mrmojorisin75

Thank god for that!! agreed - things ain't exactly rosy for the boy keane down at the unwashed are they? Hang about, it's just this kind of sensible decision making that we need at NUFC!! Shearer for manager!! Nah, not really. We need an experienced manager who knows what he's doing and won't have to learn-on-the-job. Someone who's not involved with the club, who can come in with a different perspective and be able to identify the numerous things that are wrong with the club and do something about them. Major changes need to be made, Shearer isn't the man to do them, hopefully he is sensible enough to know this and won't allow himself to be the thing that papers over the cracks.

problem with that is we've spent 2 years buying eastablished players in all positions (as opposed to uncle bobbys younger 'gambles') and we're headed right out of the league with that policy - why should it change in january there have been precious few success stories from loan moves; who is gonna loan or even sell us a decent defender? nobody, so lets get some hunger in there and see what happens 'cause loanees generally aren't known for their desire to run themselves into the ground are they?

i see there being 2 choices now; when (if) roeder gets the boots, which i hope doesn't happen by the way, i'd much rather things turn around because when all is said and done what roeder said when he took the job was that stability is the hallmark of a good club/team, and he's not wrong....however on the assumption he can't turn it around i'd say: choice no 1 - look to the lower leagues and get an up and comer the likes of mike newell, paul simpson and so on then back them all the way like everton have done with moyes (basically stand up to pressure and trust that the man picked has the long term ability to make us successful) choice no 2 - look to europe for a manager of proven pedigree and give him time (minimum 3-4 years) to get results....seeing as he's not in a jop lippi would be an obvious candidate, cappello, hitzfeld and so forth.... problem with no 1 is that as we've shown with roeder we aren't proving to be the most patient of fans (not publicly it has to be said) but the fact we're discussing it here suggests the moyes route isn't the one to take therefore by process of elimination it would have to be choice no 2 for me - but the pitfalls involved in that are immense...we'd end up getting trappatoni or someone 'cause he was cheaper and he'd be a total disgrace....it's the decision making at the top that's the problem upshot: if we could convince his, and roeder is sacked, then lippi, failing him hitzfeld

i think that makes sense - what would make more sense was him having seen what goes on at the club for the last 10 years he's sitting it out until the fat man and friends are gone and he could come back and do a job which makes his comments supporting the fat man even more inexplicable and disappointing

My argument with that would be that it assumes there is some kind of strategy involved in what has gone on since Uncle Bobby was shitcanned, and I don't think there was. Looking back it's obvious that the fat man saw Souness as a disciplinarian (admittedly needed at the club) who had succeeded in winning a trophy EVERYWHERE he'd been in the past. So the fat man backs him to the hilt to do the same with us, then when the trophy is won he can waltz off into the sunset as the man who secured us the trophy. The trouble was Souness was a disgrace. Roeder is the anti-Souness, again not exactly a strategic managerial appointment, just more knee-jerk reacting. Shearer would inherit an underacheiving yet expensively assembled & paid squad if he's idiotic enough to take over (which I'm not convinced of) under the current regime - and I'm not sure he's the person to take it on for reasons stated earlier. What we need now is a powerful and talented manager at the club, one who can stand up to the pressure PUBLICLY when it's needed. How often, even under Uncle Bobby, have we sat and watched our manager come out the equivalent of "there's nothing to see here, we have no problems whatsoever" when everything was turning to ratshit before our eyes? That has to stop, but the chairman and directors are unlikely to appoint someone who will do what is needed when what is needed involves standing up to them are they? Thus we are in a Catch 22 situation we are very unlikely to get out of without the much hyped takeover.

i read a little bit about it and i'm sure it ONLY applies if the player move abroad.... i thought the 28 year old thing was that any player can buy himself out of his contract when they're older than 28 and have a year left? two different rules i reckon....

Question: Would Alan Shearer be the type of manager we need at NUFC? Firstly, it strikes me as obvious that what we need to come in at some point soon is a manager who won't take any shit. What the club is crying out for is a manager that runs EVERYTHING the way he wants from team selection to transfer policy (that doesn't necessarily mean we couldn't have a director of football either in my opinion). Keegan was allowed to be that man and he brought us relative success. Since then we've had a succession of managers that the board and chairman have walked all over - albeit giving them plenty of transfer funds but sacking them and generally treating them like shit, they're always walking the line 'til the next sacking. Our club is run as a personal fiefdom by the chairman and board, dissenting voices are not tolerated - the only explicable reason for Martin O'Neill being at Villa and not us. So what I'm coming to is this, Alan Shearer. I love the guy but is he gonna be the Martin O'Neill we need? I'm not so sure. Throughout his time at the club he's always been old-school. Backing the manager in the face of overwhelming evidence to get rid, he's the epitomy of the "we're right behind him" method of burying your head in the sand. His recent comments supporting the chairman cement that view of him - and he has no official connection to the club now so now would be the time to tell it like it is. AS is seen as our next saviour in waiting but under the current boardroom regime I just don't see it happening - I just don't envisage him standing in front of the cameras telling us he can't work when the board don't give him the funds to sign the players he wants or do whatever he needs, that kind of thing. Thoughts?

sad fact of the matter is that for 17m we can't talk about him "not feeling like a newcastle player" and tripe like that he is a newcaslte player and we need him to get started before the end of the season, play next season, score goals and sign a contract extension then if we sell him for anything over 10m we'll have done well or if he scores shedloads of goals (which he's capable of) and stays even better what we can't allow is for him to walk at the end of his 4 year contract for nothing, having basically sat out the first 2 years.... by the way we need to be very careful because owen could move for nothing under the rule that allowed andy webster to move from hearts to wigan for peanuts - in the 3rd year of a 4 year contract a player can give 2 weeks notice and the only compensation the club gets is wages...he'd have to move abroad though (that's my understanding of the rule from a hearts fan by the way) i suppose the fact that i brought up the possibility owen might do the same underlines the general feeling that he isn't commited to NUFC and will walk at the first given opportunity....what i'm saying is we can't allow him to purely for financial reasons

the replies to this thread mirror the exact problems we face as a club - and basically what has brought us to this point; nobody has mentioned anyone other than the usual suspects; upson, bridge, baines, distin....all would cost us over the odds and with the possible exception of bridge none of them are above average players as a club we needed to have been scouting across the continent and the lower divisions to prepare us for january - billy jones of crewe anyone? can play both full back positions, centre half and to my knowledge hasn't signed an extension to his contract as he wants to make the step up....does anyone even believe that our management team know who he is? it's time we made players rather than trying to buy off the shelf for over the odds - boom and bust has gone kiddies, it don't work....so if it means taking the hit now and not signing a ready made defence then so be it i say (i totally concur with the idea of bringing in german defenders i must say however) by the way this goes for midfielders and strikers as well - there are players all over the place we need to and should have been looking at but won't have bothered expect over expensive signings from the list of usual suspects who don't perform, if we continue in this way then we WILL get relegated, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow.....but soon

i don't think there's any doubt we'll spend something in the window, our concerns should be on: (a) do we trust that the manager will buy or even has the ability to identify the type and number of players we need (b) how much of said money will be raised through the sale of james milner and charles n'zogbia (the first one i see as happening and the second as likely if bids come in) 2 of the most promising young wide players around.... this window represents the biggest financial gamble in our recent history, i hope everyone within the club realises this 'cause it's boom or bust for us now nothing else.....

Agreed. He should have been phased upstairs rather than knee-jerk sacked, as I said in the post mistake number 1. But any manager you care to look at will have holes in his transfer dealings - Ferguson & Wenger have both made total balls ups in the past to go with their successes. The point I was making was about strategy, that Robson seemed to have an idea about where he was going and what he was doing; signing players at the right age for the right money instead of at any age for any money, which it's been since he left. We found Jenas by watching Notts Forest on scouting missions - how many have we found since Bobby left? As for Taylor, Ramage, N'Zogbia etc... they were all either signed by him, came through the youth/reserves when he was in charge or he gave them their debuts....what more do you want to credit him with? Taylor was full of potential when he broke through, after a couple of seasons in the first team with Souness and Roeder his confidence looks shot and he's forgotten the basics.... maybe we should credit somebody with that? Okay, I agree with most of your points but I have to say Bobby was left in the job too long by FFS. His replacement was a joke, really, I remember I nearly crashed the bloody car when it was announced. He had to go though, I felt at the time we had to move on. (That's move on, not down) My point about Ramage, Taylor and co was that they would have probably came through anyway, although I know you can never be sure about that. This is a pointless conversation anyway, if however it does have a point, a small one, it would be to say that, apart from the blip that was Bobby Robson, this club has gone steadily downhill since the day Keegan walked away, and that, my friend is a sad, sad, state of affairs. That's actually a very pertinent point, viewing Robson as a blip - if the club had had any kind of progressive management at the top we'd have planned on the back of what Robson was doing. Says it all. Howeverm if I'm guilty of looking through rose-tints at Uncle Bobby then I feel the point must be made that many people are seriously guilty of romanticising Keegans era. Great football, great team, don't me wrong I loved it all. But lest we forget this was the guy who abolished the reserves, showed no signs of forward planning other than who he was going to sign next, and after he left the club proved his utter inability to cope with the changing face of modern football. It's easy to point to when Keegan walked and the downhill slide, as I said in the original post, and that's what the Sheffield game seems to have provoked in most people but to me that's not the key, they key was when we sacked Robson without securing an adequate/competent/similarly-minded replacement....

Agreed. He should have been phased upstairs rather than knee-jerk sacked, as I said in the post mistake number 1. But any manager you care to look at will have holes in his transfer dealings - Ferguson & Wenger have both made total balls ups in the past to go with their successes. The point I was making was about strategy, that Robson seemed to have an idea about where he was going and what he was doing; signing players at the right age for the right money instead of at any age for any money, which it's been since he left. We found Jenas by watching Notts Forest on scouting missions - how many have we found since Bobby left? As for Taylor, Ramage, N'Zogbia etc... they were all either signed by him, came through the youth/reserves when he was in charge or he gave them their debuts....what more do you want to credit him with? Taylor was full of potential when he broke through, after a couple of seasons in the first team with Souness and Roeder his confidence looks shot and he's forgotten the basics.... maybe we should credit somebody with that?

Lots of posts recently have been tracing timelines back and suggesting where things went wrong to get us to this state, and what its gonna take to put us right. For what it's worth I'd trace it back to the following: (1) Whatever went before it we have to acknowledge Robson had more or less sorted out the Dalglish/Gullitt mess and he was sacked. Souness was brought in (an obvious and costly error) to sort out some problems in the dressing room primarily. This was huge mistake number one. (2) Souness was allowed to persue a transfer policy totally at odds to the one we'd persued for the 4-5 years prior to his arrival - namely instead of signing young, hungry players (exception Parker, maybe Emre) for reasonable fees he bought big "established" players like Owen and Boumsong. Worked out well. Huge mistake 2. (3) Roeder, unfortunately, has spent what little money he had on the same types of buys as Souness did. Basically he looked at Football Manager and picked some good players instead of spending the summer looking at young players/players in lower divisions etc.... Ultimately he went for the easy option, the mythical "off the peg, ready made" player rather than do the leg work or get someome to do it for him. Is it any coincidence that Sibierski is the best of his "buys" so far? I don't think so. (4) What this leads me to is my conclusion that, I'm afraid, we're in deep shit. We all know, at the back of our minds, that the club haven't put the slightest bit of effort into scouting people between the 2 transfer windows. Thus when it opens we'll be back where we were in August trying to out-psyche teams to sell their best players for peanuts when they don't want to. And we all know it's gonna be the usual suspects (Viduka, Bridge etc...)and we'll pay over the odds for them or hand them huge contracts a la Duff. Shepherd was right when he said that the fans didn't complain about Gullit or Dalglish - post-Keegan was always gonna be painful let's face it. Where crime has REALLY taken place is letting everything Robson rebuild (lest we forget HE signed and/or groomed N'Zogbia, Taylor, Ramage, Pattison, Ameobi, Milner etc...) fall apart and persue a "strategy" that was always unattainable for a club like us. Lets imagine we excuse Roeder for the summer (Martins/Duff are admittedly decent or could be) he CAN NOT be excused for failing to have unearthed at 2-3 younger less-expensive buys during the January window to add to a loanee or 2, thus ensuring we have a squad that can cope. What worries me is his talk about only signing players ready for the first team - ominously reminiscent of Souness & his "proper players" tripe. If Roeder can only focus his attention on the immediate then he ain't the man for the job, plain and simple. And following that criteria the last 10 years should see the back of Shepherd as well. (p.s. I'm no Shepherd apologist by the way, I loathe the guy and the day he leaves I'll be dancing down Northumberland Street).