King Kev points to the start of our slight demise

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KK was on some chat thing last night in Manc and pinpointed the exact moment our fortunes took a turn the 'other' way. The day Beardsley left. He reckons we never found a decent replacement, because there isn't one. Fair point K.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Answers

auld playas

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

I think KK is only half right. It's not so much the fact that we didn't replace Beardsley, but we didn't replace ANY of the players that we sold. We swapped Sir Les for JDT; Tino for Pamela; Ginola for no-one; Batty for no-one. Peacock and Albert for Goma and Marcy.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

The exact moment the demise began was the day that KK's successor was appointed. The damage wrought by him has hardly begun to be repaired.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Hard one this: the Keegan reign, glorious though it was, sowed the seeds of our demise with its complete disregard for the future. Had we had a youth or reserve pool, I doubt Kenny would have been forced to spend money on so much crap.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

The start of the demise was the day we bought Alan Shearer. Too much money for one player, meant we had to sell later on and then circumstances took over

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001


The start of the demise was when the East End merged with the West...should never have trusted them dodgy Fenham buggers ;-)

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Actually, MacB, I think there's more than an element of truth in that. I would go one step further and say that our insistence on keeping Shearer when we were getting offers of £18 million etc for him (eg. from Villa) is probably a reason for our stagnation...you could buy two decent strikers for that and, two or three years ago, decent strikers would still come to Newcastle. This ISN'T a criticism of Al, BTW.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

BTW, it's a bit daft to talk about a demise: the Keegan years were a blip and what he is really saying is, "when Newcastle started reverting to type".

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Can we make this thread inaccessible by Sparxx? you know he'll go off on one when he reads it :))

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

To suggest the signing of Shearer as the start of our demise is absolute tosh. The team was in decline when he was signed to paper over the cracks caused largely by the impossibility of replacing Pedro, who was the hub and the heart & soul of that terrific team.

At the time he was signed he was the top striker in the country bar none, and if a proper team reconstruction job had been carried out instead of wasting countless millions on useless toss-pots then Alan Shearer could unquestionably have lead us to real success. The amount wisely spent on As pales into insignificance when compared to what was subsequently wasted.
That opportunity was utterly wasted by people who lacked vision and the necessary management talent.

Yet again, the blame for everything wrong with NUFC gets laid at the door of Alan Shearer. Open your eyes gang - the truth is out there!

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001



Don't think Mac was blaming AS, he was saying that the amount spent at that time meant that we had to start selling other players....this is a FACT....

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

It all went wrong the day Johnny Hall sacked Ossie and hired that bloody amateur golfer from Marbella. Useless tosser! Without him we'd have had no blips just a nice straight line. And we'd be dead chuffed with reaching 11th in the Premier League and snatching top players like Craig Bellamy.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Clarky - no one was saying a word about Shearer.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

too late Gav...but guess what, I am not even ABOUT to add my 2p!!!!

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Hehe I was only looking out for your blood pressure Sparxx ;))

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001


come on then!

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

ok ok ok... so I can't stand it....but it won't be an anti-Keegan rant, lord knows how well that goes over here.

The real problems, if I may be so bold, started when the PLC was formed. Keegan, in his wisdom knew the well had gone dry and it was a sucker bet that the PLC was going to generate enough funds for him to keep the team restocked with stars. TSM knew it as well and had to sell to generate any kind of dosh.

In an effort to try and keep us up there with the big'uns in comes glam boy Gullit and we rightly exposed his lack of coaching ability. He goes, in comes Bobby... All the while where has the share price gone? How much money has the PLC generated and been able to put back for players. Reallistically none, which is why we haven't spent the big money, simply because there is none to spend.

That added to the fact that we have only had one season to generate funds after the stadium expansion, the fact we owe money to NTL, why should anyone be surprised at our seeming lack of ambition.

I told you all before the picture in the mirror wasn't pretty. Why do you think we have wait for mid-summer to get players on Bosmans??? We can't afford to pay the top clubs top money to pay for players... and pay huge salaries as well!!! If the share price continues to struggle as it has IMHO I think we will be lucky to survive another five years in the premiership. All the profits gained by the expansion will go to pay off the debt. Minimal amounts will be given to any manager for squad strengthening. So if you expect more than that, you are all going to be very sorry.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001


I doubt Kenny would have been forced to spend money on so much crap.

I don't think Kenny was forced to buy crap. I think he had a natural talent for it.



-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

In fairness, Kevin leaving midseason didn't do much to maintain our upward impetus....

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

You mean we didn't finish second that season? :-)

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

This is a difficult one to come in on as someone who is new to the BBS Having read past posts which seem to suggest that Keegan is seen as a God-like figure and anyone who is overly critical of him runs the risk of facing a Fatwah I don't want to offend anyone but I think that a lot of our problems can be laid at his door. He did save us from the old third division and probable collapse but, as Dougal rightly pointed out, he proceeded as if there was no need to plan for the future. Scrapping the reserve team was perhaps the worst decision ever taken by a manager in recent years. Where teams like Leeds, Man U and Liverpool are now able to draw on players in their mid twenties at the height of their powers who cost them nothing and are loyal to the club, we have to rely on cheap players who come to us on a Bosman or mercenaries looking to feather their retirement nest egg. Also, we have not been able to generate any money from the sale of any emerging talent so the only way we can generate large sums of money is to sell of our established or developing stars such as Dyer. Macbeth's comments on AS also make sense, particualrly as AS was bought as a replacement for Cole. Even at the height of his skills was he really worth twice as

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Aye, Bobby, thanks to Kenny Dalglish...it was no thanks to Keegan whatsoever.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Keegan once said that it would be better to build in the traditional manner, foundations, then walls, roof. But in the situation the club was in he had no time for that. So we put the roof on first and would put in the foundations/walls later. (I won't even attempt to gainsay the obvious smart-Alec response to this!)

Putting the roof on first certainly enabled us to have the resources to afford construction of foundations and walls etc, but TSM's first act was to dismantle the roof and replace it with a flimsy tarpaulin wholly inadequate for the job.

Scrapping the reserves? I've never been convinced one way or another on this argument. It's such a shame that the rules for the reserve league at the time pressed KK into making that decision such that so much discussion on the issue has followed. My own view is that if the reserves had not been scrapped, our position today would NOT be materially different from what it is now. Obviously it will never be proved one way or another and views on this are unlikely to change.

But I'm pretty sure that the absence of a reserve team was certainly no reason to go and buy Andreas Andersson.



-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

All of this doom and glooms getting me down, I'm off to watch howay 5- 0 again.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Jonno - Michael Carrick said it was the lack of a reserves team that made him choose West Ham over Newcastle. The loss of him alone demonstrates, IMHO, that we dropped a bollock in getting rid of the reserves. The other thing is that Keegan admits is was partly for financial reasons that we got rid of the reserves - we were under pressure from the banks to get some money back after spending so much.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

My only criticism of Kevin Keegan is that at the time of our ascendancy he did not go out and get a decent right back and central defender. Those were the areas where we consistently leaked preventable goals. But the criticism is minor in relation to the effect he had on this club. He changed it from a deadbeat, demoralized and sinking outfit into one which arguably had only one rival. His record in the transfer market far surpasses in value obtained any of his successors, including the much admired Bobbie Robson. He took the seed money provided by Hall and grew a might crop. Had he been encouraged to stay instead of constantly being badgered by Hall that we wanted silverware, I am certain that our fortune over the last four years would have been immeasurably better. The tragedy is not that we bought Alan Shearer -- who was against it at the time?!!!- or that time caught up on Pedro -- but that we lost Kevin Keegan

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

man you lot are so unwilling to see the truth. Deep down a good majority, yes even Jonno, Softie, Gav et al are aware of the fact that Keegan left us for one reason, he was 100% against the PLC, he knew he wasn't getting any more funds and last but not least being CLOSE (ie. runners up) only counts in horseshoe tossing... nothing else.

You want answers, go to the next PLC meeting and demand answers.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001


runners up) only counts in horseshoe tossing... nothing else

For those at a distance in Time or Place I'm sure that's right Sparxx. But for a fan, for someone who attends SJP regularly, I can't tell you what a fantastic thrill that season was compared to so many others. And to go into the very last game of the season thinking that just maybe we might be title winners in 2 hours time was a feeling I have never experienced in 39 years of supporting them. It was fantastic. No - don't take anything away from that season - it was wonderful and one of my very happiest memories during all my time at the Toon.

There are those who say "winning isn't everything - it's the only thing". That might be true for some and it might be true for you. Fair enough - it's a valid view. In my own case I was very happy to see us at least in with a shout till the final day rather than have the season end some way through February and I would sure as hell much rather watch us finishing 2nd after conceding a 12 point lead every single season rather than any of the dross that has been served up since.



-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

"the amount spent (ie. on Alan Shearer) at that time meant that we had to start selling other players....this is a FACT...."

Gav,
So, if this is a FACT, then tell me who did we sell that we would not have needed to sell if we hadn't paid so much for AS? The only one I can think of was Ferdinand, which occurred during the following close season - and imo he was sold, not because we had to sell him, but because we received an offer of our money back for a 30+ yr old player who was becoming incrasingly injury prone - ie. it was a pure business decision - that went badly wrong because of AS's subsequent serious ankle injury.
Other than than the Ferdinand situation, just add up the apparently non-existent money that was subsequently wasted by TSM and RG, and in all honesty by BR.

No, as far as I'm concerned Alan Shearer was a superb signing, he was the last truly top-quality player we bought, and the very last signing I personally got excited over.
Our real problem is that didn't make 2-3 futher signings of that quality, rather than the 20- 30 toss-pots we did sign instead.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001


Elliot had poor knees, Clarkie couldn't get a first team place, Ginola was lazy, Tino couldn't be arsed, Ferdinand was injury prone all easy to explain away one by one, then suddenly woosh we've got Speed, Ketsbaia, Hamilton, Andersson, Thomasson

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Regarding Carrick's comments Dougal, as I say I remain unconvinced one way or the other on this issue. Hughes and Harper stayed on and have made an important contribution. Carrick has been reported as saying a number of things recently which seem to contradict each other.

I'll concede it may have had a slightly negative effect overall, but if the fall from 2nd to relegation candidates in one season can be explained by the scrapping of the reserves, then it must be that these matches at KP have an importance far and away beyond the meaningless kickabouts that they appear to me to be.



-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

The point of them is that they give the bairns a competitive match other than youth games. The fact that we use them as sinbins for senior players is another matter. Carrick has said this many times and I am inclined to believe him - remember, he went to West Ham while Keegan was here. Regarding Hughes - well, he had offers from West Ham and Rangers but chose the Toon cos his mam and dad liked the place (his words).

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

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