GOD STATUS

Proved his value on saturday

PLEASE BOBBY USE HIM CORRECTLY and get someone to shoulder the burden of experience

-- Anonymous, September 12, 2001

Answers

otherwise we'll knacker him

For god's sake how many times does it take to learn the same lesson

-- Anonymous, September 12, 2001

Well pete, we're avowed to protect him aren't we?

Presumably, that's why he played for 2hours tonight in advance of playing against Manure in three days. He looked absolutely knackered by the end tonight.

-- Anonymous, September 12, 2001

We'll never learn. :-/

-- Anonymous, September 12, 2001

A crazy situation tonight. By the end of extra time, our last two defenders were Shearer and Acuna. IMHO, Shearer should have been on the bench. With the score 1-1 and extra time looming, followed potentially by penaty shoot out, YBR wasn't going to take him off. If he had started in the bench, he could have been on after 15-20 mins of the 2nd half. Mind, until Bellamy came on, he had no support tho I suppose that's not quite right cos he laid on a superbe ball for Solano, who for once, actually found Shola in the box for the equaliser. Nobby was cr@p all night :-(

-- Anonymous, September 12, 2001

Even if he only plays an hour against Man U he'll have played the equivalent of three whole matches in a week. If he doesn't cripple himself, all the 'captain marvel' crap will be spun out again. The last person to be trusted on his fitness to play is Shearer himself. I don't want to hear any more 'skipper reveals he plays through the pain barrier' shite, but no bastard will take responsibility and stop him playing. It seems only when he gets an injury 'setback' do they finally consider they might have pushed him too far.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Dan,

This is NOT Alan Shearer's fault! It is his Manager who picks the team, and fields the subs. Ffs, blame the organ-grinder not the monkey, just for once!

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Ya, cant belive he played a full game WITH extra time. Bobby said last week he wasnt ready for 90 minutes in a month.

To hell with Worthless Cup, I rather lose a game then losing Shearer.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Ffs, blame the organ-grinder not the monkey, just for once!

An analogy which would not work with the next team down along the coastline...

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Clarky - don't get me wrong, I do blame BR. But Shearer seems complicit in this. BR said Shearer was unhappy to be subbed the other day - whether that was his little joke I don;t know, but it seems pretty typical of Shearer's stubbornness. YBR also says he only left him on cos of pens - that's tactically ridiculous. it's not worth crocking him for the sake of getting to round 2, and anyway there's no guarantee his presence would have made any difference to the outcome of a shootout anyway. He even jokes about how stiff AS will be feeling today. Yeah, it'll be a big joke when the bastard misses another three months.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Dan,

Alan Shearer is a consummate professional who loves playing, and in particular loves playing for NUFC. The misuse/abuse of one of the Clubs major assets has been shameful for some considerable time. The blame lies exclusively with successive managers.

The present Manager is as culpable as any, and while he says all the right things publicly, he simply doesn't "walk the talk".

I entirely agree with you regarding the crassness of BR's statements regarding the latest abuse of Shearer. He didn't want to win this Cup Tie sufficiently to play his first choice team - indeed he made 6 changes, probably for sound reasons - and yet he allowed the man who he recently said "wouldn't be fit to play 90 minutes for another month" to stay on the field for the full 120 minutes when he was plainly totally knackered "because he might be needed to taken penalty". The man's own words make neither sense or logic, and he can regard hinmself and extremely fortunate that AS didn't suffer perhaps a final career-terminating injury while playing as an emergency CB during the final 15 minutes last night.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Dan, I think the exact remark about Al being unhappy at being subbed was that he was on course for a hattrick at the time. Fortunately he didn't do much running last night, unlike Saturday.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Of course team selection rests with the manager, but I do get the feeling that Shearer has the influence to persuade YBR to pick him / leave him on against his (YBR's) better judgement. Maybe that's the one advantage Gullit had over BR! I'm sure if Shearer had signalled to the bench that he was concerned about playing too long, he would have been yanked off, and frankly to me that would have displayed much greater professionalism on his part than stopping on without complaint.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Saw this YBR quote on icNowt:
"Before the game we had picked our five penalty-takers in Alan Shearer, Laurent Robert, Nobby Solano, Wayne Quinn and Aaron Hughes.

"But we lost Hughes and Quinn because of injury and I did not want to bring Shearer off with this in mind.

"I did not want Alan to play 120 minutes but he did. In fact, I only wanted him to play 70 minutes.

So ermmmmmm....when did Bobby think the penalties were going to be taken? In the 69th minute??? Unless there's 2 Alan Shearers, I'm not sure I quite see the logic in that thinking. :-/

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Good point.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001

To step into the great man's mind, perhaps he meant that Al would have come off at 70mins if we were comfortably ahead. But the contingency was that he had to stay on because he was a penalty taker, the game was not going to plan and two other pen takers had left the field...so he had to stay on. If selected. So, he didn't want to play him for 2 hours but in the end (due to other injuries, not winning in 90mins) he stayed on.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001

But Bobby, surely the point is that if Shearer had started on the bench, a decision could have been made to bring him on at halftime,with possbly 45 mins and max 75 mins to play. With our record in this comp, it might have been expected that we wouldn't necessarily be in control at HT.

Of course, the other school of thought goes that he isn't match fit, so play him as long as you can to gain match fitness (whatever that is - anybody care to enlighten me??)

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001

I'd happily keep wor Al on the bench as you suggest, but who exactly would be Ameobi's striking partner? Nobby and Robert are on the wing, so with Bellamy we'd be a bit lightweight.

Anyway, we won the game. If Al breaks down on Saturday YBR is open to criticism. If he's ok then there's no comeback.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001

Anyway, we won the game. If Al breaks down on Saturday YBR is open to criticism. If he's ok then there's no comeback

That's the problem, isn't it? Whenever the club 'gets away' with taking this type of risk, they're somehow seen to be justified. So if he doesn't break down v Man U, they'll take him for granted and flog him to death till he does break down, next week, next month, whenever.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001

The fact is, no matter how much we love Al, he is still paid to play football. And paid handsomely. He could get a career ending tackle tomorrow, or show no reaction to Weds 2 hr slog and score the winner. If he was lacking match fitness then Wednesday's game will have done no harm. If his knee flares up then his career is over, and playing 50 mins longer than Robson wanted will make no difference. The real concern is the continuing lack of cover, and that Cort can't string 3 months of play together.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001

Ameobi and Bellamy have done fine up front until Shearer came back, what difference if they started together on Weds. Indeed if YBR wanted Shearer as a penalty taker, it would have made more sense to keep him on the bench until half-time or later. He gets his playing time and we've got our penalty taker. Or if we had been doing ok, keep him on the bench until closer to the end of regulation time when it looked likely to go to penalties. It's not unusual for teams to throw good pk takers on in the last few minutes.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001