afar

Just smells so much of when Hughton got the job, in the end that appointment worked out. Hughton though is twice the caliber of candidate that Carver is. I wish I could just forget this football club, I really do.

The Hull game is the turning point, win it and be hugely surprised if we go down despite Carver. Lose it and we are in for a long hard fight as most of us predict. A draw helps us more than Hull. I'm at 6 right now, will go up to 7 with a defeat and down to 4 with a win.

If this is true, I really despair, and will try to rid myself of my NUFC addiction, somehow. Carver till the end of the season, then McLaren to take over, wow what great times we live in. They just keep sucking the life out of the club.

There has to be an announcement that someone else is signed up to take over in the summer, at any normal club you would think that at least, but this is not a normal club. Soul destroying news this and a huge gamble by the club, I don't think they really know, how bad Carver can be.

For our most successful period as a football club (the edwardian era), we actually didn't have a manager, we had a selection committee. So perhaps you are onto something here

Couldn't agree more. It's so difficult to avoid being a cynic in this situation and think the delay is so they can say they tried but failed to get the right man and will wait until the summer. Think of all the money we're saving in paying a manager, they'll have given Carver a little bit extra for "acting up" but it will still be nowhere near what a proper manager would cost. It's f***ing genius this, think of those balance sheets

As the Echo are usually a Boro-Mackem cheer-sheet, this is an excellent article from them, and hits the nail on the head like a fairground mallet ; a better analogy to the Ashley regime I could never have imagined...the trouble is that the mass of fans CURRENTLY packing SJP are as brain-washed as many of Kim Jong-Un's regime, if not more so. Yes this is a great piece. I mentioned this rigidity to a sound process in my comments on the article when it came out.

I wish, I barely remember my 20's now

Harsh but fair. Woody had way more natural talent than both Rio and Terry, yet played a fraction of the games those two did for the country. Injuries and a lack of application were the reasons why.

When I was a kid I wanted a BBC micro for Christmas and instead got an Acorn Electron. Haven't really ever recovered from that. I had to play Elite in monochrome ffs. I don't want to be that guy again. Just appoint Garde! My parents obviously loved me more because I got a BBC Micro Model B one christmas, I remember playing Elite and also the first ever Football Manager game, awesome

He's still the best CB I've seen in our colours. Just a shame he's deteriorated so much. Albert was better by a mile. I love Albert but as a defender that statement is way off.

Waiting to the summer for any manager is only excusable if he's signed a pre-contract agreement.

The national team was Scotland though ;P I was too young to remember him. But we've had some good defenders in the past if you go way back like Frank Brennan and even further to Billy McCracken and Colin Veitch, I think the FA had to change the offside rule because of those two, lol

Totally agree Woodgate was better but it would have made a great partnership Woodgate over a shorter period of time was the best I've seen. We just didn't see enough of him in our colours.

I wouldn't be surprised if we are still in limbo going into the close of the next transfer window.

Decent, safe, won't rock the boat and comparitively cheap aye. And doesn't single a new direction or reignite hope in an apathetic fanbase. This would be a bad move imo, hope they are wrong, but isn't news international their got to place for getting stuff out ?

I think this is part of the plan. Clearly from the statement he made at the start of the season, he plans to sell the club in 2016, otherwise why put a date on it. So he wants to show a couple of years healthy books to increase the club's value.

Any summer recruitment needs to be pre signed now. Huge risk in waiting till the summer without any assurances.

Great post Unbelievable. One thing Charnley talked about yesterday is the need to work together and for the head coach to identify his needs to Carr to source the player and Charnley to negotiate and finalise the signing. So the process should work like this, HC says I need a CB with good height, technically sound and has a bit of pace, Carr identifies a number of candidates, with approximate costs, the three of them get together and draw up a priority list based on available budget, best fit for the club and likely price. Then charnley goes to work on getting the player in starting from the top of the priority list. As you say they've been guilty way too many times in the past of getting that priority list wrong, with a focus way too much on price rather than ability and/or trying to get the player for under the likely selling price. They need to learn from those mistakes.

If it is, as was implied in yesterday's chronicle story that we are waiting till the end of the season, then De Boer or Galtier for me please. Of course theyare not going to come if we are in the championship which we will be if Carver is left in charge for the rest of the season.

You've summed this up way better than I have managed, agree here. I'm coming from basically the same place.

I suggest you direct your attention to this section: Outright lies. Enormous stretching of the imagination. Charnley says he doesn't want a yes man, but that the right person will be one who says "yes" to the Ashley doctrine, who says "yes" to his proscribed media role and who says "yes" to Carr's signings. You could argue that it's all true in manager-speak, but history says that the upper echelons will say whatever it takes to appease the fans and that they have admitted openly that public statements are no more than PR exercises. Being a Newastle United fan these days requires critical literacy and a sound understanding of the language of persuasion. I'm not sure. he says he wants someone to buy into their philosophy and show a united front not question the club policy in public.there is nothing wrong with that. We don't know how Pardew was behind the scenes we presume he was a yes man but we don't truly know if he questioned club policy or process in private. One of the reasons they gave for sacking Hughton was that he was too much of a push over and just accepted things. I think the picture he paints could entirely true it could also be a complete lie, but we don't know for sure, nor will we likely ever know. He is absolutely right though that surounding yourselves with yes men will get you nowhere in business, Ashley is a multi billionaire he could never have gotten that successful in business by recruiting yes men all the time, maybe NUFC is his exemption who knows. I'm quite baffled by your failure to see through the bullshit here afar, taking everything at face value without looking at the facts. Quite clearly from that statement Lee Charnley is as much a yes man as you could imagine. I know LLambias suggested that Hughton was sacked because he was too soft ("you don't know how horrible we can be"), but in reality he DID challenge their view that some of the more important players in the dressing room, the ones that made that relegation/promotion team what it was (such as Kevin Nolan and to a lesser extent Joey Barton and Andy Carroll) were expendable and held too much power. Hughton challenged them much more than Pardew ever did, they didn't like it, and he got the boot. I'm not going to disagree with you at all on that, and it would appear that I'm being a bit naive to take what they say as fact. But I'm not really saying that. I'm saying I think this communication is a step in the right direction even if the content is not everything we want it to be. I also firmly feel that they fully believe most of what they say here. Is there spin of course there is, are the words carefully chosen, considering they rarely talk to the media then of course they are. But the general gist of it is what they believe in and a lot of it makes sense; The long term planning, making sure we make the right appointment rather than a quick or fast one, supporting the manager you have and believe in (despite what we feel about the man), being prepared to make unpopular calls to preserve that long term vision and portraying a united front in public with the head coach buying into the overall vision (again even if this vision is not one we support). However there is a lot in there also that I don't agree with, the lack of succession planning, the lack of flexibility to admit you may need short term fixes like getting a better caretaker in than carver or buying/loaning a CB to get us to the end of the season still in the Prem and I'm struggling to see where our progress has been on the field in the last 4 years of Pardew. I also want to see that mission statement, and see if we are aligned to it, because we are a very profitable business or they have done a lousy job of planning and the direction needs to change because we have not progressed on the field in the time that Ashley has been at the club. In terms of yes man and Hughton: Charnley comes over to us as just a puppet for Ashley, for sure, but we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. What they clearly want is for the process and direction not to be questioned in the public arena, and Charnley knows how to stay on message. Where they came from for Hughton was perhaps that he didn't push hard enough to retain the likes of Nolan, and just accepted that situation despite believing in retaining their services and hinting in public that he did, I don't know that's pure speculation. In any organisation you can't have splits in what is shown to the public otherwise you are doomed, I don't have a problem with them looking like yes men in public as long as that's not what's going on behind the scenes and he's clearly saying that that is the case, obviously we have to trust that he's telling the truth here but as you imply we have no evidence or reason to believe him at all.

I suggest you direct your attention to this section: Outright lies. Enormous stretching of the imagination. Charnley says he doesn't want a yes man, but that the right person will be one who says "yes" to the Ashley doctrine, who says "yes" to his proscribed media role and who says "yes" to Carr's signings. You could argue that it's all true in manager-speak, but history says that the upper echelons will say whatever it takes to appease the fans and that they have admitted openly that public statements are no more than PR exercises. Being a Newastle United fan these days requires critical literacy and a sound understanding of the language of persuasion. I'm not sure. he says he wants someone to buy into their philosophy and show a united front not question the club policy in public.there is nothing wrong with that. We don't know how Pardew was behind the scenes we presume he was a yes man but we don't truly know if he questioned club policy or process in private. One of the reasons they gave for sacking Hughton was that he was too much of a push over and just accepted things. I think the picture he paints could entirely true it could also be a complete lie, but we don't know for sure, nor will we likely ever know. He is absolutely right though that surounding yourselves with yes men will get you nowhere in business, Ashley is a multi billionaire he could never have gotten that successful in business by recruiting yes men all the time, maybe NUFC is his exemption who knows.

I don't have a problem with them writing the season off again, IF and it's a big IF they have the right appointment lined up to take over in the summer. An appointment that will push the club forward.

I don't agree that you can't believe a word of that. I don't see anything in there that is a stretch the imagination. The long term focus, the structure, the opting out of buying in January are all evident in their actions. I'm not sure he says anything that I don't think that's an outright lie there, I'll reread it again later, but I can't think of anything at first glance. I do agree with you on succession planning, it's one of the core principles of management in any decent corporation, especially as you get higher up the food chain. They keep insisting on describing the club as a business so why they haven't got this in place for one of their most important positions I don't know, especially as you say there were clear signs that it could happen.