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Great Expectations
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 Tuesday
03 January 2006
By Archie
Brand
I have been a supporter of Newcastle United for 30 years plus now.
I will continue to support them regardless of trophies, titles or
division. This is no doubt something that a Manchester United fan
would not understand. In my view, if you can't attend a home match
without crossing time zones - YOU'RE NOT A FAN!
(As I live in Bahrain that probably wasn't the strongest point to
my argument, but I'm sure you get the idea.)
I have been a strong supporter of Souness since he arrived. Give the
man a chance I thought. I have had a few jobs where I probably wasn't
the automatic choice, but given the chance I've managed to prove myself.
Why should Souness be treated any differently? Is he performing?
He has always said "let me get my players out there, then judge me".
I think, with the exception of Moore, I've seen his team, and to be
perfectly honest I wasn't that impressed with the way they played
football together.
I work on fairly complex electronics systems and have to spend time
trying to systematically demonstrate to the customer that various
parts of new systems are solid and can be relied upon.
While I'm sure you can see where I'm heading I'd like to state straight
away that I would never attempt to compare my job to that of Souness.
That would be crazy. To keep my job I have to have a much better success
rate than he has.
This said though, Souness appears to have adopted a pretty similar
methodology in his approach to the Newcastle Team, to that used in
my business. First of all, to be acceptable a system has to have fully
functioning modules and or processes. Souness has shown, systematically,
and beyond any doubt, that NUFC are lacking in many functional areas.
We can either show this at module level, where we can see that some
of the component parts, while appearing to function properly, are
in fact carrying out processes at only the most basic level, or we
can run diagnostics that cover function - in this case the key functional
groups of Defence, Midfield and Attack.
Here again we are not happy with the entries that we find in the Error
Logs following completion of these tests. Initial defence diagnostics
appear fairly optimistic. Commencing tests under laboratory conditions
give us hope. From a known condition, with clearly stated starting
criteria and controlled conditions, the defence carries out its expected
function at the lowest level.
However - laboratory conditions and real life are often different.
Something similar to the training facility and the match, maybe? Add
a few variables, such as the ball actually moving, and players running,
and the systems appears to break down. Further analysis shows us that
none of the Back-Office Central Core processes are functioning correctly
with inexplicable delays appearing, lost pointers and a definite inability
to multitask is apparent. Orphan processes abound.
To compensate for this 2 of the Back-Office peripherals are logging
unacceptably excessive time online. It is inevitable that occasional
crashes will result from this extremely inefficient process management.
This problem is exacerbated by last ditch attempts to Hack the system,
which almost always result in the over-emphasis of down-time, which
then produces an over-reaction from the Watchdog processes. Refer
to the Beep Codes in your manual.
Offensive diagnostics would also suggest that organised attacks are
properly catered for, but again we have to stress that this is only
under laboratory conditions. In real life we find that lack of bandwidth
on the Central Bus is causing bottlenecks, resulting in denial of
service at the front, in turn preventing access to the net. The aforementioned
Central Bus bottlenecks cause the system to behave erratically. Yet
again we see processes running hot and cold, stopping and having to
be restarted, but there appears to be no reliable communication between
these processes and the Front End Processors.
Any output to the FEPs is generally corrupt, and cannot be relied
upon. Live testing has shown unacceptably high failure rates, a lack
of availability of spare parts of an acceptable quality, plus lack
of available funds to either repair the existing system, or replace
it. A word of advice - maintenance should only be carried out by suitably
qualified personnel, but most importantly use of the correct spares
is a must.
Don't forget that even if the replacement parts you purchased are
from reputable sources and are expensive, you still have to confirm
complete compatibility before putting them into service in your system.
For those of you of a less technical persuasion let me sum it up by
saying; The Defence is extremely suspect. Only overtime from from
the likes of Ramage and Given is keeping the Goals Against count at
a reasonable level. We have a good frontline, but they are not getting
the service in the right place at the right time. The midfield isn't
providing the required service. There is no width. Injuries have shown
us that talent-wise we are very shallow. Michael Owen gets injured
- we cant score goals. Parker is out, we have no teeth in midfield.
With Ramage, Taylor and Given out - do we actually have a defence?
Of all these players that have been brought in to strengthen the squad
over the last 16 months, how many have settled in to the way we play?
We have a problem. How do you replace a manager at the beginning of
January? The replacement has no time to make use of the Transfer Window.
He is therefore stuck with Souness's players of choice.
If that's the case do we just leave Souness in there until March,
and concentrate on damage limitation? You never know - it might all
come together. Would a change of Manager at this stage increase either
the morale or effort of the team? Maybe. Maybe not.
As of the beginning of 2006 in my opinion Souness (and Newcastle United)
has not performed. I have seen nothing of the play on the field that
suggests we even have the makings of a good team. We have some good
players - but not a good team.
My heart says "Time To Go Graeme" but my mind says 3 more months and
3 more players. I think that Freddy is in a situation where he has
to stick to his side of the deal and throw in a bit more cash. If
things don't improve, then Souness has to honour his part and take
a walk in March.
We are coming up to the time that a good spring clean would do us
the world of good. Cash in on some of the silly money that's going
around and then buy some proven premiership players.
Regardless - we'll be there in 2006 following the boys.
A Happy New Year to all.
Archie Brand
Bahrain
© Archie Brand
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