Latest on the Manager situation!

Thursday 27th August , A day I will remember for a long time. Its the day that finally saw the end of dull boring negative football at St James's park. Kenny Dalglish has been sacked .

First a few words on Kenny,

Dalglish had a hard act to follow, replacing a living legend in Kevin Keegan was going to be a hard act to follow. What became clear was that one of the reasons that Keegan was idolised by the fans was because of his great character. He was so passionate, so in touch with the fans. There were often tears in his eyes when he talked of the toon. he was one of us. The other great thing was his cavalier approach to football. If the opposition scored 2 then we would score 3. Attack, attack, attack. was the key word in his football philosophy. He made us into the entertainers, the team that everyone loved. His way just about worked, we almost got to the top., but the pressure eventually got to him and on that sad day in January 1997 he resigned.

Bobby Robson had be tipped as the best man to replace him. unfortunately he was in a job at Barcelona that he could not leave until the end of the season, so we looked elsewhere.

Kenny Dalglish was soon appointed as the new manager.

I like many really didn't think that he was the best man for the job. He may well have had a good record when he took over a championship winning side at Liverpool. He went to Blackburn at a time when no other clubs were spending big money. He was given unlimited funds to build a side to win the championship, and that to his credit he did. After he joined Newcastle he made few changes , for the rest of the season he left the team as they were and we went on to again be runners up in the league. That though is when the good times ended. over the summer of 97 he chose to sell off Keegans flair players and replace them with supposedly more hard working individuals. Out went David Ginola, Les Ferdinand, peter Beardsley, lee Clarke, Robbie Elliot and in came, Des Hamilton, Alex Pistone, John Dahl tommisson, John Barnes and Ian Rush. things got worse when Shearer was injured and NO replacement for him was bought. He apparently tried to get the best players to come but failed. We ended up on a downward spiral and by the time Shearer returned 7 months later we were lurking at the bottom of the league. Newcastle had lost their nack of scoring goals, entertaining the fans and winning games. the CND campaign for no more Dalglish had been set up on this site in November of 97 at first to negative reactions from a lot of the other On-line fans. But by the time Tino and Beresford had been Sold and Gary Speed brought in opinions amongst the fans were divided about 50-50. the Stevenage affair turned more against Dalglish and by the end of the season most fans were resigned to the fact that Kenny must Go. Rumor has it that Dalglish was told after the cup final that he would soon be replaced The surprising thing is that he was given another £15 million to spend on players. He chose to buy lots of unknown quantities from overseas rather than buy a few World class stars .To his credit, he has re introduced a very good youth policy and brought back the reserves. We were all very optimistic in pre season and looked forward to seeing the new look team in action against no hopers "Charlton " on the opening day. It turned into I nightmare of a game. With Kenny's playing virtually the same side as last year playing the same negative boring football against a 10 man Charlton side. Although it finished 0-0 the fans saw it as a defeat and booed the team off the pitch. The writing was on the wall for KD. He had to be replaced sooner rather than later. Freddy Shepherd and Douglas Hall saw their share go down to an all time low and new that to save the club they needed to come up with a new man to lead us forward sooner rather than later.

The Following is brief Factfile on Ruud Gullit who is expected to take over as manager of English premier league Newcastle on Thursday August 27th. : Born September 1 1962: in Surinam, 1970: Signed by Dutch club Meerboys as a junior. 1978: Signed for Dutch club Haarlem. 1981: Made international debut for Netherlands against Switzerland on 19th birthday. 1982: Moved to Feyenoord. 1985: Transferred to PSV Eindhoven for 400,000 pounds 1987: Signed by AC Milan for world record 5.5 million pounds Voted European and World Footballer of the Year. 1988: Helped Milan to Italian league title. Captained Netherlands to European championship title, scoring in 2-0 final victory over the Soviet Union. Suffered serious knee injury. 1993: Won third Italian League winners' medal with Milan before joining Sampdoria. 1994: Made international comeback against Scotland but walked out of training camp after another argument with manager with the World Cup less than three weeks away. In all, made 66 appearances for the Netherlands, scoring 16 goals. Moved back to Milan for seven months before returning to Sampdoria. 1995: Left Sampdoria on free transfer and signed two-year contract with Chelsea. May 1996: Named as Chelsea's player-manager in succession to Glenn Hoddle, who left to become England coach. 1996 - Signed Gianluca Vialli on a free transfer from Juventus. He is soon joined by fellow Italians Roberto Di Matteo and Gianfranco Zola. May 1997. Led Chelsea to first major trophy in 26 years, beating Middlesbrough 2-0 in the final. Feb 1998 - Sacked as Chelsea manager and Vialli takes over. August 27 1998 - Expected to become Newcastle manager, replacing Kenny Dalglish.

Factfile Stolen by Rik, from some big Internet site.

SO what happens now?

Looks like things wont change much , personnel wise at Newcastle for a good few weeks. Ruud may well keep terry mac as assistant or may opt to bring in a new assistant such as glen roeder or even tempt Pedro back as assistant manager to further enhance his reputation As for players I think he will asses all the players and decide who should stay and who should go over a number of weeks. At the moment with 43 players on the recent team photo, Ruud has a lot of choice in which to build a winning team without bringing in new blood. With £15 million worth of new talent in the form of 9 new players coming in over the summer changes look unlikely in the short term. I would think that if Ruud wants different players then he will have to sell first.

Top of my list of outgoing players will be Gary Speed and Warren Barton . with the money from these two I would reckon he will make offers for some of the unhappy Chelsea players such as Lebouf, Zola and Flo. I am of course just speculating , but Managers tend to go for players from their former clubs. They would be 3 that I could envisage coming up North. If we do then get some of these then that would open the door for others (that shall remain nameless) to leave the club, generating more money for a really big star. I think within a couple of months we should once again have a team that will be winning every game and entertaining us again. If not than with his charm I am sure he could persuade the board to splash out on a big star to get us to the top. A certain Mr Del Piero springs to mind.

These are once again exciting times at Newcastle United !