By JMag
December 20 2004

IMHO he has probably done as much as he has been able to with the limited options he has had between the appointment and reopening of transfer window. Transfers aside he came in when the season was already in progress and Newcastle in internal crisis. By the look of some posts here people are judging Souness way too quickly. IMHO he has probably done as much as he has been able to with the limited options he has had between the appointment and reopening of transfer window. Transfers aside he came in when the season was already in progress and Newcastle in internal crisis.

It seems he had identified our defence and away form the immediate problem areas. He could only bring in old Ronny Johnsen who had to be patched up first and I think Souness wanted primarily to inject some experience and new blood into our shobby defence. Granted this small gamble hasn’t worked out, but what other options did Souness had? Plug in Taylor or other youngsters as CBs?

Souness did initially correct our poor away form by changing our midfield, but it seems this has been backfiring recently with absense of Butt and the way better teams expose our defense. But let’s not forget that he did get us decent results away from home even if the opposition was not of the highest calibre. What he actually did was dropping Robert and taking Bowyer off the right winger position. Honestly Robert has been poor this season by giving the ball away cheaply way too many times and some of of the other options like Milner and Ambrose are bit more hard working and defensive minded. Robert is already well known by other teams and he seems to have less impact than before. I don't know if dropping Robert has been ultimately the right choice (I'm big fan of him, but he hasn't been producing this season when given chance) but there has been valid reasons to do so.

Souness did not sell Solano and he didn’t buy those defenders. IMHO he has done well under the circumstances and at the end of August (Woodgate and SBR off, crazy management) it was already that this season was not going to be easy ride. Somehow I suspect SBR or many others would have not made a difference at this time of the season since our most critical problems have accumulated over long period of time.

At least Souness has identified our biggest issues and I have no doubt that he is going to move swiftly when more options become available to him. I’m quite sure that would not have been the case with SBR (with all respect to him).

I'm just saying give him the chance to have full pre-season and if things are still going badly after, then it can be said that it is fully his failure. No one can fix our defence with the players we have now unless we start to do Everton and Bolton, but that's just not for Newcastle.

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