I'm not laughing
"Robson should be sacked, his substitutions are abysmal. Dyer playing. Bowyer on bench. Shearer should be dropped. Kluivert must be regretting signing. A joke."

So sayeth the text message I got last night from someone who was at the latest installment of our traditional crap start to the season.

Now I'm fairly sure that if Bowyer had been fully fit, he would have started ahead of Dyer - which would see Kieron drop to fourth in the pecking order for a central midfield birth. So hopefully he'll be in a bettor state and can start on Saturday, but Dyer hardly looks a player in a mood to make up for his shoddy approach of late by performing well on the pitch. Did anyone actually see him do anything good last night, if so what?

As far as Bobby's substitutions are concerned, I thought Shola looked lively when he came on, but he isn't a right winger, so either we need to get a better range of players on the bench (2 strikers last night) or we need to bite the bullet and chuck on a striker for a forward who is not playing that well.

To that end, I'd agree with the message - Shearer has looked out of touch of late and either playing Kluivert or Ameobi from the start would probably be a good idea. It should also give us a bit more variety in our play, as the need to swing balls into the box from out wide for Shearer to head in/knock down wouldn't exist.

The problem with sacking Bobby (aside from the PR disaster that would follow as everyone who is not a Newcastle fan would be up in arms at this apparent mistreatment of the old man - if he can't do the job he should go simple as that, just ask Paul Sturrock) is who to replace him with?

Whilst I imagine Bruce, Curbishly, Allardyce and McClaren would all relish the opportunity to manage a club with a bit more money and a bigger gate I'm not sure that they'd be banging on our door. O'Neill would have to sacrifice his Champions League campaign with Celtic, and any foreign manager with proven experience has already been snapped up (Benitez, Mourinho, Santini, etc.)

So we're stuck with Bobby until he departs for Clacton-on-Sea next summer. I only hope it won't be too late by then.

On The Rooney front, I'm curious as to why we'd make our bid public? Surely that's only going to start a bidding war which, given Man Utd's Champions League qualification, we are unlikely to win. Yes Shearer turned them down, but he's a Geordie, Rooney won't have the same lemming like urges to commit career suicide ( 1 Premiership trophy and a couple of FA Cup runners up medals is a sad return for a player of Shearer's undoubted talent - particularly as the Premiership was before he joined us.).

Hopefully, Wayne will foolishly sign the wrong contract and join us, and come and play at the tip of a diamond midfield (he's got to be better than the king of bling for a start) breaking forward, creating and scoring goals for fun a la Peter Beardsley in his pomp.

But somehow I doubt it.

- posted by Paul @ 9:22 am