David Kelly

Not a problem apologies for the fuck off then I noticed someone else the other night mention the Shearer Haters. I for one idolise him as a player and I would fully support him if he was to get the job. Its the mass hysteria that surrounds him that I am questioning. I really think Tyneside would be up in arms if it was anyone else in the same position getting linked, but still cannot get my head round why its ok for Shearer then. I know some argue "he knows the club" whatever that means, but so do many other ex-players but i really do not think they would get the same acceptance. The mass hysteria could well be the key reason to give him the job. This club is as flat as a fart at the minute and we could do with some hysteria to get things moving again. More than anything else I think that was what worked with Keegan.

I've got nothing against him, I've always quite liked him actually, it's the decision to appoint him that I have a problem with!

Is there a word that means the same as no but is a million times stronger. I really do not see the point in exchanging one mediocre manager for another. Yes he may try and implement a better style of football than Allardyce but really anyone could do that. I would like to think that we are a club with ambition, and I'm not talking about some wild belief that we should be challenging for the league next year or anything like that. We are a club with better resources than 90% of the teams in this country and as such we should be able to compete with anyone and look to be sniffing around the top five on a consistant basis. Appointing a manager who has no track record, is managing a team only three places above us, a team who have won only two home games all season and have failled to score in most of their home games is not showing any sort of ambition as far as I can see. If he is given a vast transfer kitty who will he be able to spend it on? What has he got to attract top class players? The level he has been at for years is what he is good at and isn't what's going to be needed to take a team into Europe. Yet another fuckup by this club and a worrying sign of either the intent or intellegence of our owner.

Yet another case of a manager being overrated by the press a la Souness. I really am struggling to find much in the way of positives here other than his teams usually play half decent football (albeit without any great success in winning games). Most of all I am just pissed off that we've made no effort at all to bring in a top class manager. Chirst even Birmingham showed more ambtion than us. I'm not suggesting for a minute that I expected the likes of Mourinho to be banging down our door but surely we could at least try. Maybe we can get a couple of seasons out of Redknapp where we start moving forward a bit and get into the UEFA cup and then we can try again with a top class manager. Now have a look at their away record I very rarely get to away games these days so that means fuck all to me Anyway you won't get very far if you can only win away. You need to be picking up points at home.

Yet another case of a manager being overrated by the press a la Souness. I really am struggling to find much in the way of positives here other than his teams usually play half decent football (albeit without any great success in winning games). Most of all I am just pissed off that we've made no effort at all to bring in a top class manager. Chirst even Birmingham showed more ambtion than us. I'm not suggesting for a minute that I expected the likes of Mourinho to be banging down our door but surely we could at least try. Maybe we can get a couple of seasons out of Redknapp where we start moving forward a bit and get into the UEFA cup and then we can try again with a top class manager.

And I think Shearer would demand a significant transfer kitty before accepting the job

This might be true but clearly we haven't gone for them or a deal for Redknapp couldn't be nearly done. And if we were putting feelers out before Sam got the bullet and found out that they weren't interested then why bother sacking one mediocre manager to get another in. Would have much preferred Jol myself and surely he would have been interested.

Sums up my feelings. For what it's worth, here's Redknapp's recent record: West Ham 1997/98 8th 1998/1999 5th 1999/2000 9th 2000/2001 15th (sacked after 37 games) Portsmouth (1st spell) 2002/2003 1st, promoted to Premier League 2003/2004 13th 2004/2005 resigns in November Southampton 2004/2005 20th, relegated after taking over in December Portsmouth (2nd spell) 2005/2006 17th after taking over in November 2006/2007 9th Slightly better than I had expected but generally what I thought. Mediocre. True he's never had the funds of mangers at bigger clubs but there is a reason why the've never appointed him.

Hughes would be bad enough but at least he still has his career ahead of him, Redknapp is 60 and done nothing in carreer to suggest he is capable of building a team that is capable of mounting an attack on the top six. His preferred style of football might make the team play a bit better than Allardyce but that is the only positive I think of. If he has players in mind that he wants to sign this transfer window they are going to be Portsmouth standard players and while they might have a better team than us at the moment they are still a club that would see top ten as an excellent acheivement. While I would accept that this season, this certainly isn't where we need to be targeting going forward and these types of players aren't going to get us there. If this happens we really need to stop deluding ourselves that we are a big club because yet again we have failled to show the vision of a big club. To say I will be pissed off would be an understatement. It would be a worse day than the day we appointed Souness because before then our previous managerial appointments had been positive (even if they were failure in Dogleish and Gullit's cases) but now it's just one mess after another.

This is the kind of rumor you need to keep to yourself mate. I've already got the post christmas blues the thought of that useless cockeny being our next manager might send me over the edge!

Does being ITK help you spot someone in Ponteland. Surely all you need is working eyes!

I can't understand why we would even consider Redknapp. What sort of long term plan does that provide with him being 60. Surely he's not planning on working for much longer.

I'm with the lets get it out of the way brigade. Hopefully we will have some quality options and a quality apointment will be made. I'm not convinced though and if we're going to waste time with the likes of Redknapp, Hughes, McClaren or whatever we might as well go with someone unproven who will get better backing (both financially and from the fans) than the majority.

This is true. A few people I worked with back then thought Souness was ideal to sort out Dyer, Bellamy et al. You just have to bite your tongue sometimes like. Exactly. We all heard the 'Souness is just the hard man to sort out those overpaid premadonnas' shite. It's no good believing that all football fans have the sense to consider managers from across Eurpoe with glittering cv's. The fact is that there is a very large vocal section of supporters who are thick as shit. While we would all like to believe thet retarded charvas that Sky find outside the ground at times like these have been searched out just to make us look bad, the fact is there is always plenty of them about. And we're not alone in this by any means, if you ever listen to the Legends most of the callers are fucking retarded and Talk Sport and Five Live isn't much better.

Personally I think the bit about Shearer is spot on. You have to remember that most of our support isn't based around message boards like this but by the masses that believe every word Anal Oliver writes. These people who enjoy but know sod all about football all think Shearer is a god who can do no wrong and him being manager is the only thing that will pacify them. I've already had several people say to me that we should get him in (some suggesting along with Keegan) so no one is going to tell me that 98% of our fans don't want him.

I think performances over the Christmas period and the Barton affair had weakend his position but there must have been a final straw which I can only think can have come in terms of Allardyce's transfer targets being very different from the boards or a manager they really wanted given them the nod. Hopefully it's a bit of both because if SA was coming to Mort saying I need £10m to spend on Nolan, Diarra and some no marks from the Portugese league instead of saying we need to get some creativity into the team, it should have sounded some alarm bells ringing with Mort and Ashley deciding that rather than wasting some money on Allardyce they can give it and a lot more to a new guy who they belive in and they are confident of getting.

I've never seen Enrique have a really bad game tbh (although I didn't see the Liverpool game when he was supposed to be shite) and there have been several games where Cacapa has looked class. Strange that they are being singled out when Smith and Geremi have barely put a foot right. Allardyce's inability to adapt has surprised me quite a bit. The guy is supposed to be one of the most forward thinking managers in the game yet he expected the fans of a club that has twice played in the champions league in recent memory and finished in the top six several times over the past fifteen years, to accept the same mentality of a club that has next to no resources or fans and are delighted to be finishing anywhere above fifteenth. I thought he was smarter than that.

My biggest worry is whether Ashley and Mort know enough about football to make the right decision. Neither of them have any experience in doing something like this. As I said in another thread I hope to god they are getting some advice from someone more knowlegeable than them. That said the names most football pundits are throwing up wouldn't inspire much confidence either.

I do care if we lose. I would take less exciting football (although not as dull as Allardyce) if it meant winning something. I'm just idealist/greedy I suppose. I want to win, but I want to do it in style. We weren't winning many games under Allardyce though and just scraping the ones we did get against crap sides. The reason the football was dull was because we were shit. If we were a good team we would by definition be playing much more entertaining football.

I'm still confused. What is about Mourinho's football which isn't "good"? Or are you pining for the old Keegan style days of no matter what the result is, we'll entertain...? Mourinho rapidly brought domestic success to a club that was effectively 'sleeping' almost as much as we are. His time at Chelsea came to an end because he was fed up of interference to team matters from the non-footballing personnel. And frankly, who can blame him?? Do I think he's a realistic prospect? No. Would I welcome him as our next manager? Damned fucking right I would! And anyone who says otherwise is a few sandwiches short of a picnic! Quoted for truth. And I would also say that I would take winning every day over entertaining football although I really don't think you can have one without the and anyone who thinks Chelski fans were coming away from Stamford Bridge feeling like they weren't being entertained is deluding themselves. There is nothing more entertaining than seeing top class players winning every week.

We might as well go for a flavour of the month as that's all the time they get here

I don't think any of our previous targets are of any concern any more. The new manager will have his own ideas and will have to be bloody quick to get anyone in.

I think you have nailed it. I hope you have nailed it. I'm really hoping Ashley really wants to see us up there with the big boys and is prepared to back a top class manager in order to do it. I hope he takes some advice from people with more football knowlege than him (David Dien would be a canny place to start). I'm used to the shite we had to suffer from Shepherd so I'm certainly not at the stage where I'm expecting any of this though and rumours of the likes of Redknapp certainly aren't helping me!

Aye that is spot on tbh. I can't really say I'm in favour of sacking a manger after so little time but after some initially promissing moves in the transfer market in the summer there is very little you can say that Sam did right and our attacking play is fucking horrendous.

Thank fuck for that, hopefully there's something in the Hiddink link at the bottom of that article, although I seriously doubt it.