By Scott R
March 20 2006

If you were a chairman, a chairman of a premiership football club with one of the largest capacity grounds, loyally attending fans who helped produce the 11th largest revenue in world football, the highest of any club without income from European football...

If you were a chairman, a chairman of a premiership football club with one of the largest capacity grounds, loyally attending fans who helped produce the 11th largest revenue in world football, the highest of any club without income from European football and the corresponding lucrative broadcasting deals what would be your shortlist of attributes for the man who will identify the players your club will need, lead coaching sessions and choose tactics for the games those players will be involved in?

The answer isn’t obvious, there are many ways to prioritize a list, many ways to weight the various factors and countless variables to identify, analyze and discuss. It isn’t easy, that’s for sure.

On the other hand it is blatantly clear when an answer is stupid. For example, how stupid would someone have to be to have a checklist that said; British (+5 points for being a Geordie like)? Pretty fuckinging stupid in my opinion.

The chairman of Newcastle has an unenviable task before him, unfortunately it is one entirely of his own making as nobody else has made the decisions that have led us to where we on today and nobody else is in a position to stabilize our listing battleship of a club, (as much as he’d like to pretend otherwise or as much as we’d like to be).

Five long term managers during our 12 and ¾ season long Premiership stint, only two of those can make any claim towards overseeing a successful era and of those two only one was the appointment of the current chairman (of course that man just so happened to have been the desired target of the previous chairman too… allegedly).

That’s just part of the story, obviously. We also have to consider the nature of the replacements. In the beginning we had a manager who could have been forgiven anything in the eyes of our club. He’d saved us from a trip into football oblivion by rescuing us from decent into the (old) third division. The genius motivator, aided by financial backing of a new and enthusiastic chairman then made a number of superlative bargain buys and oversaw our dramatic promotion into England’s top league. The fairy tale continued, in our first season we finished third. Behind easily the best team in the league masterminded by Fergie the grey haired fox and behind a Blackburn side buoyed by the countless millions of a local scrap merchant “done good”.

It got better. Again with a combination of shrewd buys, powerful motivation and enviable financial backing Keegan generated a brand of football that graced the Premiership finishing sixth in the following season and then runners up the season afterward. A mere 4 points behind champions Manchester United following a disappointing 14 point haul from the final 8 games of the season and a huge early season lead thrown away. Largely, it is said, thanks to the mind games of the afore mentioned silver fox.

The next season saw the departure of the manager in January. He had lost his love for the game despite crushing a hapless Spurs side 7-1 barely a week before his resignation. Anything to do with the appointment of the new Chairman? We toon faithful hoped not. Well established as England’s 2nd team (both in ability and by choice of football fans around the country) the future was bright…. Or so we thought.

All eyes turned to Shepard and the region expected. Could there have been a more attractive club in world football with a managerial vacancy at the time? It is difficult to imagine how. Premiership football was the equal of any league in Europe, large broadcast fees were added to the budget of every club and Newcastle was a club full of international stars and had the money to buy more.

Shepard appointed Kenny Dagleish and in fairness his reign started well enough. Changes were conservative, only the sale of Ginola to Spurs caused any fan of the mercurial Frenchmen heart ache. In return, and much to his credit, Dagleish brought in a player who remains a vital part of our first eleven to this day. One Shay Given, snapped up from Blackburn for a mere £1.5m pounds.

The beginning on the new season, however, showed us exactly what we were in for. Out went a number of fan favourites and club mainstays. Including goal machine Les Ferdinand, the aging Peter Beardsley, legendary Tino Asprilla and full back John Beresford.

Their replacements, 20 players in all, were disappointing to say the least. Of all those players only 3 would endear themselves to the Geordie public and play a significant role in the future. The rest were Liverpool has beens or Liverpool never would bes (the managers son) and a host of largely useless players from the continent or lower league clubs. Unsurprisingly Newcastle flopped in the next season, finishing 13th. The season after offered no promise of improvement and two draws prompted the chairman to realize what the fans had long ago and the axe fell.

Just an aberration we thought. Our squad has lots of dead weight but with a good manager and the right financial backing we can turn this around. We’re Newcastle United. We’ve been runners up twice in the last three years!

Our manager had his replacement lined up of course and Dagleish made way for ex Chelsea manager Ruud Gullit. More wholesale changes, a couple of decent buys and a host of flops joined the club and, true to form, following a disastrous season of lacklustre performances and a poor start to the new one Gullit jumped before he was pushed.

This would have been bad enough, football disaster heaped upon football disaster but at some point Shepard decided to spice things up in his own unique style. In a scoop which would land him “Reporter of the Year Award” fake sheikh Mahzer Mahood of the News of the World captured Chairman and Vice Chairman on film disgracing themselves before the world and, far more importantly, in front of the fans who were mocked for purchasing club merchandise by the barrel load, whose women were called “dogs” and whose playing hero was called “the Mary Poppins” of football for his model professional behaviour. The pair resigned only to vote themselves back on to the board a few months later as majority share holders. A disgraceful episode from a man who should have been flogging himself for his own conduct both at the club and out of it.

The next chapter was started by local legend and all round nice guy Sir Bobby Robson who was appointed to the job, allegedly the choice of Sir John Hall who had wanted Robson over Gullit in the first place. For a time, at least, it seems our fortunes were restored despite Robson starting his reign shopping in the bargain basement thanks to two consecutive seasons of pissing money up the wall, the chairman’s relegation fears were staved off. A series of questionable players were accompanied by Craig Bellamy, Jermaine Jenas, Laurent Robert (plus later Jonathon Woodgate sometime later) and Newcastle captured 4th place, 3rd then 5th place is consecutive seasons.

Behind the scenes, however, things weren’t going well. At some point Robson lost his dressing room. His young players weren’t showing enough respect and some of his signings showed their nasty temperament more than equalled their ability. With his, by now, legendary timing the axe fell again, a few games into the 2004/5 season.

Not surprisingly replacements were proving difficult to come by. Not only was the new season under way but Newcastle United, although undoubtedly a big club, was a managerial pressure pot. Shepard ended up appointing a man believed to be his fourth choice or worse from a list of utterly uninspiring (but British!) managers. Graeme Souness. More money was spent, although this managerial failure brought in more good than bad, a disastrous season (caused largely by a fall out with the afore mentioned trouble makers) was followed by another disastrous half season in which Newcastle players were plagued by a veritable catalogue of injuries leaving millions upon millions of pounds worth of talent sidelined for more games than they played. Souness failed to get enough from the admittedly poor back ups and Shepard’s axe fell again.

So this is where we find ourselves. Currently under the able stewardship of Glenn Roeder we have never the less been reminded of the importance of appointing the right long term candidate as Fergie, the silver fox, handed a timely lesson in how to approach the game tactically while getting a 100% work rate from a team littered with talented stars (what a nice fellow he’s been to us over the years!).

So has Freddy learned his lesson? That’s the million dollar question right there and the signs aren’t promising. This time round Freddy is taking his time but placing Newcastle under the care of a man who has overseen the relegation of every club he’s managed was a massive gamble. Fortunately it is one that seems to have paid off (for now).

Freddy has talked about past failures and, in his own unique style, has attempted to pass the buck calling Gullit the “fans choice”. There is only one response that the English language with its potential for poetic description and rhetorical flourish can offer. Namely, FUCK RIGHT off. The only feeling I remember having at the time was concern when the appointment was made, unlike now the fans didn’t have enough time to make their voices heard and I personally didn’t know any who was ecstatic at the idea of appointing a man who’d been fired from a small London club and who had named the purchase of our best player, our shining light, our Mary Poppins, “crazy”. “Can’t be any worse” was the feeling of most, “might rescue us from the drab football of his predecessor” might have accompanied it but he was never in a million years the “fans choice”.

This time it’s different, this time the fans have voiced their opinions and time will tell if those voices have been heard. Opinion polls in the local paper and web campaigns have produced one name above all others; Omar Hitzfeld. A man who has enjoyed unparalleled success with every club he has managed, the man who is loved by his players, the man who has won the champions league on multiple occasions. Perfect, some think, he’s out of work and has mentioned both his desire to manage in the Premiership and his lack of concern over the stature of the club for which he is looking.

It’s just not that easy though, is it? I mean how could it be? That choice, for example, has been denigrated by local radio “legend” Mick Lowes as one made by the “idiot minority”. That’s right, a manager successful at all levels at multiple clubs from multiple countries is the choice of the “idiot minority”. You really couldn’t make this up.

There is, once again, only one appropriate response. fuck you too fatty. In what world is the choice of such an obviously outstanding candidate “idiocy”, in the world where intelligence is determined by an individual’s capacity for pie consumption no doubt. Lowes has linked us to brilliant luminaries of the game like Alladyce (check his CV fat man), Pardew (ditto), Jewell (ditto) and the plastic Geordie Bruce (ditto). There is one idiot here and that’s the man with the microphone.

Allied in the bizarre cause is Freddy’s firm friend and local media “personality”. Anal, excuse me, Alan Oliver. The man who uses his column in a popular local paper to boost his own ego, damage the club and abuse the emotional state of the fans. If there is a bigger millstone around the clubs neck, besides the chairman of course, it is this man. His candidate of choice is Martin O’Neill. It could be worse, I’ll be the first to admit that, but his cynical manipulation of events and egotistical spouting leave the man without a single redeeming feature in my mind. Here’s a message for you as well Anal, “fuck off you twat”.

But I digress, so back to the point. What is the check list for the right candidate, what should we be looking for? Despite the lack of our Chairman’s half a million salary and various huge share dividend pay outs it’s blatantly obvious that there are few people in the North East less qualified to offer their opinion than him so here is mine.

1. Has managed a top club in one of Europe’s top leagues.
2. Has qualified in consecutive seasons for European competition.
3. Has won silverware.
4. Has a proven track record in the transfer market.
5. Has never overseen the decline of a football club.
6. Is willing to work with the nucleus of players at the club, making changes with a long term plan and structure in mind.
7. Has worked with top European players.

Check past candidates against that list Freddy and hang your head in shame. More importantly check future candidates against it too because if one thing is certain, if we can be sure of anything, its that you are on your last legs.

Another hapless appointment and sections of the fans may just want to resurrect the medieval tradition of sticking the heads of those they dislike on Pikes at the entrances to town. Another hapless appointment and I’ll be the one with the blunt axe, it will hurt more. My only hope is that I’d get to you first, unlikely at best.

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