Big Sam Leaves Newcastle

[Teacake]

Having now been fully encapsulate by the frenzied tide that is KK coming 'home' I just can't wait for the game tomorrow.

A cracking press conference, and a role for Shearer if there is one he wants. The next few years could be so good!

A few intersting points in there, such as having first contact last week and waiting for the owner to return. That seems to support the theory that Redknap wasn't actually offered the job, as has been suggested more recently. (although there would obviously be motivation for that change in story).

If anyone doubted Newcastle United was a big club then maybe they should think when such an appointment has ever attracted so much press attention.

I think you've been swept up in the euphoria here Rooky. I don't blame you as your desperate for Newcastles fortunes to change but you really shouldn't pay much attention to these press conferences as you know what they are going to say beforehand & basically tell you what you want to hear.

FWIW I think this appointment will give Newcastle a shot in the arm initially but really can't see it ending up in anything other than tears.

Good luck & enjoy it while you can.

[Rooky9]

Off to the theatre match now. Should be a cracking atmosphere. All we need is for the players to have been caught up in the euphoria like they were on Wednesday and it'll be a cracker - plus keeping Kevin Nolan quiet.

Chances are it will end in tears if the criteria for success is winning something or getting champions league. 'But it is possible'. Thats not my goal at the minute though, so I fully intend on enjoying the ride and hope that others do too.

Lets hope we make football first at 8.25pm and it'll have been a match worth watching!

[Nem]

Off to the theatre match now. Should be a cracking atmosphere. All we need is for the players to have been caught up in the euphoria like they were on Wednesday and it'll be a cracker - plus keeping Kevin Nolan quiet.

Chances are it will end in tears if the criteria for success is winning something or getting champions league. 'But it is possible'. Thats not my goal at the minute though, so I fully intend on enjoying the ride and hope that others do too.

Lets hope we make football first at 8.25pm and it'll have been a match worth watching!

 

[Colchester Kev]

what a crock of shit that game was .... and it cost me money !!!

[NoflopsHomer]

what a crock of shit that game was .... and it cost me money !!!

We weren't great, but Bolton were truly terrible.

[Rooky9]

Tactical master stroke. A great way to ensure that we don't get too carried away!

Shola Ameobi isn't really a premier league player. A rusty Shola Ameobi isn't really a Championship player. Shame that he was awful today because I thought he might have put some effort in to try and make the fact the previous manager froze him out look like the wrong choice.  We alway struggle without Viduka, though a number of times its because he's been on the bench. First transfer target has got to be a younger Viduka/Shearer mould player (definitely not Defoe then please!), second is probably another central midfield player. I'd probably wait until the summer to see if a settled and strong enough back four can be made from those already there, or in Africa.

When you have to play your third or fourth choice centre half in central midfield I don't think you can be expecting to create a great deal and it showed. Can't really blame anyone because all ther midfielders are all missing through their own doing.

Looking forward to the Emirates next Saturday and my £4 a pint drinking already....

[Colchester Kev]

Why not Defoe, at least he knows where the net is ffs .... your current set of piss poor forwards couldnt hit a cows arse with a banjo !

[TightEnd]

New centre half, new midfielder, new younger target man to take the weight off Viduka's goals

and go from there....

[Rooky9]

Why not Defoe, at least he knows where the net is ffs .... your current set of piss poor forwards couldnt hit a cows arse with a banjo !

This is not true. Plus we already have two strikers in his mould and need elsewhere before we should look at changing them.

[Nem]

Defoe hasn't developed as I wished he had. He's decent, but Martins and Owen are much superior players than Defoe

[NoflopsHomer]

Great article from nufc.com after the Bolton game.

The Keegan appointment had taken me through the full range of emotions. Initial and genuine shock was soon followed by despair, denial and then indifference. And that was just the first 30 seconds.

The subsequent media hyperbole was genuinely nauseating with radio and TV mikes shoved in the faces of the usual suspects and members of the general public telling the world "it's what the Geordies wanted". I'm sure there were even folk claiming that it didn't matter if we lost every game 5-4, King Kev would win us summat....

Well, to be brutally honest, it wasn't what this Geordie wanted.
Supporting this club has turned me bitter and cynical. I don't think I was born that way, it's just been a natural consequence of years of disappointment and despair. The rest of my life has turned out pretty well so it has to be Newcastle United's fault.

My relationship with NUFC was in danger of turning stale after the Souness/Roeder/Allardyce years and recent fiascos threatened to have me turning to marriage guidance counsellors. We've said it many times before but indifference really is the biggest worry for football fans (and marriages).

But as the days wore on and the Bolton match approached something deep down in my core started to reignite. The return of Keegan had relit the pilot light and gradually the old bolier was starting to fire up again.

It was a plainly ridiculous appointment and once again left us open to national ridicule which seems to be our perpetual place in the football and I thought I'd had enough of that. But as the outside media started to snipe and sneer it all started to make perfect sense.

We clearly have an owner who is as bonkers as we are and who seems to have got into our psyche incredibly quickly. The media gurus couldn't cope with Ashley wearing his shirt and sitting (standing) with the fans. Why not? It might not be what a Chairman should do but he's the owner.

People like Allardyce and Souness had no place here - they should never have been appointed. The weren't good enough to completely change the make-up of the club. Souness had found that out at Liverpool. But the appointment of Keegan - whether it works or not - was probably perfect. A crazy manager, for a crazy club with a crazy owner and crazy fans.

If we can't get Wenger or Mourinho to this club (both big enough and good enough to transform us) then the last thing we want is another Allardyce or Souness (e.g. Mark Hughes). What's the point in that?

The national phone-ins have loved it, loved it. People from all over the country, desperate to point out that it's ridiculous. Desperate to tell us we'll never win anything and that it'll all end in tears. We know! But we'll have some great memories along the way.

And what if it did work? What if he just went and bloody won something? Can you imagine...? As KK said himself, it's not impossible.

Newcastle fans have huge expectations apparently. Do we? Do we really? I expect us to win bugger all in my lifetime but I want to get that anticipation, that raw emotion of going to see a side in black and white give their all and try and entertain. And in doing that I want us to have the same chance as Spurs, Everton, Man City, Villa or even 2004 Carling Cup winners, Boro of winning a trophy. That's not being unrealistic.

The top four will take a little longer but they're not invincible. Fergie can't go on forever, Liverpool seem intent on imploding, Grant may hit tough times at Stamford Bridge and even Wenger has had transitional seasons.

What I don't want is a team that will bore the pants off us and struggle in the short term with the promise of boring the pants off us and struggling a bit less in the long term. Why would any fan put up with that?

So, having gone through the full gamet of emotions in the days leading up to the Bolton, I was right behind the appointment, striding to the game, genuinely expectant and full of hopes and dreams. Not quite as I'd been as a youngster on my way to Keegan's debut for Newcastle but not far off. The boiler was fired up and the hot water was pumping through the pipes….

I'm sure most of us felt like that but how many fans of the "big four" have gone to a televised match against Bolton feeling the same? None, I'd suggest. And that's what they resent. They can't cope with the love we have for our club because they simply don't understand it.

Football is not about winning trophies, it's about winning battles and you decide what the battles are. I'd rather be Alan Shearer than Gary Neville. Who's got the most medals? Who's the legend…?

And so to the game, which was as mundane and uninspiring as anything we'd seen in recent years but we already had that one covered:

Two teams tainted by the influence of Sam Allardyce slugging out a goalless draw after the helter-skelter week ultimately had an anticlimactic ending. After such a hysterical build-up, not even King Kev could combat the ginger prince's team of bare-knuckle brawlers as the Trotters hoofed their way in and gatecrashed the party.

Keegan's first Newcastle game as a player was a pretty poor one against Q.P.R., memorable only for his debut goal (and a streaker in fluorescent socks) and from the start this looked like it would have to follow suit.

There was certainly no way it could match his first game as manager, when Bristol City were dispatched 3-0, as Gary Megson's Bolton came for a goalless draw and almost snatched a win.

In Gavin McCann and Kevin Davies, Bolton possess two players seemingly disinterested by the round object everyone was chasing. Both spent the afternoon practising for wrestlemania.

Add to that, the constant niggling and whingeing of Kevin Nolan, the time-wasting of Jussi Jaaskelainen and the persistent head-clutching by Lubomir Michalik and it made for a miserable evening's viewing.

It was no surprise that the game couldn't live up to the hype but where there's Keegan, there's often some magic and you couldn't help feeling a winner might just pop up from somewhere. Captain Michael Owen, perhaps. Alas, it wasn't to be.

The only magic dust in Kev's pocket was used to miraculously restore the supposedly knackered knee of Shola Ameobi. The big striker played the full game and put in a reasonable shift but for a player missing since November to have to come in and do that showed how few options Keegan had.

Kazenga LuaLua came on for Damien Duff and looked as dangerous as anybody but as Keegan admitted afterwards he was struggling to use anyone from his inexperienced subs bench.

In the end, though, it was a Wanderers replacement who almost snatched victory when Jlloyd Samuel nearly scored from close range but thankfully Shay Given made a smart low block with his leg.

So the Keegan bubble has already burst, we hear. Good. Perhaps the media folk can crawl back under their stones and leave us to start the rebuilding work properly.

Bolton are one of only three sides to beat Manchester United this season, so this wasn't such a bad result, especially given our lengthy list of absentees.

But whatever the result, the passion was back. If not on the pitch then it certainly was in the dug-out and the fire was undoubtedly back in the belly of the fans.

We've genuinely got something to look forward to now. We've got the promise of an emotional rollercoaster - whether that be extreme highs or lows - it's got to be better than a future under Allardyce or Hughes.

I hope Keegan does take a huff and walk out on us like everyone is expecting, but I hope that's in a good few year's time and I hope it's his decision. The worst thing that could happen is that we get bored of him, he lingers on and gets sacked, disappearing with a huge payoff.

If he does eventually walk out again, it would prove that he is still passionate. That's all we ask.

[Rooky9]

A cracking trip down to London and the emirates, with the exception of 35 second half minutes.

When I saw that the FA weren't going to take any action against Adebayor I knew it would cost us badly this weekend (and on Tuesday) and it proved to be the case. First half I thought we matched if not edged Arsenal. In the second half their quality came through and once they scored it was never really going to happen. Having said that, there was an obvious obstruction in the build up to the second and that completely killed the game.

The stadium is very impressive as a building, but perhaps doesn't help itself as an atmospheric ground, with the gaps at the back of the roof/stand and the roof not covering more of the seats and keeping the noise in. The stories about 'the library' I would say are relatively true. There seemed to be a small section at the opposite end of the ground to us that were standing and singing, but other than that there were only really the original chants of '1-0 to the arsenal', '2-0 to the arsenal' and there weren't many of them left to sing '3-0 to the arsenal'. Having said this there were a number of Newcastle fans round me that I wish weren't there, or infact alive. I had my first experience of idiotic racism for probably over ten years. These people should be put down in the hope that they don't get the chance to reproduce and spend the rest of their life leaching off society. I don't hold much hope but we'll see if reporting them does any good.

I went to the ground with an Arsenal fan I know, and his mates, in my colours, had a pint at a pub by the ground, got the tube back into town and had no problems at all, which is how football should be without losing the banter inside the ground. I did get booed by a 5 year old boy in the crazy queuing system at Arsenal station which was fairly amusing.

There's always next year....