Souness: some thoughts
Thanks to everyone who sent us emails about the shock appointment of Graeme Souness as the next Newcastle manager. Here's some thoughts of our own:
At best it's an unadventurous appointment. The sort that a club scrapping around in mid-table obscurity might make. Clubs like... errr... Blackburn. It's just shuffling the Premiership pack.
If we had got Freddy's first choice, Steve Bruce, you'd expect Birmingham to appoint someone like Graeme Souness, then Blackburn could appoint Paul Sturrock and so on and so on. It's the easy option.
Tottenham and Liverpool, to their credit, went down the more courageous route. Spurs appointing the former coach of a side that had won the World Cup and Euro Championship, Jacques Santini, while Liverpool persuaded Rafael Benitez to leave UEFA Cup winners Valencia.
Not forgetting Chelsea, who had the financial clout and buying power to persuade the manager of the Champions League winners away from Porto.
Three appointments of non-British managers with international pedigrees. Proven winners and all of them given time to buy the players they wanted and mould them into a squad, before the season started.
Meanwhile, those lovable Geordies kept the nation entertained with an ill-timed managerial dismissal - the day before the transfer window closed - after selling their most saleable asset. Both decisions now obviously made on the cuff, without any future planning, whatsoever.
Both decisions had some merit, but only if what was lost was replaced by something better. Woodgate wasn't even replaced, while Robson for Souness is like scrapping a vintage car - that undoubtedly needed changing - and getting a saloon instead. Functional but distinctly uninspiring.
So who should we have appointed? Well, the suggestion of Ottmar Hitzfeld seemed a good one. Someone with a fantastic track-record and an appointment that most of us would have been prepared to give time to succeed.
Perhaps he was asked, perhaps he turned us down, perhaps no-one in our boardroom had ever heard of him. We don't know.
More likely, is that a short-list of would-be successors was drawn up and put in order of Geordieness. So, once Shearer and Bruce ruled themselves out then there was only Bryan Robson available, with Brian Little even behind John McCririck in the betting.
Even three million pieces of silver weren't enough to persuade Steve Bruce to jump ship, although when he finally takes over at Old Trafford we'll read in his inevitable biography just how close he came. After all, it's his hometown club, the one he supported as a boy etc. etc.
Venables, Strachan and O'Leary were the others in the frame. Big names but with reputations enhanced by their punditry more than their plunder. Bluster rather than booty. At least we didn't get any of those three stooges.
Most of the favourable comments about Souness mention his ability to kick backsides, smack heads and knock people into shape. Is this what discipline is?
That sort of approach used to work on the pitch... until they introduced discipline. Souness the player would be red-carded every other game nowadays - if he wasn't already serving a suspension. The game has moved on. How many backsides has Arsene Wenger kicked to put together his unbeatable side?
And contrary to popular opinion, we had a disciplinarian at the club not so long ago. Cuddly old Bobby Robson was one of the toughest nuts in the game. He could have the Duncan Fergusons of this world acting like naughty schoolboys in front of the headmaster - it just happened on the training pitches away from the public gaze.
Perhaps that's where Bobby went wrong. Perhaps he was too much from the old school of treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen, which starts to wear thin after a while. But Bobby could also put his arm round a player and make them feel like worldbeaters with a few well chosen words. But even that wasn't working in the end.
Anyone who thinks that Souness will come along and knock our prima donnas into some sort of shape is kidding themselves. Managers have to be smarter than that. Perhaps Souness figured that out after realising that Andrew Cole and Dwight Yorke couldn't be bullied into submission at Ewood Park and in his rational moments, he later admitted his errors.
It's down to the players to introduce some self-discipline and maturity. The clever ones will work that out for themselves in the next four months, while the rest can go in the January sales.
Bobby Robson was always able to harp back to the day when he took over a club in turmoil that was one place off the bottom. Souness may legitimately claim similar but let's hope he doesn't. It didn't wash when Bobby did it.
Whatever anyone thinks, a decision has been taken and an appointment has been made. Let's get on with it.
Souness may be the latest recipient of the poisoned chalice but he's actually got the best job in football. All he has to do is win six games, they just have to be in the same cup competition.
He managed that at Blackburn and a repeat at St. James' would have the doubters tucking into humble pie. As those Arsenal fans who sneered "Arsene Who?" will testify, humble pie can taste rather good. The larger the slice the better....
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