Wallace

Some journalist on the radio said that was McClaren's decision. Charnley had planned to meet him but McClaren said there was no point.

Love that he has got them in training already.

Mike Ashley and Newcastle: how to suck the spirit out of a football club Steve McClaren’s sacking is the latest symbol of the deep troubles at Newcastle, who are stumbling incoherently into another relegation battle with the fans feeling sour, angry, baffled and betrayed David Conn Friday 11 March 2016 13.00 GMT Last modified on Friday 11 March 2016 14.08 GMT When Newcastle United slump into another of their serial crises during what passes for stewardship under Mike Ashley, the grand old club look wrong in every respect – from “top to bottom”, as their hero of yore, Alan Shearer, recently lamented. Yet another manager, Steve McClaren, has been dispatched from the ejector seat months after he replaced Newcastle’s discount experiment with John Carver’s career and wellbeing. Substantial money has actually been spent on signing players – £80m in the summer and January – but this has prompted only bewildered questions about the quality of recruitment by the chief scout, Graham Carr, who in effect selects the players in the decision‑making structure insisted on by Ashley. With all of it leading the club stumbling incoherently into another relegation battle at a stadium built for cavalier adventure, the whole modern incarnation of St James’ Park looks dire. Ashley’s tainted retail empire, Sports Direct, has its logo on every wall and in everybody’s face around the ground, while the players Carr has signed according to the Ashley value policy of being under 25, pull on the noble black and white shirt with Wonga emblazoned on their chests. The mood among an army of supporters who actively want to embrace the club as an engine of pride and regional identity is sour, angry, baffled and betrayed. Newcastle are facing the drop for the season when the financial divide between Premier League and Championship will gape wider than ever, alongside Aston Villa, another big club of great tradition failing under a billionaire owner. Yet while Randy Lerner has almost said his farewells at Villa Park, and announced he will not be over from America much any more, Ashley is involved with the hierarchy – threadbare as it is – at Newcastle and sanctioned all that spending. Somehow, nothing they do is working. The club reversed the clinical, misery-inducing strategy set out by the managing director, Lee Charnley, last season, 60 years after Newcastle last won a domestic trophy, the FA Cup, of in effect surrendering ambition in the cups in favour of aiming for a financially comfortable position in the upper half of the league table. Then, out McClaren’s team limped from the Capital One Cup in September to a 1-0 home defeat by Sheffield Wednesday, after which Charnley – to his credit – sent an email to supporters apologising for “a very disappointing start to our Premier League campaign, and a painful early exit from a cup competition that we were determined to give everything in this year”. Fourteen league matches after that, of which only four were won, a run punctuated by the 5-1 thrashing administered by their former manager Alan Pardew at Crystal Palace, Newcastle trudged out of the FA Cup in the third round, losing 1-0 at Watford. That has left top-flight survival as the only aim and, with the Premier League finalising its unbelievable £8bn for the total 2016-19 TV rights, Ashley cannot contemplate missing out on so much money. Charnley’s apology in September talked about being in it all together and not apportioning blame (“We have sat down as a collective – myself with Steve and his coaching team, and Steve with his players …”) but the ringing of the relegation alarm drowns out such emollience. It is natural at times such as this to see Ashley’s ownership as a permanent dead hand, which has brought his cheapskate, bottom line‑obsessed practices of Sports Direct to a football club that have always relished stars with a touch of extravagance. It is easy to forget that after his first hideous period of ownership, when he seemed to buy the club for a good time then saw them relegated in 2009 and promised to sell up, the Ashley tenure briefly came together. In 2011‑12, after Carr’s scouting had brought in talent including Yohan Cabaye, Papiss Cissé and Hatem Ben Arfa, Pardew took the team to a fifth-placed finish, and the then managing director Derek Llambias pulled the finances back to sanity. Then Ashley appointed Joe Kinnear as director of football, Llambias left the next day, other clubs including Leicester City overhauled their recruitment, including from France, and Newcastle, with their talk of the top 10 and lack of interest in the cups, came across as too financially matter-of-fact for their own good. As they scramble to stay up now, Charnley must know, even if Ashley still gives an air of being detached, that there is only so much spirit you can squeeze from a football club.

Wonder whether all the media will be invited this time?

Good to see the before Ashley and after stats. I repeatedly point this out to people who tell me we have always been this bad. Pardew used to tell us likewise as well - that our average position was in the lower half of the league and we were unrealistic to expect to be higher.

I can't get too excited about this at the moment. Rafa would be a brilliant appointment but let's see if we are still in the Premier League at the end of the season and if we still are, if he is still with us at the start of next season. I just don't trust out lot not to do something to make him walk. If he survives that then I would be hopeful that things will be better in the future and I think if Rafa is after a long-term project, then that is definitely what he will have here as the whole club needs overhauling. What does give me hope though is that maybe the club have seen the errors in their way of appointing cheap lower league out of work managers who are just grateful to have a job. Such appointments command no respect from the players and it soon becomes apparent that they are out of their depth. Hopefully they now realise that the most important appointment is the manager. This would be the first time that we are looking to appoint the best manager available and that is quite a seismic change in attitude for our lot. If we stay up (and their inevitable slowness in reacting to the situation makes it so much more difficult) - that Bournemouth result will have proved crucial as there is no way this change in attitude would have come about otherwise - and no doubt were we to be relegated under McClaren, they would probably have stuck with him in the Championship.

I thought he was meant to be out of the country which was one of the reasons why this is all taking so long.

Perhaps we've gone to Liverpool.

Don't know about now but I saw him in the away section a couple of times when we were in the Championship (after he had left the club).

It's Man City, write it off. That's the thing, with a decent manager we wouldn't necessarily have to be writing games off any more, plus Man City haven't been that great since they announced Pellegrini was leaving. At the end of the season, you get unpredictable results. It all depends when the game is rescheduled and if Man City are still in Europe and if they still need to win games for a top 4 finish. Likewise with Spurs for the final home game, will they need a win to win the League or will they have a European final coming up? As it is at the moment, we have no chance of winning those games - in a few weeks - maybe.

Whether McClaren deserves to be treated in this way or not is arguable but it would be nice if the club could treat people with some respect now and again. They get upset at the negative press but if they just conducted themselves in a better manner, they might find that people would respond more positively to them.

The one thing that would encourage me about his appointment is that he is nobody's fool. The board are not going to be able to manipulate him and he will not necessarily tow the party line in public. Everyone is aware of that so you assume they must be as well - in which case you would hope it signals a recognition that they need to change the way they do things. I also think that he would be good for the Academy etc as he overhauled Liverpool's set-up and that side of things seems to have been badly neglected.

I think he wrote his book.

Whatever is or isn't happening, this has now became another farce that could have been avoided and it is not exactly going to create the right environment to stay up. Whether the club are "playing" everyone or not, McClaren had zero respect from his players before - at best, he will either be a figure of fun or sympathy now. And if the plan is to get a new manager in then they need him ASAP regardless of whether the Leicester game is a write off or not - with 10 games left, a new manager needs as much time as possible with them.

This carry on can't be impressing potential candidates.

They are a bunch of cowards - can't do anything face to face. Always hiding behind phone calls, press releases, intermediaries and more often they don't even bother communicating at all. None of them will put their name to anything so they can say they were not the ones responsible so they can shift the blame to someone else.

He has had some very good games and some very poor ones. In some ways it is hard to judge how good he is because of the dross he has had to play with and Sissoko provides no cover.

I think it is meant to be a maximum of £30 but maybe those clubs that charge less may use it to increase prices!

Is this getting to the stage where he could resign and sue them for constructive dismissal?

Why not? He was on at least that at Everton and we are quite clearly desperate, he's in the position to ask for what he damn well wants. Yep. He was one of the highest paid managers in the Premier League when he was at Everton despite the fact they were heavily in debt.

The longer it drags on the more damaging it becomes. It is obvious they are looking for someone else because they have not come out in support of McClaren. What message does that send to the players? They obviously have no respect for him as it is and will have even less now. Even if McClaren ends up staying now (because they couldn't get anyone else), it is obvious the club (bar Charnley have lost faith in him).

The standout candidate is obviously Rafa and he would immediately command the player's respect. However, I can't imagine for one minute that they would even try or that he would be interested with where we are at the moment. The board would have to concede a lot of power to him - are they prepared to admit that the model is not working or do they intend to stick to it regardless? I don't see candidates such as Moyes or Rodgers having enough of an immediate impact to keep us up and I think Moyes is perceived as a failure so again, would our foreign players have much respect for him. It would not make sense to go for a foreign manager with no experience of the Premier League at this stage because there is no time to adapt. Redknapp has taken clubs down before so he is no guarantee either of safety either. The only one I would have some sort of confidence in who would rally players and fans alike would be Rafa - but as I said, I don't think our lot would consider him. The thing is all these managers want to work in the Premier League but there are very few jobs available so some of them will have to make some sort of concession if they want such a job. Likewise NUFC but will we do that?

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/steve-mcclaren-urges-newcastle-hierarchy-7513035? Deluded or what McClaren wants to work on, convinced he still has a degree of support among the fan-base.

Southampton do. From their website. Reed says that the club is constantly working to identify future managers and coaches, just as it does with prospective player signings. It was that approach, he reveals, that left Southampton with a list of potential appointments to work off from the moment that Pochettino resigned at the end of last month. “The interesting thing is that, while we were endeavouring to ensure that Mauricio stayed, there was always the possibility – as there is at any time in a manager’s tenure – that we might part company,” explained Reed. “You have to have a succession plan up your sleeve, which is what we had, so we possibly had six-to-ten candidates on our ongoing research list. “Some time before [Pochettino’s departure], we began updating and making sure we knew the status of those candidates. “Like targeting players and doing the background analysis and due diligence we do on them on a daily basis, we’ve always done the same process with regard to managers and coaches. “Because we have access to fantastic video footage and data from clubs all around the world that we collate on a regular basis, that gives us an idea of styles of play and the ways certain coaches like their teams to be set up. “We have always kept an eye on up and coming coaches, which is how we ended up recruiting Mauricio Pochettino. That [appointment] was the result of a lot of hard work, research and diligence based on what he’d done as a coach at Espanyol in terms of developing players, bringing them through and overachieving for a club that wasn’t particularly well-funded. “Of course, when it was announced that Mauricio was actually leaving, we were inundated with enquiries,” continued Reed. “When this has happened before, if you got – I’ll throw a number out there – 40 enquiries, probably 30 of them would be speculative. This time, we had the odd one-or-two crank applicants, which were entertaining, but by and large we were amazed at the level of applicant who wanted to show interest in the job. “We were astounded. To me, that shows the esteem which this club has in the industry. “In the end, we whittled it down from managers who’ve won trophies, won leagues, won European competitions, had vast experience of playing in the Champions League and European cups and so on. “We’ve had [interest from] international managers and from all continents like South America and Asia, but we were quite delighted that, when we got down to the final four, all four of them had been on our list originally. “I can’t give away any secrets, but we are now closing in on a preferred candidate. Things are going well. “What takes time on these things is the paperwork, but I’m hoping we can get that sorted very quickly and the fans will be excited about an announcement coming up sooner rather than later.” Read more at http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/news/article/12062014-les-reed-on-new-manager-1640712.aspx#SXmkzIy8zX3KrCWK.99

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/newcastle-united/12186714/Newcastle-are-no-longer-a-football-club-in-the-conventional-sense-but-a-mutation-of-Sports-Direct.html Newcastle are no longer a football club in the conventional sense but a mutation of Sports Direct Mike Ashley's catalogue of farces has conspired with a downturn in recruitment to rip the heart out of the club By Paul Hayward, Chief Sports Writer7:11PM GMT 07 Mar 2016 Nobody who believes the soul of a football club is un-killable could attach that claim to Newcastle. In this age of red-hot globalisation at the top of the English game, there is no guarantee of eternal life for a tradition that still just about glows on the map. Alan Shearer, the greatest of all Geordie No 9s, recalled the other day that Newcastle used to be everyone’s favourite second team. The cauldron of St James’ Park united a community behind a vision of buccaneering football that would make visitors reach for earplugs and smelling salts. Shearer’s point was that those golden days belong now in a museum as other, better-managed clubs stake their claim on the future. As an experiment, try watching Leicester at home one day and Newcastle the next. Nothing could illustrate more starkly the lottery of billionaire ownership. Leicester’s story is a tickertape parade of good decisions. Newcastle’s is a grim procession of bad moves by an owner who has torched a lot of his own money by mistaking a football club for a retail warehouse. Newcastle’s turbulence goes back a long way: in the current era, to the sacking of Sir Bobby Robson in 2004. The revolving doors have spun since for Graeme Souness, Glenn Roeder, Sam Allardyce, Kevin Keegan (in his second stint), Joe Kinnear, Shearer, Chris Hughton, Alan Pardew, John Carver and now, possibly, Steve McClaren. But managerial chaos is a symptom, not the cause, of Newcastle’s dismal showing, which has exhausted the bounds of schadenfreude and is now just plain distressing. In the Premier League era, Newcastle have challenged for the title and been to the Champions League. The real dead weight since Mike Ashley stuffed sale profits into the trousers of the Hall and Shepherd families in 2007 has been one of culture. Newcastle are no longer a football club in the conventional sense but a mutation of Sports Direct; an exercise in low-cost retailing, with no space for emotion, glory, allegiance or tradition. And the players can smell it, which is why their away record is so abysmal and the team is so short of fight. Newcastle are a stepping stone for players lifted from smaller clubs in less wealthy leagues who probably harbour hopes of playing for a proper club one day but then get sucked into the mire of indifference and mediocrity. In his book, Up There - The North-East Football Boom & Bust, Michael Walker quotes Sir John Hall on the sale of the club to Ashley. “His team told me they were going to use Newcastle United to brand Sports Direct in the Far East,” Sir John said. “I thought that was ideal – globalise Newcastle, which we hadn’t done though we tried. Basically that was it.” Ashley is not the only plutocrat to apply a strategic business motive to buying a club. Both Manchester City and United fall into that category. But Ashley is one of the few to believe that driving down costs and turning a great stadium into an advert for cheap sports gear is in tune with the mega-money mood of England’s highest tier. In his book, Walker counts “137 Sports Direct signs and logos from one side of the pitch.” With energetic management, good scouting and ambition on the playing side, Ashley might have been able to justify picking a club off the menu to boost tracksuit and squash racket sales in the Far East. But the catalogue of farces, from Kinnear’s surreal appointment as director of football to Pardew’s anger management failures, has conspired with a downturn in recruitment to leave Newcastle at risk of their second relegation in Ashley’s nine years. That word, culture again. As Shearer wrote in his Sun column: “They [the players] simply do not care. They have betrayed a club, a city, a community, with their lacklustre and totally heartless performances. They may even be responsible for losing a generation of fans. “When I joined this club in 1996, it was everyone’s second-favourite team. Fans from outside of Newcastle loved the passion around the club, the feeling and the way we played football.” Which modern footballer, you might ask, would “care” for very long about representing a club with such a heavily branded soul: a team without a sporting aim or a spiritual identity? Some of this pre-dates Ashley’s ownership. Other players who walked through the gates of Newcastle’s training ground concluded swiftly that this was not a club of serious endeavour. So now another relegation battle has been added to those of 2013 and 2015 as Newcastle fester with the fewest points of any Magpie side in the Premier League era. Ashley’s Moneyball trick meanwhile is in ruins, with the local Chronicle noting: “[Graham] Carr [the chief scout] got off to a great start when bringing in Yohan Cabaye, Mathieu Debuchy and Cheik Tiote. Since then, though, Newcastle fans have paid money to watch Yoan Gouffran, Emmanuel Rivière, Florian Thauvin, Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa, Rémy Cabella, Massadio Haïdara, Sylvain Marveaux and Siem de Jong all fail to cut it at St James.” From Sir Bobby Robson to Keegan to Shearer and all points Geordie in between, Newcastle have been a repository for the idea that football is a sacred union between a team and fans who measure out their lives in that fortress at the core of a great north-eastern city. But how long can a soul survive such ravages? Newcastle are now their supporters – and very little else