Castle or Ruin?
by Paul O'Donnell
The mess at Newcastle has reached a new level. Not the level the team and fans had in mind when KK returned however. The absurdity created by the turnstile-like rotation of managers over the past five seasons is still spinning out of control and has now resulted in KK taking a walk; for good.
The euphoria and frankly absurd prognostications of fans for their new future created by the return of Keegan just 8 months ago has evaporated revealing what many suspected was the real root of the problems on Tyneside. When the board members fancy themselves coaches, managers and the ultimate judges of talent there is sure to be conflict and major problems for all associated with the club. The focus of attention in events such as this is naturally on the most publicly visible of the clubs hierarchy, the manager.
That appears to be the source of the issues that has resulted in Keegan surrendering his badge.
It is the manager that puts his reputation, his future and his sanity on the line week-after-week, yet Newcastle's board seems to believe that man doesn't need to know or even influence what players he has available to build his team. On Tyneside, that manager has little or no input on who goes or who the club pursues in the transfer window apparently and thats the way the board wants, and expects it to work. Dreamland. A recipe for disaster.
Statements by Keegan suggest that the board was shopping players during the transfer window without even making him aware of what was going on or seek his guidance on who to pursue to strengthen his team. While not stated directly by either the board or Keegan, the move of James Milner to Villa and the board forcing him to "accept" the Birmingham club's 12M pound offer was the last straw for KK.
One of those who was himself caught in the swirl of events in Newcastle since Sir Bobby Robson left the club had this to say (quoted from ESPN):
Glenn Roeder, manager of Newcastle in 2006-07 and currently in charge at Norwich, told BBC Radio Five Live: "The club is a tragedy and it goes from one disaster to another.
"There's no stability at the club and I don't think there has been for a long time. They go from one manager to another and the people who suffer the most are the most important people, the supporters."
Those supporters are deep in despair these days and it has been brought to them by their own board and its heavy hand. After the high of the dramatic return of KK last year complete with the totally unrealistic prognostications of a glorious future for the club they now find themselves back in the doldrums.
Remember the poor treatment afforded Big Sam at Tyneside? He was simply run out of town because the board and fans would not accept what many saw: the team on the pitch was simply not good enough to realize those dreams of cups and titles. Besides that, they also would not allow Big Sam or any other manager (now including KK himself apparently) the time it would take to actually build that team that could actually reach for those stars they all seemed to have in their eyes.
The money and perhaps more importantly, the time, wasted to get to that magical "next level" now has Newcastle in a new disaster of their own making. Actually, it might be more accurate to say that it is all just another event in the continuing saga on how not to conduct the business of a professional soccer club.
The very real danger on Tyneside is that this club could be on the brink of becoming another Leeds United, driven to their demise by their own board. That may not happen to the Toon, and I sincerely hope that it does not, because the financial resources at Newcastle are very substantial.
However, until the board allows the football side to be run by the professional footballers, this run of bizarre events will continue to lurch from one disaster to the next as the team earns little more than survival at the EPL level, if they can even manage that.
