Chris Mort Speaks On The Criteria For United New Manager

For about a week now, we only read about any speculations of who will replace Sam Allardyce as the manager of Newcastle United. Today, United chairman told the official site, he and the owner Mike Ashley feels the most important thing now is to get the decision right.

Mort said, he wants a manager who also able to lay solid foundations for Newcastle future and to that they will need to take whatever time is necessary in making that right decision.

They also added three important criteria in consideration for each of the candidate, which we summarise below:

1. To have the team playing with the right balance of winning football and stylish football. This means only the great managers that can combine the sort of style with a winning. We appreciate we will have defeats and losing runs along the way but if the team is not trying to play football “on the carpet” as Sir Bobby Robson recently described it I think they will always struggle to win over the followers of Newcastle United.
2. We would like a manager willing to develop the youth side of the club. For too long the club has missed out on too much of the young footballing talent in the region and, these days, that talent also needs to combined with young talent sourced both nationally and internationally.
3. A manager that can speak English. There have been media suggestions that we would only appoint a British manager. That is not true. However, we think this is a big enough job without the manager having to operate through an interpreter, so the manager will have to be someone who is able to speak English.
4. We need someone willing and able to take on, and cope with, Newcastle United which are not currently a Champions League team, and in six seasons out of the last ten we have finished in the bottom half of the Premier League. We have also seen over recent months the pressures placed on Newcastle United and its manager by some of the press and occasionally by some of the supporters – we need someone who is willing and able to handle that.

There’s also a point that I think very-very interesting one, especially for those who fancy Jose Mourinho the most, sorry but it seems that we WILL NOT going to after him.

On his note, Mort said that we are not necessarily going to interest a manager who is already at a team playing Champions League football or whose only ambition is to manage a top team in, say, Spain or Italy.

I have to say, I personally think it makes a lot of sense, although with all those criteria we cannot hope to get the right man in a short period, in fact almost a dream come true if we can get a man that satisfy all those requirements.

I’m more than happy if we can get the man who can answer the challenge on point 1 and 2.