Wallace

Alan Pardew was on Five Live the other night and they were talking about the Newcastle situation. He was asked if he would want the manager's job. He was very hesitant - said it was a mess and then there was Shearer. If Shearer wasn't appointed manager now, he would still be in the background and that would be an uncomfortable situation for any prospective manager.

At least the transfer hasn't been dragged out all Summer - get's so boring when that happens. It is much better when they come out of the blue.

I think this. If he thought he had even an outside chance of getting the job back he'd have been shitehawking in the media for weeks. Yup. Luke Edwards in one of the Journal webchats said that he had changed his number had not been contactable.

Barry supposed to be having a medical at City.

I'm not sure. He did throw Ameobi on against Aston Villa rather than Ranger. It's hard to say at this point who Shearer does and doesn't rate. He could have been saying "give Owen chances and he'll score" to boost Owen's confidence or maybe he really thinks Owen still has 'it'. We'll see if he gets made manager who he tries to keep and who he tries to buy. Shearer was praising everyone trying to boost their confidence.

He is a decent wheeler-dealer, just seems he needs to sign large volumes of s*** players to turn up one or two good ones. He had that reputation at Bolton - that he signed loads of players - some came good, others were never heard of again.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/article6396030.ece Mike Ashley puts Newcastle on the block Sportswear tycoon faces £150m loss for quick sale of demoted football club Jenny Davey and Ben Marlow THE sportswear tycoon Mike Ashley is to put Newcastle United football club up for sale with a £100m price tag. Ashley will appoint Keith Harris, chairman of Seymour Pierce, or bankers at NM Roth-schild this week with a mandate to achieve a quick sale. His decision comes just days after the club was relegated from the Premier League. The asking price is £34m less than Ashley paid for the club two years ago. Since then he has ploughed £110m of his own money into the northeast team to pay down its debts. Ashley told The Sunday Times: “It has been catastrophic for everybody. I’ve lost my money and I’ve made terrible decisions. Now I want to sell it as soon as I can . . . advisers will be appointed shortly.” If Ashley manages to find a buyer it will put an end to his controversial and occasionally acrimonious two-year spell in control at St James’ Park, having initially put the club up for sale for £400m last September because of a series of protests and demonstrations following Kevin Keegan’s departure as manager. But dropping out of the top flight of English football has slashed the value of the club. There has been some interest from Nigeria and South Africa but no firm takeover offers. The club’s demotion will make it harder to drum up bid interest. Asked if he regretted his decision to buy the club two years ago, Ashley, who owns the sportswear chain Sports Direct, said: “Of course I regret it. I never said I was an expert in football clubs. I was just a fan – although a very wealthy fan. But I’m not so wealthy now. I put my money into it and I tried my best. But I accept my best was woefully short. I am genuinely sorry for everybody about what has happened.” Ashley landed a £929m pay-day when he floated Sports Direct on the London stock exchange in 2007, but the credit crunch and a string of ill-fated gambles have slashed his wealth from £1.4 billion to £700m, according to this year’s Sunday Times Rich List. The news comes as talks to give Alan Shearer, the care-taker manager, a full-time contract to rebuild Newcastle United were continuing this weekend. Ashley also praised former interim manager Joe Kinnear, who took temporary charge of the club after Keegan quit last autumn. “I personally thought Joe put the club back on the right track. He took it from second bottom to 13th but things went against him,” said Ashley. Kinnear was forced to stand down because of ill health. After its relegation from the Premier League, the club faces a big restructuring that is likely to lead to a clear-out of the first-team playing squad to balance the books. At present, Newcastle relies on a £40m work-ing-capital facility from Bar-clays bank. Meanwhile, West Ham United is poised to be taken over by its creditors in coming weeks. Sources close to the east London football club say the huge debts of former owner Bjorgol-fur Gudmundsson and those of the club itself have all but killed the chances of any rescue. This means it will fall into the hands of Icelandic bank Straumur and a consortium of other financial institutions. Straumur is owed about £100m by Gudmundsson, while the club owes about £45m to a group of banks including RBS. The Icelandic bank is expected to hold on to the club for between two and three years before putting it up for sale.

I struggle to think of any alternatives if Shearer turns us down. Steve Bruce looks like he is going to Sunderland which means the Wigan job would be free and there are rumours about Martinez going there - they are a premiership club and his former club, so you would think that would sway him. I would like Owen Coyle but he seems to have the choice of Burnley in the Premiership or Celtic. Ketsbaia has just got another job. I don't think Coppell would want the job and I don't think Curbishley would do much here or be that inspiring. Although I could imagine the latter two both at Wigan and probably more suited. The other thing that worries me is if Shearer turns the job down, that doesn't send out a good message to prospective managers about support from the owner. Alternatively, if another manager is happy with the conditions, then that would make me question their motives and ability and whether they really appreciate the work required.

On the Journal webcast last week, someone said that a seriously rich consortium had been in discussions with Seymour Pierce and that they had been in contact with Shepherd because of his knowledge of the club. As is usual, it was dismissed out of hand but he was insistent that something was afoot.

Not sure. If there is going to be one then it needs to happen soon and quickly. The last thing we need is to seemingly stablilise things for a few months, then get taken over and all the uncertainly starting again. No on-off stories of potential takeovers would be good.

I think Shearer will do a lot of things right at the club and restore some dignity and pride. I think he will advise Ashley and co. on many different things outside of the normal manager's role because there seems to be a lack of knowledge within the board room. Most importantly, whether Shearer will be a good manager is another thing. How good will he be with budgets, identifying good players with a good mentality, moulding together a good team, tactics, man management? Time will tell but I am hopeful that he will become a good manager. There seems to be a lot of good experienced people within the game who have a huge respect for him and on whom he can call on for advice. For some reason, I don't see him in the same category as Ince, Adams, Southgate etc - I think he has a bit more about him - more self-belief, confidence, authority, humility, gravitas, intelligence. I do think that at the very least, we need this monkey off our back. Shearer needs to be given the chance now - if he is successful - brilliant but if not, then we know that his shadow will no longer be hanging over future managers.

Five Live reporting that Steve Bruce is going to the Mackems. Wigan are refusing to confirm it but 5L say they are at the stage of sorting out the compensation. Guess he has given up on the Newcastle job now.

Wonder if he might end up at Birmingham? Was McLeish his manager at Rangers?

Will try to get to them all but the midweek fixtures may be a problem. Hadn't quite realised how far Plymouth was until it was pointed out to me that it was past Torquay.

Never improved his game whilst here - infact he has got worse.

Add them all up and you get £1.16m/week. x52 = £60m. We're still actually missing about £11-14m from our calculations. So either the board is being paid a lot, the kids are being paid a lot, or these guys are earning a lot more than we thought they were, in which it'll actually be easier to cut the wagebill. Let's hope so, anyway. Surely the wagebill will also include bonus payments on top of those weekly basic figures (not that there will be many this year...), off-field staff wages from top to bottom and also payments needed to sack people? That's what I was wondering - there are loads of backroom staff and 4 managers this year. Is this included or is that purely the player's wage bill? I seem to recall when the financial report came out a few months back that quite a high percentage of the wage bill was attributed to non-playing staff.

What is it about Shearer that provokes such scorn? I can't imagine this happening with Terry, Lampard, Rooney and Gerard in a few years time.

Bassong is meant to be the lowest paid player in the squad so that's one figure that is way off. And I cannot believe that even this club would be so stupid as to pay Xisco £50,000 a week especially as they were already moaning about the wage bill by then. Likewise the figures for Guthrie and Enrique.

Well at least we should start getting some money in for Milner, Given and Zoggy.

Always wonder how the media know exactly how much a player is paid and their contract details. Surely this is confidential information and all of the figures and clauses bandied about are just guesswork?

I don't think they were booing but the fans were definitely singing. I didn't even realise that there was a speech as the PA system was poor.

Chuffed for Burnley. They were in the top flight when I first starting watching football and I always had a soft spot for them. Always used to have loads of Geordies in their team back in the day.

I just hope that whoever the manager is that he is allowed to decide which players he wants to keep to build the team around and that he is not undermined by the board selling any player as soon as they get an offer. As Shearer said, we are already behind the other championship teams in planning for next season. No doubt other teams will be reluctant to sell us their better players because we are now a rival. It is going to be a huge job shifting so many players out and getting replacements in so short a time. I guess the players will probably be back for pre-season training in around a month's time because the season starts the first week in August.

Anyone else see Rob Lee in the away end or did I imagine it?

I understand all that but it does make me mad when there is so much misinformation broadcast. It is one thing to offer an opinion but when they state facts that are incorrect, I do get wound up. A simple example - a few years ago, there was discussion where they were castigating Bobby Robson for buying Dyer. Someone phoned up and pointed out that it was Gullit who bought him but as that would have ruined the whole argument, it was ignored. I daresay now that most other fans when asked who bought Dyer would answer Robson.