Cronky

It sounds like the Board wanted to sell Owen. Keegan vetoed the idea. It's only a problem if the Board had ignored him and flogged the player anyway, unless you're saying that they had no right to make the suggestion in the first place. He's a player in the final year of his contract, who has refused to sign a new, improved one. Most clubs would sell in that situation. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/n/newcastle_united/7593683.stm Going by reports the idea of selling Owen wasn't even suggested to him mate. He discovered this after the fact, the opportunity to refuse or rebuff the idea reportedly wasn't put to him. Given that Keegan vetoed a couple of the transfer deals - which the board firmly had in the pipeline - on the final day of the Jan transfer window it's easy to see the board going over his head this time. I still don't know where you've got the idea that Keegan wasn't able to veto the proposed sale of Owen. After all, in the end, Owen wasn't sold. Where are these 'reports'? IMO, this is just a simple matter of Keegan wanting to spend more money than the club were prepared to allow him. That was what was behind the walk outs during his first spell at the club. That was what was behind the problems he had with the Board at Man City. That was what was behind his outburst earlier this year after the Chelsea game. The rest is flannel.

It sounds like the Board wanted to sell Owen. Keegan vetoed the idea. It's only a problem if the Board had ignored him and flogged the player anyway, unless you're saying that they had no right to make the suggestion in the first place. He's a player in the final year of his contract, who has refused to sign a new, improved one. Most clubs would sell in that situation.

Let's bear in mind that Milner asked for pay rise one year into his contract, and then put in a written transfer request when that was (rightly) refused. If you then get a £12 million bid for the player (and I don't think I've heard anyone say that wasn't a good price) you'd have to be stupid not to accept it. I can't see that the Board are in any way at fault there.

Hummm..... It would be interesting to know who exactly Keegan was thinking about when he said that players were being bought who he didn't want. He seemed genuinely pleased with the others, so that only leaves Fernandez, a one year loan signing. Hardly a resignation issue. It could be about Keegan wanting to buy another player, and the Board refusing. Or only agreeing if another player (Smith, Barton, Owen?) was taken off the wage bill. Pure speculation, but that's all we're left with here.

Owen's position will be the same as it's been for the last three years. If a bigger club comes in for him, he'll be off like a shot. If not, he'll stay.

This may be speculation rather than inside knowledge. Keegan's previous success was based on big money signings rather than bringing through young players. Someone who's not watched a game in three years isn't going to know much about the emerging talent abroad.

We should also bear in mind that Keegan has never won a major trophy in his entire managerial career. The idea that he's a great manager is only a matter of opinion. Incidentally, can anyone tell me why the thread about which player Keegan resigned over, has been deleted? Politely, please.

I totally agree. The guy is a human being with faults, not some kind of god. It's interesting that a lot of people were saying that things were going well, and then all because KK doesn't like it, Ashley and his cronies are incompetents and crooks etc.

Got to be someone who's prepared to work with the current set-up, which I think has been pretty successful in bringing in players. Poyet and Wise have a good working relationship, so I wouldn't mind Poyet.

That only worked in the days when wages and contract terms were fairly uniform within a club, and didn't form such a huge part of the budget. It's a specialist job now.

Personally I don't think there's any comparison between Keegan and Souness. And aren't the problems you describe the same problems faced by all bar a handful of fashionable clubs? Incidentally I quite like the idea of the current set-up, but it has to work on all sides. If Keegan has the final say on who goes and comes, because he has to pick and prepare the team, would that be so bad? And if you don't trust the manager's judgement on players, maybe you should have picked a different manager? The comparison with Souness is only in regards to the stance both managers have taken. Souness wanted his own players and in the end Shepherd reluctantly caved in, and it cost us millions. Obviously Keegan is a lot better judge of a player, but the bottom line is if it goes wrong, Keegan won't be picking up the bill. Should he then be in a position to dictate incomings and outgoings? Turning down offers for Smith, £12m for Milner and handing Owen a massive contract....while these moves might make him popular in the dressing room, I'm not sure it's healthy from a financial perspective. I don't think any system is foolproof aginst bad signings tbh. You can just as easily say the same about Wise & co, what credentials do they have to dictate transfers? Wise especially. And the bottom line is, if it goes wrong on the pitch, they won't get the sack, Keegan will. If you're worried about a Souness type situation, don't give him 50m to spunk on players willy-nilly. As I said, I quite like the set-up. Wise & co scout, find players, make recommendations etc, all this seems sensible. Keegan has the final say on purchases and sales. That also seems sensible imo, as it's his team and he'll get the sack if they don't perform. I honestly believe Smith would be out as quick as flash if the squad was adequate, but it's not. I can also understand why he wanted to keep Milner, Barton and in particular Owen. We only got 2 players in at the end of the day. If you want a new style coach, you don't appoint an old style manager like Keegan imo. They have failed to properly man manage and communicate with Keegan and he must have felt he wasn't properly engaged in the only job he has ever been interested in. ...apart from Fulham, Man City and England, of course.

I think most reasonable people think theres a place for teamwork - Scolari when asked about Robhino on Sunday said he didn't have a clue which is fine. Identification is also fine. I think its the idea of players bought unseen or put up for sale without approval that most people see as a step too far. Well, Keegan seemed to approve of the purchases of Guthrie, Jonas, Coloccini etc. I can't see that there's any reason to believe that he didn't approve of Xisco, whose transfer was being negotiated over a long period of time by all accounts. As for outgoing players, it seems that Keegan was able to veto the sales of Barton and Smith. He seemed to agree to Milner's sale, on the understanding that the money would be invested elsewhere. It boils down to why the money wasn't used, and that might not be in Wise's control. The selling clubs might then start bumping up the price.

I think theres a difference between having a good existing team and being able to that and being a club needing to boost itself. As I've said elsewhere I think the aims of the structure is laudable in the long term but I don't see the harm in having a one-off spree to get us going. I honestly don't think that Ashley would have been against shelling out for a really good player, but those players want to go to Champions League clubs or at least clubs who are in Europe. You can try to compensate by paying huge wages, but that gives you problems as well. Ashley is right and Keegan is wrong on this. Unless you've got Abramovich-style millions, you have to build slowly.

Is minimal net spend realistic for a club looking to improve? I think we have improved. Don't you? Possibly - we'll see - but at the moment I can see us maybe finishing around tenth. I do think a reasonable splurge (nothing daft) could have made a challenge for 6th possible. General point here - Wenger has proved that it's not necessarily about how much money you spend - it's what you know, and how good you are at identifying the up and coming players. Ashley has assembled a team that I think are good at that. Keegan seems all out to fuck it up.

Is minimal net spend realistic for a club looking to improve? I think we have improved. Don't you?

Keegan is doing what he feels is right for the future of NUFC, and that is to stand up to some shop owner with no footballing experience who recruits a casino MD as the head of the company and an inexperienced second rate manager as Director of Football. If Keegan walks then he will be walking for the right reasons for NUFC as an entity going forward, irrespective of what idiot is the owner. He wants success long term for NUFC and is prepared to fall on his sword if it ultimately means that the mess which is the board is removed. My point was that Keegan and Ashley can no longer work together with any credibility. Are you disagreeing with that? No I agree that their working together is only possible if Ashley gets rid of Wise and the MD but even then it will be fraught. However I diagree with your perception of Keegan making the club "look like a shambles". As I said, he's doing it for the correct long term reasons and that is to remove the farcical empire that Ashley has built around himself. OK? Well, yeah, I can see that Keegan wants to reproduce the situation that he had with Sir John Hall - direct access to an owner who he could pressure so that he can outspend the opposition on the best available players. In today's Premiership, and in the situation NUFC are in, is that realistic? Does Alex Ferguson go to a Director of Football as a go-between between him and the American owners? No. Directors of Footballs and go-betweens have never worked in the English game to date... Ashley is out of his depth and needs to wake up to someone who is seasoned and mature in the game, i.e. his current manager. Not sure how Man U work, but Ferguson has a passion for the game that Keegan can't match. I don't think anyone can not watch a game of football for over two years and then expect to manage a Premiership club without a lot of help with player identification and recruitment.

Robbie Keane I should have added - and who isn't in the Champions League.

Keegan is doing what he feels is right for the future of NUFC, and that is to stand up to some shop owner with no footballing experience who recruits a casino MD as the head of the company and an inexperienced second rate manager as Director of Football. If Keegan walks then he will be walking for the right reasons for NUFC as an entity going forward, irrespective of what idiot is the owner. He wants success long term for NUFC and is prepared to fall on his sword if it ultimately means that the mess which is the board is removed. My point was that Keegan and Ashley can no longer work together with any credibility. Are you disagreeing with that? No I agree that their working together is only possible if Ashley gets rid of Wise and the MD but even then it will be fraught. However I diagree with your perception of Keegan making the club "look like a shambles". As I said, he's doing it for the correct long term reasons and that is to remove the farcical empire that Ashley has built around himself. OK? Well, yeah, I can see that Keegan wants to reproduce the situation that he had with Sir John Hall - direct access to an owner who he could pressure so that he can outspend the opposition on the best available players. In today's Premiership, and in the situation NUFC are in, is that realistic?

Keegan is doing what he feels is right for the future of NUFC, and that is to stand up to some shop owner with no footballing experience who recruits a casino MD as the head of the company and an inexperienced second rate manager as Director of Football. If Keegan walks then he will be walking for the right reasons for NUFC as an entity going forward, irrespective of what idiot is the owner. He wants success long term for NUFC and is prepared to fall on his sword if it ultimately means that the mess which is the board is removed. My point was that Keegan and Ashley can no longer work together with any credibility. Are you disagreeing with that?

Keegan has to go. Ultimately, Ashley might have to sell up and go as well, because there will be so much hostility towards him. But if anyone thinks that normal service can resume after this fiasco, then they're kidding themselves. What decent player, who has other options, is going to join a club where there's clear tension between owner and manager and any second the manager might storm off. Such a public airing of dirty linen is making the club look like a shambles, and Keegan is to blame. He either had to sort it out privately, or quit. He probably thinks it's clever to manipulate the owner by getting the fans on his side like this, and a lot of people seem to agree. But what he's actually doing is making the place look like a ship without a rudder.

You're correct. Keegan took over from Ray Wilkins after a dispute.

I keep coming across posts which state that the Manager should have 'full control' over transfers, but in practice no manager is in that position. He has to work with the people who hold the purse strings, and inevitably some players are going to be sold and others are not going to arrive when the manager would prefer something different. That's life. The only boundary that I think should not be crossed is players arriving who the manager explicitly says he doesn't want. But has that happened here? Does anyone seriously think that Keegan said he didn't want Xisco and Wise still went right ahead?

The more I think about it, the more I think that Keegan was simply spoiling for a fight so that he could get out with a nice lump of compensation. Take a look at the players where there was a supposed dispute - Milner - player asks for a pay rise one year into his contract. Board refuses, player asks for a transfer in writing. Board get an offer of £12 million, which I think most people would agree is generous. Perfectly sensible to sell. Owen - player on an inflated salary is in the final year of his contract and refuses to sign another one. You can't be held to ransom like that, so it's reasonable to say - sign or go. Barton - A tricky one, but most fans would actually agree with Ashley rather than Keegan - he's now damaged goods and needs to start somewhere else. Smith - he doesn't deserve the criticism that he gets, but again he's not a player that you should be making a stand about keeping surely. Modric - Mort publicly stated that we actually bid more than Spurs in transfer fee and wages. What more can you do when the player doesn't want to come? The new system as a whole has brought in some good players and the team has improved. What's the problem? And I don't believe for a second that Keegan wasn't aware of how things were going to work when he first signed up. In short, I can't think of an area where I'd say Ashley and co were clearly in the wrong in their judgement. If the manager is getting into arguments with them, you have to wonder whether he's deliberately putting himself in the firing line.

i'm not going to call for anyone's sack based on the info we currently have, but i dont like llambas. not saying we should sack him, but i dont like him as much as liked mort. Whether it was his idea or not Mort tried to LEARN about NUFC, the fans (meeting with many different groups, fanzines, etc) the players, the existing set-up, the community leaders etc. After a few months he actually knew what the lay of the land was - Llambias has come in to run NUFC like a business and has not put the effort or shown the knowledge of Mort, probably because Mort already did it so why repeat the experience (they thought). Seems like a mistake - might be Ashley's? Could it have helped avoid the fuss? Who knows, but I doubt Llambias and Ashley expected things to end up the way they did Tuesday and now the consequences are hitting them. I think when Mort came in most of us were skeptical (posh sooothen barrister tw@t) - I would have never guessed we'd be missing him. Convenient though it might be to think that's it's down to Llambias, there were signs of tension during Mort's watch as well. Keegan was supposed to be annoyed at what he saw as the feeble attempt to sign Modric, and that led to Mort putting the Board's case to the fans via the programme. Then we had the outburst after the Chelsea game. Basically, Keegan wants to work in the way that he worked before with the Halls, where he has direct access to the owner with the purse strings and can pressure them into forking out for the players that he wants. That's an attitude that's bound to be popular with many fans, because that's all they want the owner to do - pay up. Trouble is, you can't run a business like that. Even under the Halls, there came a day when the purse strings had to be tightened, and that's when Keegan upped and left.

I'd agree. Ashley was faced with a difficult decision after getting rid of Allardyce, because the fans were unlikely to take to a little known manager, and the pressure might have been too much. Keegan was the acceptable candidate, even though he didn't have the reputation of being a team player at all. As Kaka said, it's turned out to be the wrong call.