Wandy

 

change of subject like..

 

 

 

Wearside- can you tell me how many times Sunderland have been relegated in the last 20 years?

genuine question.

 

 

 

In the last 20 years they have been relegated 4 times, all from the top league, in 1991, 1997, 2003 & 2006.

 

In my 25 year NUFC supporting lifetime I have witnessed them be relegated a further 2 times to add to those 4, in 1985 when they were relegated from the old 1st divison and then, the funniest of them all, the 1987 relegation to the old 3rd division. I was at the game V Gillingham at Joker Park which relegated them to the 3rd, along with another 2000 mags in the clock stand paddock. It's still a very, very sore wound for them to live with even to this very day.

 

Embarrassed for you to be honest.

 

 

You need to log on here to find the true definition of embarrassment... http://www.readytogo.net/smb/forumdisplay.php?f=86.

 

change of subject like..

 

 

 

Wearside- can you tell me how many times Sunderland have been relegated in the last 20 years?

genuine question.

 

 

In the last 20 years they have been relegated 4 times, all from the top league, in 1991, 1997, 2003 & 2006.

In my 25 year NUFC supporting lifetime I have witnessed them be relegated a further 2 times to add to those 4, in 1985 when they were relegated from the old 1st divison and then, the funniest of them all, the 1987 relegation to the old 3rd division. I was at the game V Gillingham at Joker Park which relegated them to the 3rd, along with another 2000 mags in the clock stand paddock. It's still a very, very sore wound for them to live with even to this very day.

This is a post taken from another NUFC forum. It's not mine but I have to say it is a very balanced assessment of the situation...

As the dust settles....

What has this week been all about? These are my reflections [naturally, you are not expected to agree with them].

I believe Mike Ashley is a dreadful owner of NUFC, and have frequently said so, often to recriminations. However, I can't, and won't, accept that his agenda is to "screw", or destroy, Newcastle United. For a self-made multi-millionaire who has spent something like £3-400m to date on the club, that is utterly illogical. Yes, the fans upset him post-KK and he tried to dump the business - but only at the right price.

He has become successful building and running a retail business with a very specific modus operandi. This is what he knows, this is what made him successful. Unfortunately, but predictably, he has sought to apply the same principals to running a football club. Some of these concepts, while not the norm within the football world, will be successful, but some don't effectively translate into this new world for him. Nevertheless, that is his comfort zone, and will inevitably guide his every action.

What has been missing in his new business empire imho is experienced council on football matters. He is undoubtedly acquainted with football insiders, and will seek their advice and opinion. However, imo he has badly needed someone on the inside, someone who he implicitly trusts, someone in who he can confide on specific football issues. Today he will believe he finally has that experienced football confidante within the club with the appointment of Alan Pardew.

Part of Ashley's naivety regarding football, and perhaps his achilles heel in this business, is that he does not appear to recognise the importance of keeping the club's supporters 'onside'. He regards them much as he would the customers of his retail business, wherein he would never contemplate communicating to them what he was proposing to do strategically, much less seek their concurrence. This is a major weakness, and one that Pardew will perhaps eventually exert some influence on.

Ashley quite clearly did not believe Chris Hughton had the complete skill set to satisfactorily guide his expensively-acquired asset through the choppy waters of the PL. He came to believe Chris was an excellent coach, rather than an excellent team manager. Ashley probably believes his success in The Championship was largely down to the quality of the high-earning playing sqaud, allied to Hughton's undoubted coaching skills. A good part of Hughton's success was the closeness of the playing sqaud and the small management team, and his direct involvement of a cadre of senior players in some of the decision-making. I suspect Ashley came to believe that this apparent strength could well become a weakness over the long haul - if for no other reason than it is entirely alien to his own method of managing.

It has been suggested this week that Ashley did not believe Hughton was a safe pair of hands in the area of player acquisition, and believed he was not well enough known or respected internationally to attract the kind of young developing talent that Ashley wishes to build the future of the club upon. It is suggested that the two high profile signings in the summer of 2010 - Chiek Tiote and Hatem Ben Arfa - were entirely down to Chief Scout, Graham Kerr, with little or no input by Hughton. This may or may not be post-event spin. Conversely, Ashley is reportedly very unhappy at Hughton's signing of Leon Best and James Perch, perhaps unsurprisingly.

If you wrap all of this together it is not too hard to gain an insight into Ashley's thinking with regard to Hughton, however risky and however unsympathetic and hard-nosed the ultimate decision may have seemed. It has also been suggested that Ashley's actions have apparently been influenced by the failure to appoint Alan Shearer as Caretaker Manager during 2008/9 until it was effectively too late to keep the club in the PL, and was not prepared to take that same risk again.

While I disagree with his selection of Alan Pardew to replace Hughton, he fits what I assume to be Ashley's specification almost perfectly. Following on from Allardyce and Keegan, I don't believe there was ever a chance of him hiring another high profile, high cost, and high maintenance manager like Martin O'Neil and the ilk who would demand essentially a free hand to run the football side of the business. Despite the accusations of remoteness, I believe Ashley is actually a hands on manager who wants to be at the epicentre of all major decision-making. For the first time in his troubled period of ownership, Ashley finally has his own man, his first choice, in the dug-out.

Sacking Hughton seems to most people a massive gamble. Ashley has almost certainly weighed the risks in his mind, and concluded that the risks of not acting decisively where likely to be even greater. Only time will tell whether he was right or not.

Taken from this forum.. http://www.notbbc.co.uk/forums/f=unufc

Been lurking here for years, and have been meaning to post for a while...what better time than now.

25 years I have followed this football club, and have noticed recently that we seemed to be going full circle back to the dark days of the early 1980s. An unambitious board, local rising talent looking likely to end up elsewhere & a fragile confidence amongst the supporters about what the future would bring.

This football club is in serious trouble now. Unless there is a sensational appointment in the form of someone like Martin Jol then NUFC is about to become fragmented amongst it's support just like in the days of Seymour & McKeag. It's actually unfolding right now on this message board as fans draw up the battle lines about boycotting/supporting the club and it will result in our relegation this season.

I was one of the original "supporters for change" who boycotted in the '80s but handed out leaflets etc outside the ground on matchdays. It was obvious then in the 88/89 season that the turmoil would send us down but we were unperturbed. Relegation was a price worth paying as it ultimately got rid of McKeag and ushered in the Keegan Wonder Years. The same price is now worth paying to get rid of Ashley.

To all those who utter the "just support the club" mantra : dont waste your breath, you may as well join the protests because when NUFC is disunited as it is about to be then the only way is down.

The big difference from 30 years ago though is that the club is much more high profile now and whilst nobody cared about us back then this time we are universally loathed for sacking Hughton. Fans, players, managers, pundits are right now expressing their contempt at us and will be willing us to be relegated. Just have a look around the forums, we are despised and who can blame them for doing so?

Dark, dark times ahead.