Following criticism that N.O was overly critical of Graeme Souness, we set you the readers a challenge, asking you to send in your pro-Souness views and while not many of you took up the challenge, one or two of you did and as promised, here they are, published in full. Thanks to everyone who wrote in.

Newcastle-Online.com reader Jon Lee, an exiled Magpie now living out in the States, has took up our challenge to write a positive article concerning Graeme Souness and his future as Newcastle United manager. Jon takes a pragmaticm businesslike look at the situation.

As a long time Newcastle supporter now living in the US I feel as though I can take a more subjective view of the situation regarding Souness than if I was back home surrounded by the recent failures of the team.

My view is taken purely from a business perspective and is a simple one. Souness has been brought in as a project manager. His brief is to achieve “success” in a defined timescale. I understand that “success” is a somewhat subjective term but I think most would agree to the following as being reasonable:

1. Earning a place in Europe
2. A top six place in the league
3. Selling all of next year’s season tickets.

One of the most essential lessons for any project manager is to manage your Stakeholders. If you don’t do this, even if you are technically successful, it is very difficult to have a successful project because too many people actually want you to fail or at the least, will stand on the sidelines and throw verbal rocks at you. In Souness’ case, his stakeholders are primarily: The board; his players, the fans and the press. These are listed in the sequence in which they can “kill” his project the fastest. So how has he fared on this:

1. The board: He has actually done moderately well in keeping his main stakeholder (Freddy Shepherd) on board to date. Although as his project is looking more and more likely to fail he will rapidly lose support in this area.

2. His squad. I understand that he has inherited a difficult squad, but special footballers tend to be a little temperamental and have a touch of the prima donna in them. It is his job to get the best out of them. Frankly some of the comments he makes about them in the press make me cringe. If I made those comments about my staff I would not expect them to want to work for me. My opinion is that he has failed in this area.

3. The fans. I know that not many fans were that happy about his appointment in the first place which is not his fault. However he must have been aware of this at the time and did not do anything to try and turn them around. The situation is that he has now lost the confidence of the majority of the fans to the point where they are frustrated and starting to barrack the players, making the whole situation worse.

4. The press. This has been appallingly handled by him. His stance of “you don’t help me then I won’t help you” is immature. Even if the press are idiots, you need to treat them with respect.

So whereas it is still theoretically possible for him to succeed, he has made it very difficult for himself by antagonizing so many of the people that he needs. As such this project is doomed to failure unless a miracle occurs.

The question now is not if Souness should go but rather when. That has to be a business decision. Obviously he needs to go before the start of the new season, otherwise the club will never sell all it’s season tickets. Furthermore, it is imperative that a quality manager is brought in to replace him regardless of the timing.

The only reason for letting him go immediately, is if the club were to be in danger of relegation or that quality manager was available now. Only if relegation were considered a real danger should he be thrown overboard without a good replacement. The priority then would be to bring in a cheerleader who can motivate what is a terrific squad to play to their potential.

The interests of the club must come first even if that means that we must endure this torment for the rest of the season then. Bringing in another wrong manager just because we don’t like Souness would be a disaster, only in the next case we may not have the resources to recover from it.

By Jon Lee