tmonkey

Best piece of attacking play by Blackburn so far. Long ball into the box, big players scramble to head the ball, lots of tussling, ping pong continues for 10 seconds, then it's cleared. Trademark Big Sam.

That's not what he said though. Implied it imo - "Mascherano did them a favour by staying on his feet".

Gray is right - Mascherano should have dived. Would be a penalty and a red card.

Phenomenal goal from Torres.

Villa are dominating ManU here. Matter of time before they score a second.

Barry with a touch of class there. Carew really is a best. O'Neill was daft to have dropped him.

Milner to redeem himself?

Villa falling apart. Class.

Milner and Friedel cockup. Free kick to ManU within the penalty box.

God damnit Blackburn equalise. What a scrappy goal too, typical Big Sam team.

Palacios sent off unfairly.

I'd root for Spurs even if we were in the European spots. Would love to see Big Sam get relegated.

Penalty to Spurs!

Fantastic stuff. This really is an insight into the style Shearer prefers, and its great to know that it's the complete opposite of the likes of Souness, who wanted his wide men to be second fullbacks almost.

In some ways, I'm wishing Shearer had taken over after this game. If we lose by three, four, even five goals, that effect he's produced could be gone overnight. On the other hand, if we win, we could easily go on and win 4 or even 5 of the remaining fixtures.

Would love to see Owen in that midfield role again. Even in games where absolutely nothing was happening for us last season, with no creativity being shown by anyone, all it took was a decent ball into the box and there was Owen, ghosting into the box unmarked from his midfield position, in the right place at the right time with only a simple header or volley to put either side of the keeper. Maybe we'll see Xisco in Viduka's role.

I can see Shearer being a bit Souness-like in terms of kicking out any players who dispresct him (or fail to adhere to his tactics religiously), as opposed to man-managing them like e.g. Sir Bobby or Keegan would. Although the same can be said of Sir Alex, the key difference with Ferguson is that he's earnt that respect as a manager. Souness never did, so hopefully Shearer won't be relying on his reputation as a footballer earning him respect throughout his managerial career.

Although there's no way of knowing just how much of an influence Shearer in his Assistant role had on Roeder's caretaker honeymoon period, in 05/06 we did go from 15th with about a dozen games left (i.e. flirting with relegation) to finishing 7th after a remarkeable turnaround under that pairing following Souness' departure. And we know for sure that Roeder was a s*** manager who failed to inspire his players on top of lacking the balls to play an attacking formation after that honeymoon period ended, so one has to wonder if Shearer's influence in that turnaround might have been pretty significant. Who knows? What I would say is that he at least does have some experience of being in a management setup that was tasked with saving Newcastle's Premiership status with a limited number of games remaining. Admittedly the job is tougher now with fewer/harder games, and he's in the direct firing line this time as opposed to being behind the scenes, but overall I'd say he has more relevant experience than plenty of other established/experienced managers out there in the game who've never been in such a dangerous position at a club where pressures tend to be inherently higher than elsewhere, managers most of whom wont know the current squad half as well as Shearer probably does. So on the face of it, Shearer's "lack of experience" isn't quite as bad as it's being made out to be.

Not impossible, could be like Strachan at Coventry, player/manager comes out of retirement and gives the team a kick up the arse, both on and off the field (although iirc, the affect was short lived and they still got relegated).

...he's the perfect person to bring us back up. At the very least, even if he turns out to be worse than Big Sam or Sounses (virtually impossible imo, I reckon we'll be seeing attacking wingplay teams under him as long as he has the players capable of doing that - fuck sake we shouldn't have sold N'Zogbia), at least if he fails then we have a major positive of having him out of our systems, a big shadow over any potential manager removed from his shoulders.

For the first time in months - well done Ashley & Co for finally doing something.

This is absolutely fantastic news. For the first time since he retired, we're in a position where we need to take a gamble on an unexperienced former legendary player, just like when we appointed Keegan on the edge of relegation in 1992.

Confirmed! According to SSN.

If we have to sell our key players, we need Llambias to try his best to sell them to the clubs so that we get a few talented youngsters coming in the other way. Could land the next Bentley, Gillespie, Diarra etc if we're lucky enough.