from that period, and prospective managers were reluctant to join us with that issue in the background. That's not Shearer's fault - every player wants to play - but it did us more harm than good long-term. Keegan seemed to have lost his passion for the game, and had left his two previous jobs under a cloud. If it wasn't for his name, he wouldn't have been considered second time round, and his behaviour in quitting would have come in for far more criticism. It's a dangerous situation when someone becomes bigger than the club. Shearer shows promise as a manager, but if he decides against taking up the job permanently, I hope (no doubt forlornly) that people don't instantly start blaming Ashley for not offering him everything he wanted. His motivation to become a manager has always been a bit uncertain, and he didn't actually get any better results than Kinnear. Let's appreciate him for the qualities he shows, but not put him on a pedestal.

A big thank you to all those fans who showed defiant support for the club yesterday. They gave the right message. The cameras were looking for crying Geordies and they only managed to find one. I know we deserve to go down, but I find it hard to get over the fact that if we'd scored just one goal in our last two matches we'd have stayed up. Not difficult even for a bad side when it's Fulham at home, and an away game against a team whose season is over. And we failed to do it.

Shearer looked thoroughly dispirited in that interview and it's the first time I've seen him in that state. That may be down to his emotional attachment to the club, but I don't take quite as much comfort from that as others on this forum. After all, it's a manager we're looking for, not a fan. I felt it was significant that he said that he needed to think about whether he was 'the right man' to take on what would be a mammoth task. I thought at first he may be just playing his cards close to his chest as a bargaining tool to get more resources from Ashley, but I now think there's a serious issue in there for him. He's always been reluctant to move into management, and has turned down opportunities in the past. It's a very demanding role which makes inroads into a man's personal life, and I don't know if that's for him. It won't be a matter of going to Ashley, and getting a promise of so many millions to spend to get the club straight back up. Apart from anything else, the budget will depend on unknowns like how many of the old players can be offloaded, and at what price, and how ready the younger ones are to step up. It's more likely to be a long-term job which will be quite unrewarding in the early stages, and the first task will be to try and stop the downward slide. Shearer took on the job hoping to engineer a rescue mission and he's failed. Management isn't all about glory - you have to remain motivated through the bad times and the only way of doing that is to have a love for the job, or at least a compulsion to do it, no matter what. I think he's wondering himself whether he's got that kind of motivation. This is a man who's never really failed in his professional life before. What we've seen recently with Keegan is that local sentiment isn't the right reason for giving a man the job, and certainly isn't the right reason for a man to take it. I'd be happy to see Shearer re-appointed if he feels he wants it, but if he's reluctant we'd all be better off if he stepped aside. It may not be a bad idea to get a completely new face in to take fresh look at things. Whatshisname from Swansea might fancy it. Martinez.