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Alternate NUFC Timeline


bulivye

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been reading some stuff on alternatehistory.com ( you know, what if Harold not William had won at Hastings? etc) & it got me thinking about where everything went wrong for this club.  at what point did everything start going tits up? 

 

i'm not sure i know enough to comment intelligently on where, if we could intervene in the real timeline of NUFC, we'd have been better off today if only we'd not done X, or, HAD done Y...  sacking SBR? hiring Souness? fat freddie's selling up to the wrong chap? 

 

curious to read what you lot think...

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Only signing Lee Bowyer in 2003. Two or three quality additions could have seen us win the league and from there who knows.

 

I would agree here. That summer was so depressing. Souness cropped us, Owen cost us, Pardew crippled us and Carver killed us. Throughout this Ashley became increasingly desperate to invest as little as possible.

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so 2003 was the year of our undoing?

I'd say so, although you could obviously point to Fenton's goals in 1996 if you wanted to go further back as a huge turning point in our recent-ish history.

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Guest Howaythetoon

Peter Schmeichel and Eric Cantona. Had we won the title, I think more titles would have followed and maybe even European success. It was only 3 years after KK left that Man Utd won the EC. That KK side was the best footballing side in the world at the time and I think our style would have eventually won us stuff.

 

Other critical timelines were the IPO of the club, not getting Sir Bobby in earlier and then the appointment of Souness. I'd also like to see how we would have fared under a Shepherd/Big Sam era, I think we would never have been relegated and would have probably become a stable top 7 club or something and maybe even enjoyed a Cup win or come close.

 

Going back in time in the 20s we were all about winning titles, but following relegation in the 40s and a few cup successes in the 50s the club were happy to prioritise cups and have an attacking team spearheaded by a number 9 as fans lapped it up, rgeardless of league finishes. Jackie Milburn once revealed that the players were told to forget about the league and concentrate on the Cups. We were once in the title race, but the club played weakened sides in order to progress in the FA Cup. How times have changed.

 

We stopped trying to win titles and clubs like Man Utd and Liverpool overtook us, along with the likes of Spurs and Everton. Arsenal were always a major power. Eventually we become just another club.

 

As ever with NUFC, its always been about money. We have spent big money, but badly and we haven't invested in our youth in the entire history of the club. The likes of Waddle, Gazza and Beardsley should have had the then club appointing top managers and spending top money on building a top team with them as we certainly had the crowds or could get them.

 

Sir Bobby's father wanted him to join Newcastle, the Charltons their father wanted them to play for NUFC, but even as much as they wanted to themselves, they knew NUFC were not the best place to be for a talented kid so they went elsewhere. We lost out on some incredible talent as a result of that.

 

For me the biggest mistake this club has ever made was floating on the stock market. Prior to that we were one of the richest clubs in the world behind Man Utd in terms of growth. We went from making a 6m loss to turning over 60m in just 4 years or so and breaking the world record transfer fee.

 

The Halls and the Shepherds cashed in though.

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Guest Howaythetoon

So, HTT, in that season where we lost the title to MU in the closing days... what's the key moment or tipping point that sent us on our way to where we are now?

 

 

No aspect of that era sent us to where we are now.

 

When KK left, so did the ambition to be the very best. The Halls and Shepherds thought because they had 'made it' it would always be like it was under KK, if not with KK someone else. Trouble is, that NUFC was 90% KK. He dragged this club towards the very pinnacle pretty much off his own esteem. Yet people still slag him.

 

I'll tell you what, take away KK from 1992 and we would be Sheff Wed right now.

 

He was the one that got us promotion, got us playing exciting football, got us in a position to sign good to top players and got us to within a whisker of wining the league. He was NUFC, or rather that NUFC.

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We came along probably 5 years too early. If there'd been the 3-4 Champions League qualifiers at the time of Keegan, I think we'd still be at that level.

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Failing to appoint Robson in Jan 97...

 

Since he wasn't available we should have waited until the summer, appointing Dalglish felt like it made sense at the time though.

 

That's definitely the point it went south like, then there's Ashley buying the club rather than someone who wanted to run us properly, Keegan feeling inclined to pack it in in the first place in 97, to a far lesser extent choosing Butt over Carrick the summer before Robson got sacked.

 

It's all ifs, buts and maybes but at least we used to make these mistakes in good faith while striving to improve, no matter how flawed the decisions were.

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Lots of options, but I would say Souness. A better appointment there and things are a lot different.

 

The way that went down... the Summer before ourselves and Liverpool were in very similar situations wait until things go south or push on and be pro active.

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Aye. They sack Houllier and get Benitez...we cling on to Robson 4 months too long then replace him terribly.

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I wonder if Graham Fenton regrets scoring those 2 goals. When Batty scored the title was still in our own hands. Not winning that title changed us mainly because it affected KK, we may have signed Shearer but KK clearly had self doubts after blowing the league, there was all the flotation talk and he walked too early. We should have tied the bugger down and made him stay.

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Not getting rid of Shearer when his legs started going. Getting rid of Sir Bob. (the two are linked)

Appointing Keegan the second time round.

Appointing Kinnear DOF.

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Not getting rid of Shearer when his legs started going. Getting rid of Sir Bob. (the two are linked)

Appointing Keegan the second time round.

Appointing Kinnear DOF.

 

The first mistake Shepherd made was not getting rid of Bobby in the summer of 2004 (that 5th place finish massively glossed over how shit we were that season) and his next one was appointing Souness instead of someone decent.

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