merlin

lyon are about the size of man utd in france in term's of support a huge club, + they are usually a selling club at times as well despite winning 6 straight league titles Olympic Lyon av attendance last season - 36,058...well below ours, let alone Man U.. Marseilles is the biggest at 53,000 - just above our capacity.......

Llambias & Co shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a professional football club, unless it is to sell lotto tickets...if these comments are accurate it bodes very ill for the future of Newcastle United... Tell him to go back to spinning Roulette wheels...

...but look how far we have slipped behind Liverpool and clubs like Schalke or Lyon. I am sure Lyon don't get the crowds NUFC do, OR the SKY money, so why is the turnover relatively low..? Mostly, I suspect,due to our loss of popularity outside the NE...and even within it !

IF it turns out that the club HAVE decided to risk this duo being in charge for the rest of the season, then it is yet another example of Ashley's chancer mentality ; it looks suspiciously like a penny-pinching measure in the hope that the club avoids relegation, but this could rebound massively. After all his knock-backs financially during the past year, one would have hoped that our Chubby Owner may have realised that if the club goes down, he will lose massively yet again - this doesn't seem to matter if he is prepared to gamble on these 2... Ashley should eat a large slice of Humble Pie and ask Venables to take charge on contract until the end of the season or even beyond if necessary ; there is too much at stake to risk this backfiring and the club going down. In the circumstances(which look bad for Kinnear's future as a manager).he should even be looking at getting a permanent replacement if a suitable candidate can be found or persuaded to take the job...uncertainty is a killer and may be the ruin of the club.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cymru/chwaraeon/safle/peldroed_wrecsam/images/brian_little203.jpg Sir Brian! *sinks to knees* What a great side he put together for us, and he was my childhood idol. I can tell you that if KK hadn't come back in March 92 after his walk-out, we would have been highly-likely to have appointed Brian Little, then at Leicester. A good manager, did wonders at Darlo in early 90s, made one bad mistake - signing Collymore whilst Villa manager.

I should remind you all that Fletcher was a big fan of Bryan Robson when he was Boro manager--we may even have ended up with him after KK went, but SJH wanted to try Bobby first...!!!

Don't want him, would rather have Scolari...

No-one wishes Joe Kinnear anything other than he benefits from what appears to be necessary surgery to his heart ; whatever his failings, he did pick up the poisoned chalice when no-one else would, even though it was likely that he needed the money, so all credit to him for that and I wish him a speedy recovery. Nevertheless, the club now has to sort out a half-decent replacement, and quickly..although it may be tempting a humiliating knock-back, I WOULD sound Scolari out - he will be smarting at the action by Chelsea and a man of his experience and know how might just be tempted to try to get some revenge on his former employers by taking us on.. Venables, or someone like him is , however, a more realistic candidate ; we cannot afford to mess around with Hughton and Calderwood at this stage of the season, with Pompey also looking for a new man...

This - but the Medics might force the issue and then we will need a replacement.

This

Venables was a fine coach, capable of doing a fine job previously. Having turned down the job via The Sun last time round I doubt he'll be offered the job again. I agree - Venables would have done a better job than Kinnear and I DON'T think he would have taken the club down. He has great experience working with foreign players too, and that would be invaluable because he would command respect from them. He IS a good coach and that is something the club desperately needs. He MIGHT take the job if it was offered on, say, a 2 year deal or even 18 months, but I reckon he would have some hard questions for Ashley & Co about signing/choosing players, questions they might not like..! Unless we go for a promising young manager as a long-term appt., we will be lucky to get an experienced manager with Venables' credentials because no-one wants the job.

The worst part is knowing that it could be another 50 years before the club wins anything.. that is, if the country hasn't gone bust by then....

Always had a soft spot for them, they always used to try to play good football. Have made my views about MON clear on the Title Chances thread, and believe they have a decent chance of breaking the Top 4 monopoly, if not this year, then next. They have improved every year under O'Neill, and I expect that to continue because with more cash to spend, he will find the players who can be that vital difference when teams try to shut up shop against them. If we had not fired SBR in such a shoddy way, I am convinced MON would have joined NUFC if asked, but he was wise to steer clear of Shepherd... If that had happened, we may well have been where they are now, but to be fair, he inherited some better young players than we had at NUFC. I wish them well, they have run the club properly, and Lerner must also take a bow for letting MON get on with it - unlike our chubby owner...

Agree with your assessment - As for Villa, that is why I rate MON as an excellent manager...he has obviously learned from Clough that a proper TEAM will always beat a team of top individuals in a long contest like the League. If you look at most of Clough's sides, they were better as a unit than when dissected individually..people like John McGovern were basically journeymen-workers, but Clough took him to every club he managed. That isn't to say he didn't have some top players in his sides - the likes of Roy McFarland and Archie Gemmill(Derby)Trevor Francis and Peter Shilton(Forest), were Internationals, but he believed in a good 'mix'of players. O'Neill has done likewise at Villa and whilst it may be a bit soon for them to finish in Top 4, I wouldn't rule it out.

As I said earlier, I was certain John Robertson's coaching would improve Milner's play - he also was a winger without much pace, but he was instrumental in Forest's European Cup successes.... Robertson was class though. Milner isn't. Not exactly - Robertson definitely WASN'T class until one Brian Clough got hold of him ; he was an overweight, moody and slow Scottish winger who showed the odd flash of brilliance - Milner certainly looked a better prospect at 21 than Robertson did.. He was one of the players that Clough was constantly on the back of - they had an argumentative relationship to say the least and Clough was always at him...then, when Robertson's wife fell seriously ill, Clough was the first one to send her flowers, much to Robertson's amazement...! That was one of the reasons Clough was such a great manager - his players never knew EXACTLY how he was going to react....

Stranger things have happened, but I don't think they are any more likely to go down than we are.... Every club in the bottom 9 are in danger.....

As I said earlier, I was certain John Robertson's coaching would improve Milner's play - he also was a winger without much pace, but he was instrumental in Forest's European Cup successes....

Not surprised at all - he has been a disaster since he replaced Redknapp and you can see why ; his whole demeanour gives off negative vibes...also, who knows what problems he still has outside football ? IF they get a decent replacement - and the fact that they have fired him now indicates that they probably have someone lined up - then they have enough good players to get out of trouble ; their performance against Liverpool was light-years better than ours at SJP and they should really have got something out of it. Nevertheless, it still won't be an easy escape - all the teams from 12th downwards are still in trouble. As far as the effect on NUFC is concerned, the matter is still in the club's own hands and they have no-one else to blame if they go down.

To play a high defensive line successfully, you need several qualities in your side;- 1. Pacey defenders 2.Intelligent defenders with a great organiser running the back 4 3.An ability throughout the side - but esp the midfield - not to lose possession easily 4.A keeper who reads the game well and is quick off his line. Of the 4 qualities mentioned above, I reckon we only have possibly one - the latter, and even THAT is not certain ; when Beye is in the side, we go some way to addressing Point 1, but that is all. Liverpool in the 70s/80s used to play that way because they had most of the qualities mentioned above, but even they got caught out sometimes - we did them in 1974, 6 months after the infamous Cup Final, and Derby did them a few years earlier, simply by exploiting the high line. I think they were beaten by 4-1 and 4-0 respectively, but it worked for them most of the time by catching opposition forwards offside..a dangerous game when the opposition have speedy forwards.

I would agree with those who say Ameobi is one of the worst forwards seen in a B & W shirt... I saw mention of Gui'varch earlier, but clearly, many posters are too young to have seen the likes of Rob McDonald...... However, Ameobi even rivals THAT particular donkey in his clumsiness, awful first touch, inability to impose his weight on defenders, and lack of speed off the mark...it is one of the mysteries of modern football why successive managers have stuck by this guy and my high estimation of SBR dropped several notches after he kept waxing lyrical about Ameobi - then again, he thought Carl Cort had been a good buy,despite the fact that you could count his appearances on the fingers of one hand, and we lost millions when he was sold to Wolves, a move which made local Supermarket staff rather sad because they had enjoyed seeing his public bust-ups with his former wife..allegedly..!!!

Probably the most vital win of the season so far - if this game had been lost, relegation would have been a certainty... By no means out of the woods yet, because the coming fixtures are tough - esp at home - but the club at least now have a chance of staying up.

I'm surprised you had time to say all of that with most of your time spent with your nose against his arse or your mouth around his cock awful reply tbh.... Completely agree and agree about the KK comment too. Kevin was our most successful manager in recent times and that probably coincided with the fact that he was the manager in every sense of the word. He knew what he wanted, got it and generally gave us the best years we will ever see. Even his second spell was amazing as that team he took over was doomed. Getting that lot to play football, was a miracle I felt. It was to some extent a greater accomplishment keeping us up last season than it was saving us from the old 3rd. Keegan wanted to do the managers job in the way that the job should be done. Control over team selection and also buying and selling. When he had that we were relatively successful and when he felt that was being taken away from him, i.e. the PLC, then he couldn't manage in the way that he was used to and probably promised. So off he went. Of course similar things happened with Ashley, he wasn't managing like he expected he would do (Wise etal) or even was promised and so away he went. I think Bobby had a good spell when he was managing in the true sense of the word, buying well with folk like Bellamy and Robert etc but it seems that he started to fail when his management was undermined. I am sure his attempts to get rid of Shearer (reported a few years ago....was it to Liverpool?) were the first indications that he was no longer fully in charge. I expect Bobby would have left on principle but of course, with his age etc, he had no where else to go and so continued with his power diluted. If younger, he would also have walked away when the contract was changed, as it was obvious his management was severely weakened. We had the same sort of thing with Gullit really. Probably a bad appointment but again he couldn't manage in a way that he wanted, again Shearer the stumbling point and so off he went. Not saying Gullit was right at the time but he wanted Al out of the pictiure and I imagine that Freddie disagreed with this forcibly. Whether right or wrong, Gullit couldn't manage properly and so left. Difficult to sort out the other managers in the same vein but Roeder was always under trial in many ways, Sam wasn't here long enough, although probably just as well and JFK is a puppet to some extent and again isn't a manager with real control. Souness I cant decide upon though his run in with Bellamy maybe suggested that he had full support from the chairman and therefore full control over team matters etc, just useless whatever power he was allowed. KK could not work under the situation of Wise etc and the buying and selling of players he didn't approve of and I feel thats why he left. Many feel he should have stuck it out but thats not Kevin's way. The job was not what he was told it was gonna be and I am sure if he knew that at the start, he would not have returned in the first place. Perhaps he should have chucked it as soon as Wise was appointed but maybe he didn't realise the full extent of the dilution of his management until that final day or so of the summer transfer window, when players were coming and going without his consent or even knowledge. Its hard to see another manager having full control but until this happens with a good man in charge, we won't go far. Those who have been successful have had this, best example of course at the present time is Ferguson. He has been a manager in the full sense of the word and I think thats the only way it can work. Until we have that here, we won't ever move forward and I suspect that its never going to happen and that Kevin and to the lesser extent Sir Bobby, may be the last true managers of NUFC. If HTT has been sticking up for KK in respect of this, then I would have to agree. Comments following his contribution could have perhaps been a bit more constructive but then agan, maybe the name says it all. I always enjoy your comments, KeithK - I suspect , from your username, that you are from a similar era to myself...! Agree with all you say, but would add that Wenger also has most of the control at Arsenal - both he & Fergie said that they thought KK was right to walk after the fiasco last Autumn and that they wouldn't tolerate interference in buying/selling either. Sadly, I believe we have seen the best of Newcastle United and I doubt very much whether the club will even be a serious contender for CL football again, certainly not under the present regime....oh yes, and your final comment ABOUT the comment was spot-on...!!

Totally agree.

Yep - agree with this.

I don't know why anyone is arguing about what may or may not have been in the so-called 'Fine print'.... The facts are that Ashley made a profit in the last transfer window - end of... He has NOT backed KK and the current manager is just a temp because no-one else would take the job. Its time to accept that the owner has messed up BIG time, and the club will be an also-ran for the foreseeable future.