December is always cold up there in the North East, and snow is often cancel-out any United’s fixtures, but this year of December, the hot wheels of fireball strikes the Geordieland.
Sam Allardyce is now having his most terrible times during his managerial career and maybe deep inside, he will regret his own decision to leave Bolton to manage Newcastle United. Although some media reports suggest he will never make the Toon Army love him, I’m personally believe there’s still hope and support from the genuine Toon fans.
The Guardian said Sam Allardyce has frequently dismissed those who criticise his stewardship of Newcastle United as “hysterical” and lacking “proper understanding” of football but Sir Bobby Robson falls into neither category.
As Allardyce battles to save his job amid simmering dressing-room dissension and with several tough fixtures looming, Newcastle’s current manager could have done without one of his more illustrious predecessors deconstructing his tactics in a Sunday newspaper.
Sir Bobby Robson explaining: “What the fans wish for is not just the right result but Newcastle playing the ‘right’ type of football with plenty of wit, the ball being passed along the deck and plenty of creativity in midfield. If Sam can trust his flair players, fans will forgive him if they don’t win every week.”
Sir Bobby may have said the right thing about the wit, lots of passing along the deck and creative midfield, but for some reason, I also thinking of what some said about Newcastle’s attacking tradition. What is that actually and since when we have adopted that “tradition”?
Sir Alex Ferguson told about the memory of Howay-Five-0h! and some of the fans are still thinking of the real Newcastle United team is “that team” and refused to accept any changes. The fact is football has changed dramatically since then and like it or not, United supporters must also willing to change their minds.
Today, I found another good article, and not like the latest one that I highly disagree with, this one is more in depth and more properly thought. This one is hard to accept but Alan Hansen is telling the truth on Telegraph article about some of the Toon Army.
Newcastle have always considered themselves different to other clubs. They still measure themselves by the benchmark of the Kevin Keegan years when they played a brand of football that enthralled everybody. And sometimes you feel like reminding their supporters that those days will never, ever return.
He also said that we must to study Patrice Evra and Nemanja Vidic at Old Trafford. By the time they’re arrived in January 2006, they looked completely out of their depth in a Manchester United back-four. Now they are stalwarts of what is unquestionably the best defence in the country.
I understand, each one of you who is in the anti-Sam bandwagon will rubbish me and say that Big Sam is not molding the Manchester United way but he wants to do a copy cat of Bolton to our team. But I want you to read more of Hansen’s article.
I spent all my football life as a defender and since retiring I have repeated time and again on television and in print that football is essentially about defending. I appreciate Arsenal’s passing and movement, Manchester United’s freedom of expression and Steven Gerrard in full flight as much as anybody. But, if you are a manager of a team without a decent back-four and keeper, you are manager of nothing.
Newcastle’s greatest problem has not been a lack of investment or support but a complete absence of continuity plus an unwillingness to lay down proper foundations. This is a crisis that began with the sacking of Sir Bobby Robson after he had taken the club to positions of fourth, third and fifth. Since when there have been too many managers and too many bad buys.
Another example of the Toon Army refusal is when Dalglish took over from Keegan in 1997. As far as I can remember, TSM guided Newcastle to second place in his first season and the FA Cup final in his second season. But when he tries to make the changes later on, we (sadly, including me that days) not considered it was good enough to lay the foundations and cost us to lose the entertainment.
Some of his buys may not good enough at that moment. The signing of Barnes and Ian Rush as well as Stuart Pearce looks like not a good foundations, but we will never know what’s on the managers mind and we may regret it now and thinking about what it would be if we give more time for Dalglish to do his Toon revolutions.
KD sacking may also have the intervere from the Shepperd and Hall regime, they are seems to have the same impatience like most of the Toon Army on that day where nothing is in good perception but chasing an instant success.
There’s a battle within the Toon Army and I was involved on a discussion about the good and bad side of Sam Allardyce. I give up then, because they are so passionate about the Keegan years which I think is normal but childish.
Supporting the Toon is our duty, and we have the rights to critized the manager when we think something is wrong, but to cause him get sacked was not the real fans is supposed to do.