Since Bobby Robson left St James park, would you have a look at the managers that you’ve employed since?

Souness

Roeder - Weyhey he managed to save us from relegation after Souness and we managed to qualify for the Inter-toto (with Alan Shearer as his assistant).
This season has not gone as expected. The motivation of having a guy like shearer around has gone and we are slowly sliding into trouble.

No we’ll have a look at the post-Kev records:

Dalglish - Ruined the makings of a League winning side by bringing past heros in to replace the likes of Les Ferdinand, David Ginola etc

Ruud Gullit (Commonly known to play sexy football, eherm, and had Ginfranco Zola at Chelsea) - Had to pick up the pieces after Dalglish - tried but failed (not good enough as a manager) - where was the sexy football?

Bobby Robson - Had to carry on picking the pieces up after Dalglish. Managed to build up a half decent team (many of the players are still present). Did well, got sacked !

Souness - errrr, what can i say, had a decent team after Bobby left, turned the team to an average side who werent ever going to finish in the top half of the table.

World Class Manager - errr, No, Glen Roeder, you know, that guy who got West Ham relegated?

I believe that world class manager gap should be filled with a world class manager regardless of the wages. Think of your share prices and the value of the club.
Freddy, you’ll be lucky to get £70m for the club, never mind £100m, after we get relegated next season !!
Splash out, just like you have for players like Martins (£9m), Owen(£17m), Luque(£9m) (total: £35m), on a world class manager who can manage those players and all the rest to win things !!

Imagine what it’ll be like to hold a real Cup that your club have won.

Give a real manager a chance, go on, we could be the entertainers again !!

Mark

How can anyone say this? Players have been continuously played out of position and their abilities have disintergrated. I cant believe anybody is going to say that Roeder handled the Euro Cup exit well. We lost, we’re out of Europe ! We’ve no chance of qualifying for europe next season. Bobby would have got us into the UEFA cup at least.

Who thinks that Reoder is going to take us forward from here?

Who thinks we could be facing relegation next season under Roeder?

what do people think of it?

I hope we recover from this sooner rather than later.

A very concise article in it’s own right, with great details and analysis.

However I have to differ with several of your points of view. I believe you are giving Van Gaal too much credit and Mr Roeder far too much benefit of the doubt.

When Van Gaal took his men to St James’s he knew about our main weakness which was the defence he also knew like any coach will do is that a team who lacks defence lacks organisation. He also knew by looking on paper our main strength is clearly the midfield,and attack. With Butt and Parker centrally this should not be the easiest to breach also not fogetting Dyer and Duff make ideal outlets for the central midfield with their rapid pace.

Being the away team Van Gaal set out his team to contain the ball and pass it around as much as possible. Thus by doing this hopefully it will draw our midfield out of position leaving our defence to be vulnerable. Many coaches would have done exactly what Van Gaal did but the bold ones, the brave ones would have gone direct to try and by-pass our midfield (i.e using the channels, playing wide, or even long ball) and attack us like they did in the second half and second leg.

Van Gaal made the mistake of not being ruthless enough and giving us far too much respect but to be fair to the Dutchman, I doubt anyone could have foreseen Newcastle’s out of character, 35 minutes spurt of, some of the best attacking football we’ve played all season.

Ok Second leg.

So You’re saying it’s only right that Roeder line up a team as close as possible to the same line up we had at St.James’s. Usually this is correct but not in our case… Fatal Mistake it was… why you ask? So many reasons… Our line up in the first leg was to attack, we didnt have a game plan we just went out for the kill and it worked.

In the second leg, same line-up despite Huntington replacing Carr it was relatively the same. The main difference was we had a game plan, im not talking about all-out-defence but we had an intention to contain the ball like Alkmaar did in the 1st half of the 1st leg (look what happened to them). It’s ironic that we played better without a plan and managed to score 4 goals.

To name the ultimate mistake by Glender. To go out and to contain a game against a side that is the leading goal scorers of their domestic league aswell as the leading scorer’s of the very competition we are playing them in is madness. Centre backs are known for their strengths not agility, putting a stiff inexperience, lack of position sense paul Huntington against a orthadox, trick pacy winger is again pure madness. I mean the amount of times Huntington got turned was embarressing not to mention his poor postioning which certaining did not help.

With a 3 goal lead Glenn’s plan could have been correct even with our lack of tactical nous in our players we mite just have gotten away with it (with abit of luck too) but with a 2 goal margin and the away goal rule? Some say success and failure in football has a very thin line.

All I can say is. Mr Glenn Roeder my friend, look at your team, spot your strengths and spot the weakness. Play to your strengths.