Alain Goma has blasted Newcastle boss Bobby Robson and his former team-mates after quitting the Tyneside club in favour of First Division Fulham.

The French defender completed his £4million switch to Craven Cottage yesterday and was immediately told that new boss and fellow Frenchman Jean Tigana will put him through the training paces. And on feeling the First Division leaders' desire to reach the top he launched a scathing attack on Newcastle, declaring a "lack of ambition" at the Premiership club.

"I'm not a manager, so I can't say what you should or should not do. But perhaps we did not work hard enough at Newcastle - and that is what I missed," he said. "I don't think Newcastle shared the same motivation and ambition I have. That is what I need if I am to do well. I always did my best for Newcastle, yet I needed this challenge for my career. I'm very ambitious and I want to improve as a player. Newcastle knew that if the opportunity arose to go somewhere I would enjoy, I would agree. I wasn't very happy in terms of football."

He continued in The Sun: "I see no reason why Fulham should not finish above Newcastle in the Premiership next season. I expect the training will be very different under Jean Tigana. I know he likes to work hard. I am looking forward to it. It is important to work hard pre-season and then work very hard consistently week-in, week-out through the season."

"I watched Fulham play Manchester United in the FA Cup and was very impressed. Living in Newcastle was very different to being in my home in Paris. London will be more attractive for my friends to come and visit me."

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

Answers

First Domi then Goma criticise the training methods at the club and it makes perfect sense to me.

Easy training will lead to the type of muscle injuries we seem to pick up so often when the players do put some effort in. It is little wonder that players leaving the club end up sidelined for ages, as they probably walk into strict training regimes and think christ this is hard!

How many times this season have we heard that the players have hd a day off. I suspect Goma came here to do a job and really work hard at his football. He comes to the Newcastle and he has too much spare time because we don't train him so hard, he needss friends around him but they won't travel that North, he gets pissed off.

It's all a downward spiral as far as I can see. Get a few injuries so relax the training so no-one else gets injured, this results in unfit players and goes a long way to explaining the attitude of players on the pitch.

Robson is a well respected coach but I see a major weakness here for some reason. I would have thought he would want his players super fit and with an extensive education in continental football I'm surprised that he deals in this way.

Robson will surely defend this criticism and I for one will be interested in what he has to say.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

I actually don' think it's that bad.

Newcastle don't share the same ambition - ie we haven't spent money to strengthen the squad. He also said we could have worked harder, well couldn't everyone?

It looks to me that the Sun is making a few mole hills into mountains.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

It depends on what "working hard" entails for Goma and what it means to our coaching staff. The amount of injuries is pretty conclusive.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

In football, as in other forms of employment, "leavers" are usually disaffected to some degree, and their initial criticisms of their previous employer are usually slightly embellished.

In good companies, someone fairly senior would interview a leaver just before he went to hear his criticisms at first hand, and form a view as to how legitimate they are. I wonder if this was done with the likes of intelligent men like Didier Domi and Alain Goma who will have strongly held, and probably well thought out views of life at SJP - but think I already know the answer.

We simply can't tell from the outside, but there is a growing amount of anecdotal evidence that is increasingly suggesting that things are far from right at SJP.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

It's not as if we can discount these views by saying, "Everyone's fit and we've only had a few minor injuries this season and the players look really motivated every time they play".

The club needs to show some sort of defence to these sort of comments or the disenchantment will grow. Of course a resounding victory over Boro' could go a long way!

Also, in light of Shearer's comments after the Everton game about everyone wanting to play for Newcastle, will Goma's departure signal the dawn of a better collective team spirit at the club (even though Marcellino is still there) or will it only reinforce the Senior Pro's club of Shearer, Lee, Speed and Barton?

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

'perhaps we did not work hard enough'. That was Goma's suggestion as to why we weren't as successful as we could have been. Fair enough - so why don't we train hard enough? No indoor facility for when the pitch es are frozen? Bobby dealing with transfers and absent from training? The coaching staff? Or Bobby himself thinking we either don't need to or it being counterproductive? I can't see apathy and laziness as a reason - or even lack of ambition. Surely not. God forbid.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

There is no smoke without fire so they say, I rely on the training ground reports of Steph, Ciarra , and at times Clarky. Okay it was into the season but the feeling to me was of a general lethargic attitude to training, I may be wrong , I can just second guess.

Bobby Robson is too old to be involved in the training, he has to realise this, the beginning of the end in my view was reading how the Dutch players used to mock him behind his back. Respect his knowledge of the game, but it may need a excellent coach for his plans to bear fruition. The pre-season is a time to work , the physical brings on the mental toughness , we used to have teams at the commando training center for a week pre-season , bawl em out, make em sweat, treat em like tish , end of the week , good old pi££ up and then they were off for 3weeks specialised training at there home base to sharpen up and a couple of weeks for friendlies, This year it looked like, one lap of the Riverside and off to the USA, wrong, wrong,thrice wrong

It will be interesting to see if the club reply to Goma`s allegations, I shall not hold my breath , the main get out is now that it is a short mid-season players keep fitness levels up. The comparisons between Rangers and Newcastle this year are so real its unbelievable, no own proper training facilities, add no academy. 73 million been spent over the last 3 years, attitude,no committment and players returning from injury, suffering again, lack of faith in clubs medical staff, it goes on in paralell. There is something drastically wrong within the walls of SJP and for once I think you cannot blame the board.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

Yes and no

Yes the manager has to be respected by his players, know his own strengths and his limitations. Ferguson has his younger coaches, now McLaren earlier Kidd, O'Leary has now moved away from it by promoting Kidd. Bobby oozes passion but the driving of the players fitness etc should not be his role.

No, the board should have the measures in place to spot where there are weaknesses in the running of the company. If the sales revenue from shirts goes down they will know (I hope !!) and question the marketing boys and girls, and push that side of the business. The marketing manager has a role to do but it mustn't stop the board from questioning him. Similarly the football team manager should be under the same pressure. If the football manager comes back with the repeated excuse of injuries, poor training facilities, returning players getting injured again then the board should push that. Maybe some of it is a separate task. The guy tasked with building the stadium should now be tasked with getting a training facility to match. There should be a club doctor who reports to the board not into the football manager who has a vested interested in short term player perfomance. There should be a senior individual who is solely responsible for the level of clapping the players offer to the crowd at the end, with an obvious candidate. There are other examples, I'm sure.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

Yes, yes macbeth - precisely. Just as someone inside the club should have been cognisent of the dressing room unrest in RG's era, and why someone now should be evaluating the criticism's leveled at the heart of the Club's professionalism by Didier Domi and now Alain Goma.
They may both be just whinging frogs, but conversely they could be spot on. If they are something drastic needs to be done about it - but if you don't ask the questions you don't get the answers.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

I am too confused about the many ways in which we appear to have managed to go wrong to sugest an answer to this question but we had the opportunity in the 90s to overtake every club in the land and we didn't take it. Watching Liverpool, with whom we should now be wiping the floor, winning games and so on, frankly makes me sick - if we hadn't been so badly mismanaged in so many ways, that would be us.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

It clearly isn't a simple answer, and no one person to blame. The question now is who's going to take the bull by the horns and start sorting this mess out?

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

Divvent fret Dougal, it'll turn out to be something rock bottom basic that's behind of all of our troubles, and we'll be stuck in this rut until 'it' is sorted (when it dawns on them what 'it' is).

That's not really meant to be as flippant as it might have come across. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think it's so much that everything has gone wrong at the same time, but rather that there's something basic that's having an effect on everything.

I have an opinion on what we should do to sort things but it's a soap box thing so I'll keep shtum.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

Go on, PB, the rest of us have spouted from our soap boxes. :-)

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

Over the past month or so I've read serious criticism of just about every aspect of the club: the board, the medical staff, the pitch, the coaching staff, the training facilities, the players etc etc. Even the proposed kit for next season looks naff. 'Club United' seems another way to rip-off supporters, the official web-site is a complete disgrace, and another player has left the club saying he wasn't happy. As someone else has observed there seems to be no long-term vision at the club. Freddie Shepherd and Douglas Hall may make easy targets but ultimately the buck stops with them and I'm not seeing any recognition that the club is in difficulties, or any action to address some of these concerns. Am I alone in thinking there is complacency at the top?

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

I suppose this may be the nearest we get to an official response to Goma's remarks.

"Goma accuses us of lacking motivation and ambition. Well, that's rich coming from a player who played only 39 out of 85 possible games for us.

"I know the figures because I've had them looked up. He played less than 50 per cent of our games through injuries. That meant he cost us twice as much in wages.

"Does Goma think Fulham are a bigger club than Newcastle United? Well, if he can't hack it up here he can go. If he can't play for a manager like Bobby Robson and fans like ours he's got a problem."

I guess this finally puts an end to our high profile French signings then! I heard/read somewhere that Robson doesn't like the French mentality so is all this really surprising?

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

If, as Buff suggests, the Board of Directors cannot be blamed for the catalogue of failures which he enumerates, I would like to know what are its responsibilities. Boards are responsible for the strategic direction of the business entity, setting clear and agreed objectives with the management, and monitoring the progress towards the achievements of those objectives. Ensuring the overall fitness and health of the playing staff, facilities for the cultivation of young talent, and sound financial management are the responsibility of the Board. Suppose you were starting from scratch, would the names of those currrently in control of the Board readily spring to mind as ideal candidates?

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

Rereading again Floridean, you are right, but I cannot lay blame on them for the training agenda, other points yes

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

Well now it's official - it's the French nation to blame for our problems!!
This childish, petty response to Goma's criticism, following identical criticism from Domi, demonstrates just how far our Chairman is divorced from reality.
How utterly depressing.

BTW - 100% agreement, floridian.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

Would like to hear this interview for myself rather than reading the Suns version. Saw him talking on Sky last night and all he said was he really enjoyed his time at the club and said the fans were definetly the best hed come across.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

Bobby got a bit huffy about it on the local news tonight. Said something along the lines of how disappointed he was since Goma had been so professional until then and how he doubts that Fulham will appreciate their new player saying such things in public.

Seems to me like Alain is entitled to say what he likes. He's played it honest throughout. They could gag Domi since he had to withdraw his comments or lose a hefty chunk of change by standing by his words which would have counted as a transfer-request. I raised concerns about YBR leading the lads for physical jerks when he first joined since I could't see how matching an owld fella for fitness and suppleness was going to carry us through 90 minutes. I had assumed that it was just a short-term measure to get their trust and attention but don't know now.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

Let's consider this supposition. If for some unknown reason Bobbie Robson were to disappear from the scene, how much confidence would you have in the management and direction of the club? Are they capable of bringing success to the club. One of the responsibilities of a Board which I did not mention was to install good management and have a plan for orderly succession. I do not believe that the current management is satisfacory, Robson excepted, let alone the existence of any real plan to improve it. Without a good infrastructure, we have little hope of attracting reaining or getting the best out of our playing staff.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

When PSV appointed Robson it was for one-season-only as an interim coach. They already had his successor lined-up and were prepared to wait. That is how you run a football club. Whilst I have great respect for Bobby Robson, the issue of his successor must be addressed, and sooner rather than later. Unfortunately the current management of the club give little confidence in their ability to take the right long-term decisions for the club. Knowing they're vulnerable they'd rather not rock the boat. As long as they are at the helm I find it difficult to be optimistic in the future of the club.

-- Anonymous, March 17, 2001

For the doubters out there. The papers are all running a story this morning saying Robson will be given £30 million to invest in new players this summer.

Shepherd has had a series of meetings with Robson to outline a plan of action for next season. Foresight?

I respect the opinions of many on here and I appreciate that some things point to some discrepancies in the management department, but to be frankWTF do we know?

We all have opinions and experiences in respective disciplines which lend themselves to valid comment, but how the hell do we know what is going on behind the scenes.

Criticising SHepherd for not getting the training ground ready. This man is so proud of our stadium and so much effort has gone into getting that right. It's all part of a plan in my opinion to get the revenue stream flowing before money can be expended on new players and facilities. In two years time we may have a 52,000 capacity stadium, some of the greatest training facilities in the country and a tremendous youth academy. Robson will probably have sorted out the playing staff.

Long term planning, it doesn't happen overnight and it can't be realised overnight.

-- Anonymous, March 17, 2001

Good point, DeB. All any of us can do is try to make sense of htings from our own experiences. If the club would start to communicate regularly with supporters, make it known that they do indeed have some kind of big plan and how they plan to implement it, there's likely be alot less grumbling. It's understandable that they would be unable to release details that could compromise the club in the transfer market(for example). But just let us know there's some kind of plan and that movement is being made to implement it.

I hope Bobby does get the money and things do turn out all rosy. I'd love nothing more than to be sitting around in 2yrs time laughing at what a fool I was 'back then' to think the worst.

Communication is a good thing.

-- Anonymous, March 17, 2001