Anyone see SJH in yesterday's Mirror? He was praising YBR but also said that he had to achieve something in the next two years. He said that the next two years are critical for us as we really MUST be involved in Europe. He also slagged off Gullit and Dalglish to an extent, saying that, after the work and effort that had gone into the club, it was heartbreaking to see us struggle against relegation. Talked about the infrastructure that is being built and his belief that eventually we will have a team of 11 Geordies.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2000

Answers

I haven't seen the article Dougal - is it cut & pastable? I feel very strongly about this - as a matter of fact I've just had plenty of time to dwell on this very subject during my recent 32 hour return trip to Sydney !

As I see it we have two main options at this stage - EITHER keep developing at the steadier pace seen since Bobby took charge, OR look to invest more heavily again - as per the previous three managers. The former plan would hope to see us 'successful' (definition flexible!) within approx 2-4 years. The latter would aim to bring in silverware much sooner ie. within Johnny Hall's 2 year timeframe.

With all respect to the great man my personal belief is that the accelerated set of expectations is unnecessily risky and could well blow up in our faces again, especially financially.

Looking at the current squad and performances, the hope of success within 2 years would require substantial financial investment in quite a few international class players - notably a goalkeeper, one (possibly two) central defenders, and a proven top striker to get the best out of Big Al in the twilight of his career. And barring the miracle happening of all our youngsters coming good (AND staying fit, AND at the club), it would also almost certainly require a handful of additional quality squad signings - in the areas of full back (maybe left AND right) and possibly a midfielder and/or winger. As a wild guess maybe costing us another 30 to 45 million minimum over the next couple of years.

I'm not naturally patient but I'd far rather we carried on building at a prudent pace - ie. allowing a team to develop rather than trying to buy one, centred in 3 or 4 years time around a nucleus of hopefully Cort, LuaLua, Dyer, Griffin, Hughes, the Caldwells, Domi and one of Shay or Stevie Harper - combined with the odd Nobby, Acuna or Bassedas and only a small number of newly bought 'stars'.

The biggest downside of this is that we will possibly never get to see Shearer win something in his beloved b&w, but maybe for once we need to let the head rule the heart ?

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2000

Will try to find it Loony. It's actually putting Bobby under a lot of pressure asking him to achieve things in two years - as our erratic form has shown, we are nowhere near the finished article. Our best hope of seeing AS with a trophy in black and white is through the cups and we have as good a chance as anyone in them. "Tell me ma, ma, to put the champagne on ice, we're going to Cardiff twice, tell me ma, me ma".

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2000

History is littered with Clubs who have tried to buy rapid success and failed, including SJH's Toon. Success has to be built on a firm foundation - witness manure and Liverpool before them.
Frankly, I don't believe we have the financial muscle now to try spending really big again. Significant financial resources will be needed to make occasional big buys - such as to replace Alan Shearer 'when the bell tolls'. No, I'm going to have to disagree with SJH this time - we MUST establish a proper base for long term success, and this seems to be the course BR has set us off on.
This approach should also mean we might hopefully finish up with some more home grown players in the team - the likes of Hughes, Caldwell, Amoebi and Chopra.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2000

I don't see too much wrong with running the two in parallel. It would probably need only one or two short term biggish buys to tide us over the time it's going to take for the kids to be ready.

I agree with you Clarky, we probably don't have the financial clout to compete with manure etc, but I'll bet if Bobby wanted somebody badly enough, they'd find the money from somewhere, provided it wasn't an auction.(Just about impossible these days I suppose).

Not being very business orientated, I'm probably being completely naive taking that point of view, but it would be nice for the kids to come into a team that's reasonably consistant rather than the way we are now, blowing hot and cold, I mean, could anybody see us doing to Liverpool what Leeds did at the weekend ? Nee chance.

I must admit it's mystifying me a bit why Basedas isn't showing his face more often, and I know who I'd get shot of straight away, even if it meant losing a few millions. But that's another story.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2000

I think SJH meant that Europe is likely to become more and more important and we need to be part of it, just like we needed to be part of the Premiership.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2000

Pit Bill do you know what worries me (apart from everything)? The fact that, when we really had our backs to the wall last year, we were playing much better. BTW, anyone know what's happened to Kevin Gallacher?

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2000

>>>>>History is littered with Clubs who have tried to buy rapid success and failed, including SJH's Toon.

Disagree very strongly. If turning a club from third division relegation prospects with a 3rd div ground into a club challenging for honours, qualifying for Europe, with a magnificent (full) stadium isn't success then I don't know what is. And transforming a squad worth peanuts into a squad valued at 60m after spending just 40m.

The club was set back and hopes of silverware wrecked by the actions of a clueless manager, TSM. The man who dreamed of (and supplied) rapid success, SJH had opted for a certain Bobby Robson at the time. Measures of success are fraught with difficulty if all that matters is silverware. It means that at least 17 Premiership sides are failures every season. It's like the measure of a person as "a 100k a year man" and so on. A person's life and "success" must be subject to other factors as well. Newcastle has been very succesful by most objective measures (league positions, attendances, income, European Qualifications, etc, over the past 10 years. If silverware was the sole factor then there are a great many fans up and down the country wasting their time on a Saturday.

History is littered with untrue home-spun adages like "you can't win with kids" and "you can't buy success", etc.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2000

You can bullshit your way to the top but bullshit won't keep you there for long.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2000

Any more Chinese proverbs anyone?

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2000

Man who run in front of car get tired.
Man who run behind car get exhausted.
Man with hand in pocket feel cocky all day.
Man who walk thru airport turnstile sideways going to Bangkok.
Man with one chopstick go hungry.
Man who scratches ass should not bite fingernails.
Man who eat many prunes get good run for money.
Baseball is wrong, man with four balls cannot walk.
War doesn't determine who is right, war determines who is left.
Wife who put husband in doghouse soon find him in cathouse.
Man who fight with wife all day get no piece at night.
Man who drive like hell bound to get there.
Man who stand on toilet is high on pot.
Man who lives in glass house should change clothes in basement.
Man who fishes in other man's well often catches crabs.
Man who farts in church sits in own pew.
Crowded elevator smells different to midget.


-- Anonymous, November 06, 2000

Spending money to achieve success....it can work, but often doesn't. Perhaps it's down to timing, to an extent. ie with the right manager in place, who has got the team heading in the right direction, a key top player or two can make all the difference. Trying to bale the team out of trouble by spending loads tends to paper over the real cracks that are causing the problems. Going back to the other excellent thread about Dyer, if the problem with him is not lack of ability, but lack of application or perhaps confidence, then what's the point dipping into the pocket again. Success breeds success. We are heading in the right direction, but now need to consolidate and build upon what we have achieved. The team won't fully believe in themselves until they've won something. This self-belief is far more important than cheque-book management...

Hmmm. All a bit waffly and vague, but I'm too busy to re-construct what I'm saying, and at least it keeps the thread moving ;-)

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2000

Jonno,

We've discussed this before, and our views are not as divergent as you might think.
Like you, I believe that SJH saved NUFC from oblivion - anyone who doesn't is either blind, daft, or both. He then created a legitimate PL Club from a broken down edifice that was going nowhere.
The flaw in the whole story was that they progressed too quickly on the playing front by spending big and creating a team that were legitmate contenders for honours - but transiently. Behind that, the Club infrastructure had not been developed to the point where the relative success that had been achieved could be used as a springboard for real sustainable success over an extended period of time.
As we know, youth development in particular was badly neglected - and with the money beginning to run out there were no internally developed resources to carry the Club forward.
Without doubt, the Club was moved to any entirely different plane by SJH, and this was indeed a genuinely major achievement.
However, I still maintain that you cannot achieve sustainable playing success - which I would define as winning trophies over a number of seasons - purely by throwing money at playing resources. All of the other things needed to sustain success need to be put in place.
Although the team were wonderful to watch, we did NOT win trophies under KK despite the enormous sums he spent on players, and when his team started to break up the underlying weakness of the Club infrastructure became painfully apparent. Indeed I believe the non-sustainability of the beast that had been created actually contributed to KK's departure, and while I hesitate to defend TSM, it could even be argued that this may well have contributed to his failure. Of course, he was more capable of engineering his own failure without support from anyone or anything else.
Sustainable success must be built on firm foundations. I sincerely hope the Club have learned from the mistakes of their recent past, and ensure that 'all the bricks are laid' this time around - preferably not on quicksand.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2000

I'm just surprised that LR hasn't posted on this thread to agree with everything said above. And while he'e at it, to present NH as an exemplar of good foundations, prudent management, a moderate stadium and one or two half decent players who have come up through the youth programme (Stam and Solskjaer, for example). And he'd be half right, for once.

Has he had a fit of modesty, or what. I think we oughta be told.

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2000

The time to splash the cash is when we've got a sound base. Get our noses into Europe this season & bolster the team with a quality buy, then estaclished in Europe, get our foot in the champions league boltered by a champions league quality purchase. If you buy out of desparation you get desparate players (see Boro). Keegan had it right, he always seemd to buy well when we apparently didn't need another player. It only went wrong when he got desparate errrr when he paid B#15m for someone

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2000