Scottish Mag

Have just been talking to Jimbo saying exactly the same thing... Although until we know if Ashleys investing, selling up or asset stripping then it could all change.

I know we're supposed to have a 'big four' (as those nauseatingly advertised Super Duper Grand Slam Soapy Titwank Sundays remind us), but it's not even that competitive - Man Utd are adopting a stealthy dominance of the league once again, three times in a row they've won it now. Its not any more competitive than the SPL..

Will be announced Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 10:00 am.

He'll end up back at Ibrox. Only signed for us because of how close we are to Scotland what with his missus coming from up here.

He never won anything until he took over at Celtic and when you manage one of the Old Firm you are nearly always going to win something. Precisely. Even Graeme Souness won something (a lot more than Strachan) with an Old Firm club. Aye and thats when Celtic were skint and signing players like Wayne Biggins. Don't get me wrong I am not writing off any manger that has won things with them, just look at the likes of Advocaat and O'Neill but Strachan he was shit before he came up here and I was shocked that he got the job given that all he had done was get Coventry relegated and have 1 good season with Southampton. Btw snakehips I disagree Rangers got shafted, we were in the same position a few years ago when we were on our Uefa Cup runs, shit happens when you are competing on all fronts.

Whilst I do rate Krul through what I have seen of him at his time at Falkirk, you cannot judge a player on one game. David Marshall was just as good against Barcelona for Celtic.

My Dads, friends, mothers dog...

Alan Shearer will meet Mike Ashley tomorrow to try to thrash out an agreement which would see him sign a four-year contract as Newcastle United's manager. Before signing Shearer will drive a hard bargain with the owner of the newly relegated club. While Ashley has placed a deal running until 2013 on the table, the former England captain seems set to demand total autonomy over recruitment, a radical backroom revamp and a significant transfer budget. After failing to prevent the team from dropping into the Championship during his eight-game stay, Shearer will inform Ashley that the club require root-and-branch reform and advise the owner to help fund an immediate return to the Premier League by making a further investment, possibly as much as £30m. While the legal loose ends of Shearer's contract may not be tied up overnight, he has stressed the need for Ashley and his managing director, Derek Llambias, to act quickly. "Newcastle needs to be filled with people who love this club," he said. "The problem we've already got is that we're lagging behind the other Championship teams who have already started preparing for next season. Newcastle will be a huge scalp for the whole of the Championship and we're up against it already so big decisions need to be made and need to be made soon. I will give my opinions to the men in charge and then it's up to them to see where they want to go." Changes behind the scenes are expected to include the replacement of the senior coaches Chris Hughton and Colin Calderwood with John Carver. Until recently the manager of Toronto FC in Canada, Carver was extremely highly rated by Ruud Gullit and Sir Bobby Robson while serving as first-team coach under their charge. It is thought Carver's sudden resignation from Toronto and recent return to Tyneside are not entirely coincidental. Shearer also appears ready to create a role for his tactically astute former Newcastle and England team-mate Rob Lee, while Bob Dowie, the brother of Shearer's assistant Iain Dowie, may also become part of the new regime. Shearer and Ashley are agreed that there needs to be a mass clear-out of high-earning players – Newcastle have 15 of them commanding in excess of £50,000 a week – although, with many on long-term contracts this may be easier said than done. At first glance they look unlikely bedfellows but Newcastle's owner has been effectively backed into a corner by the club's record scorer and, with Shearer in a position of considerable strength, he is expected to bow to demands. Should negotiations break down and the local hero instead return to his former job as a pundit for the BBC, Ashley would face the full wrath of Newcastle fans who have struggled to forgive him for allowing Kevin Keegan to walk out last September. Moreover senior Newcastle players have urged the multimillionaire retailer to do everything in his power to retain Shearer. Steven Taylor and Damien Duff believe a major rethink is required at St James' Park and that Shearer is not only the right man to re-formulate philosophy and policy but also to lead them back into the Premier League. In a damning indictment of the modus operandi of previous managers, among them Joe Kinnear, Keegan and Sam Allardyce, Duff revealed. "This has been a proper club for eight weeks now." Tellingly Shearer, who has already overhauled the medical and scouting departments, is the first manager working for Ashley to have extracted significant concessions about the way the club is run from a man with whom Allardyce and Keegan struggled to communicate. The Ireland winger, signed three years ago from Chelsea by Glenn Roeder, feels such managerial clout will pay long-term dividends. "It's the first time in a long time that this place has felt like a proper football club," Duff said. "Alan Shearer has been brilliant for eight weeks. If there is one man to get us back up into the Premier League, it is him. Hopefully the gaffer will stay." Taylor, an England Under-21 centre-half, said: "There have to be big changes after this. People have to realise it is an honour to play for Newcastle United football club. You have to give it 100%. The past 10 months haven't been good enough. We need more belief and a positive mental attitude back. We need stability. The only person I think can take Newcastle back up to the Premier League is Alan Shearer. He has been fantastic to work with."

Newcastle's Peter Lovenkrands could leave St James' Park in search of top-flight football, according to the winger's agent. The Magpies were relegated on the final day of the Premier League season as they lost 1-0 at Aston Villa to bring to an end 16 years in the pinnacle division. Lovenkrands' six-month deal in the North East is due to expire in June and his agent, Ivan Marko Benes, has confirmed that the Dane is looking to extend his stay in England. But the 29-year-old is also keen to play in a principal league, claims Benes, meaning Newcastle, who will be playing Championship football in 2009/10, may not be an option. "We are looking for a new contract for Peter in England," Benes told Bold.dk. "Most players want to play in the top division, so Peter is no different." Lovenkrands had hinted earlier in May that he was keen to extend his stay on Tyneside.

He never won anything until he took over at Celtic and when you manage one of the Old Firm you are nearly always going to win something.

The talk up here has been linking him with the mackems. Heres hoping.

Has left Celtic. Heres hoping hes going to the Mackems...

Am not that up on labour law but a company can change the contract of its employees if it suffers a significant changes in its circumstances. Otherwise how would companies be allowed to make redundancies? Employment law accounts for these things i believe. Fair enough if thats the case. Just cannot see the modern day footballer voluntarily doing it...

I keep seeing all this talk of pay cuts. If there is no relegation clauses in their contracts does anyone really believe that any of the players will take a voluntary pay cut? No chance..

http://www.true-faith.co.uk/tf/editorials....B8?OpenDocument

He'll be one of the first to be shown the door if Shearer stays on..

How do you know that? I think he could be very good in the championship. 65k a week good?

If we don't give Krul his chance now he will be off too. There were a couple of decent Dutch sides linked with him last summer and whispers of interest from Chelsea. I really cannot see him being happy as a back up keeper in the Championship. Saying that would it surprise anyone to see Ashley cash in on him? Thats the worrying thing for me, whilst a lot of us are trying to take positives and looking at the likes of Taylor, Guthrie, Krul etc to play a big part can we really trust that the clowns in charge will not let them go at the first possible chance they get?

He'll still get a decent payday somewhere. In January he was linked with La Liga sides was he not? I think he'll prefer the Spanish beaches rather than Blackpool beach tbh..

The same as now I would expect. They will say the extra 4 games a season warrants the same price...

Can't believe people are still posting shit like this over on N-O Fucking clueless.

At twenty to five on Sunday afternoon, the look on the faces of the several hundred faithful crammed into Shearer's bar in Newcastle was familiar to anyone who has ever seen one of those documentaries about prisoners on death row As a shot from Aston Villa's Gareth Barry took an exaggerated deflection off Damien Duff and headed for the bottom corner of their team's goal, the Newcastle United fans looked like those who, after knowing it was coming for an age, had finally been given a date of their own execution. They did not appear surprised or angry or exercised by the unfairness of it all. Rather they stood, open-mouthed, silent, bereft, like they had been expecting this for some time. It was a beautiful day on Tyneside for an execution. All over the city, those fans who hadn't made it to Villa Park to watch the death throes of their team's 16 year Premier League life, were peeling off their replica shirts and exposing to the sun physiques that even their mother would have difficulty describing as attractive. But then, as someone pointed out, they do that in February up here. Hundreds turned up to watch the game on the televisions in Shearer's, the largest licensed premises in the city, which runs half the length of the Gallowgate End underneath St James's Park itself. Inside, this was a nervy congregation, quiet, subdued, about to spend 90 minutes snacking on their fingernails. "You lot in the media seem to think every Newcastle fan is laughably optimistic," said Elliott, a student at Newcastle College. "But they're not. They're really pessimistic. Specially this year. I don't suppose there's many in here who thinks we'll win today." He was right. Most fans in the place seemed long ago to have resigned themselves to relegation. "There's a big myth about expectation in this town," added Mark, whose job is to scout for locations in the area for film and television productions. "But I don't expect nothing. Listen, we've not won anything for 40 years, so why should I? The best I'm hoping for is the team to represent our town properly. And right now, this lot don't." Mark remembers when they did, however. In the late-Nineties, under Kevin Keegan, the buzz of a team competing for honours reflected the regeneration of the city: together club and town seemed to be going places. He used to be inundated with film companies anxious to enjoy a slice of Newcastle's renown. And they always wanted to know about the football club. In those times, the players were the ambassadors of the Geordie nation, a nation on the march. Now, the story coming out of Newcastle is one of despair and decline. And the rest of the country tends to view the city and its football team through the prism of the rentamob who turn up outside St James's Park to get their wobbly jowls on Sky Sports News at every opportunity: the bloke with the enormous head, the man who claims to be Alan Shearer's cousin, the couple of lads who can't spell "boycott", a pantomime cast suitable for football's most comical soap opera. And if you want to know who the locals blame for all this, who they feel reckon has sent their club on its downward spiral, you don't have to look far. Midway through the second half, as their team failed to muster anything remotely to match the passion of its followers, the club owner Mike Ashley's face came up on the screens dotted around Shearer's. Suddenly the place erupted into fume-specked fury. The boos were insistent and angry. One fan threw a pint at his face. Like the team's shooting, though it was woefully off-target, and splashed down his mate's back, causing a momentary internecine push-me-pull-you. "It's all Ashley's fault," said Mark. "He's sold off our best players, brought nothing in and if we go down with him still in charge it'll be bloody hard to get back up. The man's made all that money in business yet appears to be a complete idiot when it comes to running our club." As the game progressed, however, even the energy generated by anger at Ashley began to ebb. Newcastle's woeful season did what the club's loyal supporters had long feared: it petered out. In Shearer's, the final whistle at Villa Park was greeted with silence. A profound, unhappy, dispirited quiet gripped the place. "Aye, I'm off to realise my investment," said Dave, when he could muster the energy to speak. "I've bought a load of rope and I'm ganna sell it to folk on Tyne Bridge." Outside the television cameras lined up to record the funeral. But no-one was in the mood to give them the pictures they expected. No-one was blubbing, no-one protesting. Instead, they wandered off to drown their sorrows somewhere, anywhere else; somewhere where they wouldn't be putting money in Ashley's pocket. And, as the fans made their way from Shearer's, the last of the afternoon's sun was catching the top of St James's Park. It looked magnificent up there on its hilltop dominating the city, its white tubing roof glowing, a shameless monument to local pride, and now the biggest stadium in the Championship. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/...tle-league.html

I still don't think Shola will be anymore than a squad player. Yes we will have to sell and get the wage bill down, but replacements will come in.

I would start looking about the SPL for a few bargains. Aye many rip the piss on here but some of the players whose names have been banded about as of late went from the SPL to the Championship for peanuts such as Ross McCormack, Jason Scotland and Ricardo Fuller.