fredbob

That didn't apply to Mike Hooper did it ? Chance after chance after.... Missed the whole point didn't you ? Great manager that lost it in the end, due to age, nothing else. Should have been moved upstairs though And considering what that pillock Shepherd brought in, we should have persevered with him even then ! How come ages wasnt an issue when he got us to 3rd places? We drop 2 places having not been backed and admittedly have a few discplinary problems and all of a sudden he's too old and has "lost it" i dont get that view. Obviosuly we should of been planning ahead and looking for life after SBR but there is no way people should be justifying his sacking with tripe like "he lost it" , he should of been kept on for one more year at least.

Yep, i agree we shouldnt of been struggling as much as we did, but isnt that the whole beauty of the game, if it was as easy as an equation as that,football wouldnt be as entertaining as it is. Its difficult to make a good comparison from today and then, because during our 2 year stint in the CL we prevented our rival ie liverpool from getting the money to make the advancements they have now, ie 4 years of solid CL qualification. Look at Liverpool now, despite having all the finance from there recent run in the CL competitio, if they spent nothing this summer do you they would still find it easy to attain 4th? Was it only the 32nd game of the season when 4th place looked to be tied up, that isnt dominance to me. I dont deny that it was a poor season, but you have to look at the facts and despite the fact we had such a shitty season (with a good UEFA cup run) we still came 5th. The likes of Villa and Everton would never be able to have a season like ours then and still have 5th places tied up like we did. The crux of my point is that i still believe SBR should of had another season and that we as a club are sufffering from sacking SBR rather than the genreally excepted consensus that we're suffering because of Souness. It was the manner and circumstances of the sacking that lead the job to be unteneable in my opinion.

Cant contemplate KK failing,,,,,, it dosent compute,,, its never happend,, EVER I like your optimism, personally i dont think it will be a failureif we get a 7-9th place finish providing the football is good and theres a marked improvement, it took SBR 2 seasons to get us moving! Hopefully though we dont get a rejection riddled summer and we take off as a club, i can see us taking a lot of points off the big 4 next season.

What will your feelings be if we achieve a mid table finish out of interest?

Spurs have a 2-3 year head start on us and a more reknowned manager and a very good squad, in a better position to attract a better claibre of player than us and i think theteam in the best situation to take advantage of the politics and turmoil in the liverpool boardroom. Benitiez is an excellent manager but is is he good enough to motivate his players through another season of turmoil and still cemenet that 4th place? Im not sure, they say the top 4 places are cemented but is was something like the 32nd game until it was set in stone.

4th Spurs 5th Liverpool 6th Villa 7th Everton 8th Man City 9th Newcastle 10th Portsmouth 11th Blackburn Think spurs and villa are really the only 2 teams outiside the top 4 who are completely set up for an assault on the top 4 with Spurs dislodging Liverpool in my opinion. Villa wont quite make it into the top 4 because i think they wont have the mentality to maintain it throughout the entire season, in my opinion anyway. Porstmouth and Blackburn wont have the means to take advantage of the advantage they have over us currently but the other teams who are in a position of strength. Think next season will be a good season with some good results but i dont think it'll be until after next season when the new set up will start working perfectly and our reputation gets raised hopefully attracting the player we truly need to suceed.

No - are you really a Gimp ? Those who continue to live in the past about SBR are welcome to their dreamworld fantasies ; As for Ferguson, you can bet that he WON'T be at OT when he is 70 - the Man U Board will ensure that the succession is done WHEN IT SHOULD BE, which is something NUFC are not reknowned for .. Ferguson himself won't want to do that, although I DO expect him to move upstairs at OT. Too many sacred cows held by some fans on this board - just because SBR was from the NE, people think he is above criticism - wrong, and although I am quite prepared to give him credit for a job well done, I am also prepared to acknowledge his faults ; and he DID have them. As I said before, no room for sentiment in Football - I think you'll find that under Ashley & Mort, this will happen less & less at NUFC so you had better get used to it... It's thefact that he was 70 years old that seems to be the sticking point here, i can understand that if he was struggling with the team but he wasnt, he was having a few problems discipline wise, i just cant believe that someone would put so much empthasis on the fact that he's 70 year old. I dont understand where you think theres sentiment in this when he was doing well for us. Sentiment gets thrown right out the window when the person its aimed at has valid reasons for it to be discarded. I dont disgaree with you when you say that we needed to plan for SBR eventual retirement, sacking, resignation but at that point at time there was absolutely no footballing reason to sack him, if the board were worried about his age then why werent they looking for a top class manager a) when he was 69 or b) when they decided to announce to the world before SBR that he wasnt to stay on.

To be honest, id have him as my number one, pretty ridiculous that he's only the 3rd.

So whether i like it or not, it all comes down to his age? Irrespective of the quality of the manager, or the success of his career or even the success of his career at his current club, he was too old to turn things around and that is a fact for you? So there isnt a single part of you that thinks that maybe, just maybe he would of turned it around the next season and he didnt deserve the chance to do so? He was destined to fail because he was old? I dont buy that im afraid, he was 69 when he got us to 3rd. Look at Ferguson, how old is he now? Im not comparing the 2 as managers but im just saying that in this case age doesnt even become to be an issue. Maybe that was a poor example. I also dont think it was all about ego, he knew that he had a poor season, despite finihsing 5th, in hindsight he never directly blamed the chairman of no backing after the 3rd place finish if it was all about ego then i cant see why he'd take responsibility, in my opinion, it was all having the poor season and not been given the oppurtunity (which he deserved in my opinion) to turn it around, who's to say that he wouldnt of shipped some of the problem players? Its a moot point but i think that his dismay doesnt come from the fact that he was sacked when he in his eyes and ego had done a great job, but because he was sacked without being given an oppurtunity to turn it around. It seemed we got to a point where people thought that SBR was lucky to have Nufc rather than Nufc being lucky to have SBR. Look at where he found us and where he left us, there is absolutley no way that that point of view is valid when you look at the successful clubs around us.

Hate Chelsea way more than Man U, Chelsea are a fucking huge club and they woldnt be if it wasnt because of Abramovich, hate the fact they've come so far so quickly and i hate all these Chelsea fans that have come out the woodwork like maggots. At least Man U have built it from the bottom to the top.

So do you think its purely coincidnce that this initative will effect mainly our leagues and leave most the other major leagues in Europe unaffected? I dont, Blatter and Platini have made it clear in the past that they dont like our league. Even the reduction of CL places is aimed mainly at us and not for the benefit of the competition although its painted that way. Why should we compromise the strength of our league? Although im not exactly estactic about the monopoly the top4 have on the league, they have all got there (bar Chelsea) on their mertis and only there merits, rememeber Man U, Liverpool and Arsenal all started on an even keel with many of the maojor clubs in Europe, the lieks of Arsenal and Liverpool mauybe even behind.

I disagree somewhat with your assessment of SBR final moments at the club, i just think theres a hell of a lot of supposition in what you are saying (i.e the cracks appeared he was old and losing the dressing room, we were bound to fail) and a fair bit of discrimination of his age, i think if he was 20 years younges and was having the same problems but similar success then i cant help but think the crowd would of stuck by the manager more than they did, instead his age was used as a stick to beat him with, despite the fact his record stood at steering us to 4,3 and 5th all in his late 60's. I agree that there may of been an air of stubborness from the man, it seemed clear that he felt he had unfinished business with the club and felt he hadnt taken them as far as he could, and in my opinion, he could of taken us further, he had an incredibly poor season by his standards yet still finihsed 5th, this was after a season where he wasnt backed so after the high of getting a 3rd position finihs the season before to dropping to 5th the following season with the dterimental loss of a CL place he was unceremoniuously shown the door after all he had done. I dont know of another man who i would of trusted to turn it around, he was constantly undermined under his tenureship and had key players like Speed sold without his knowledge, something which effected the team somewhat in hindsight. Maybe theres an argument to say that his stubborness would of meant that he would of held on longer than would of been healthy for the club, but i dont think for one second it was fair, or even clever to sack him after the poorseason he had, there was no footballing reason to sack SBR, losing out on CL for 2 years was a major blow but we had an impressive run in the UEFA cup the season before having failed to qualify for the group stages and had also qualified again for the UEFA cup again, where maybe we would of started as favourites for the entire competition. It was a ridiculous sacking without the benefit of hindisght and a sacking in ridiculous circumstances. Something that i think this club paid for massively, some say that the apoointment of Souness was what damaged us the most, but i think those people need to ask themselves if there was a manager out there, better than SBR who would of taken the job after the manner of his sacking. Even the fact that he wasnt backed after his 3rd place finish, would of been a major sticking point in many managers eyes. He should of been given at least one more year to prove that the club wasnt about implode, every top manager has a poor season, Fergie has, Wenger has, Benitez has as well, Moyes has, every single one, and yet they are given the benefit why wasnt SBR given the same benfit....because of his age, ridiculous.

Id be more interested in seeing more home national managers to be honest, that would be more of a far reaching initative which may yield some results, well in my opinion anyway. I dont understand why Fifa and UEFA have such a vendetta against the PL. Would i be being arrogant if i said that the big 4 is only so because Newcastle fell back massively after SBR? That to me seems to be the point where the big 4 got the monolpoly on the prem.

Sad thing with thier current profile, chances are they will be able to get an even better manager in, his advisors wont be looking on these shores like Shepherd so thats where the similarities between us and Man C end after SBR, so the only option really is a world class manager. The only issue i can see with the next appointment will be the funding - surely Frank wont go back on his word about no investment this summer if a new managr is in charge.

Hold on, im sure all i said was i wouldnt be overwhlemed if we were looking to sign a player to replace one of our strongest performers in the team because they maybe wouldnt make a good partnership. But well said big man, you really made me look stupid there... But you've even said yourself you've never seen Dunne play so perhaps you should before judging if he'd make a good partner for someone or not. Hence why i asked whether he was a Terry type defender or a Ferdinand type defender, maybe i was wrong to say "it wouldnt work cos you never no" but i always known it to be comon lknowledge that the best combination of defenders are the ones that compliments and neutralise each others weaknesses, ie the different type of defenders, if they have the same attributes then surely they'll have the same weaknesses..... Makes sense in my head. I think that'd very true with striking partners and CM partners, but not so much with CB pairings. As long as the both understand each other and communicate well any two types of defenders can hit it off, its just a bonus if you have two which complement each other like that, imo of course. Fair enough.

Hold on, im sure all i said was i wouldnt be overwhlemed if we were looking to sign a player to replace one of our strongest performers in the team because they maybe wouldnt make a good partnership. But well said big man, you really made me look stupid there... But you've even said yourself you've never seen Dunne play so perhaps you should before judging if he'd make a good partner for someone or not. Hence why i asked whether he was a Terry type defender or a Ferdinand type defender, maybe i was wrong to say "it wouldnt work cos you never no" but i always known it to be comon lknowledge that the best combination of defenders are the ones that compliments and neutralise each others weaknesses, ie the different type of defenders, if they have the same attributes then surely they'll have the same weaknesses..... Makes sense in my head.

Just to reiterate i dont think the story is racist...

Hold on, im sure all i said was i wouldnt be overwhlemed if we were looking to sign a player to replace one of our strongest performers in the team because they maybe wouldnt make a good partnership. But well said big man, you really made me look stupid there...

Sorry but thats a load of s*** So its purley coincidence that the best partnerships in teams or footballing centre halves with wall centre halves, DM and AM and Big man Little man combinations....? You're right, it does sound like shit.

i'd rather play him with faye and sit taylor on his arse next to given tbh Cant play 2 defenders of the same style together it just doesnt work, like all partnerships througout centre of the team. so we should play a good one and a s**** one instead? aye, that'll work No, we shouldnt play 2 defnders of the same style, i thought that would be clear from my above quote, here i'll put it in bold for you... can you explain what the alternative is then? playing dunne and taylor? i'll stress again, we should play our 2 best central defenders, same style or not. if we were to sign dunne, taylor wouldnt be one of our two best defenders. Address the real weakness in the defence and look to sign the type of defender we need, address your weaknesses before you address your position of strength, like i say i wont be too overwhelmed if this comes off. Whats the point of playing your 2 best defenders together if they are unable to play together, it'd be like lampard and Gerrard for england....same concept different position. you miss the point. we are hardly overwhelmed with defensive talent at nufc incase you hadn't noticed, and we're not realy in a position to be picky about dropping a far superior defender (which faye is to taylor imo), for the sake that he is similar to richard dunne, who is also far superior defensively to mr taylor. and, to be honest, i relay dont think they are all that similar, they are both big, thats about it, but dunne doesnt get caught out by many one on one and has a turn of pace, he also commands the back four/leads from the back. can't say i've seen faye do any of these things? You need to get the balance right, hence the already estabilished and prven combination of having a footballing defender and a wall defender. All i was saying was that i dont think that combination would work because they are too similar. Hence why id be underwhelmed because id rather get the footballing defender in. One of them will be forced to not play his natural game and go into a role he's not comfortable with, that wouldnt make sense to me.

Do you not think that if something racist is said then maybe it should be pointed out? Or would that be getting in the way of a good story..... was it racist ? Open to interpretation i suppose. Personally in my opinion if race has no relevance to the context of a story or argument and it is mentioned then it shows that that person doesnt treat the person as equal. Im not saying that its a racist comment or the story is racist but if you see colour as a relevant factor to any anecdote irrespective of the connotations of the anecdote then in my opinion you dont see them as equals. Its just my view on attitude to racism, ive heard the whole "im not racist cos i dont hate them" and "i cant be racist because im firends with 'em" explanation so many times. If you cant consider someone as equal then you have racist views in my opinion.

i'd rather play him with faye and sit taylor on his arse next to given tbh Cant play 2 defenders of the same style together it just doesnt work, like all partnerships througout centre of the team. so we should play a good one and a s**** one instead? aye, that'll work No, we shouldnt play 2 defnders of the same style, i thought that would be clear from my above quote, here i'll put it in bold for you... can you explain what the alternative is then? playing dunne and taylor? i'll stress again, we should play our 2 best central defenders, same style or not. if we were to sign dunne, taylor wouldnt be one of our two best defenders. Address the real weakness in the defence and look to sign the type of defender we need, address your weaknesses before you address your position of strength, like i say i wont be too overwhelmed if this comes off. Whats the point of playing your 2 best defenders together if they are unable to play together, it'd be like lampard and Gerrard for england....same concept different position.

He's far better than Faye. So we are looking to replace our best centre half then? And what? Dunne is a player Keegan rates and has managed before, he's been excellent over the past 2 years so if Keegan wants to bring him here even at the expense of Faye then I'm fully behind it, Faye has played well for us over most of the season but he isn't the leader we need that can bring some organisation to the back four, Dunne is so get him in I say. Nothing, i was just under the impression we were looking to address our weaknesses in the first team...like i say i wont be too overwhelmed with it because i think its clear that we need a footballing defender.

i'd rather play him with faye and sit taylor on his arse next to given tbh Cant play 2 defenders of the same style together it just doesnt work, like all partnerships througout centre of the team. so we should play a good one and a s**** one instead? aye, that'll work No, we shouldnt play 2 defnders of the same style, i thought that would be clear from my above quote, here i'll put it in bold for you...

He's far better than Faye. So we are looking to replace our best centre half then?