Former United player Chris Waddle has said he believes that if current Newcastle manager Kevin Keegan doesn't get what he wants from the club, in the form of support, decisions and results then he won't be afraid to say something and potentially walk away from the club. Keegan is quite clear that he needs players in order to attempt to succeed at ploughing his way up the Premier League table.
His current squad is small and just a few injuries could cause chaos once the season is underway.
An ever optimistic Waddle said of the situation:
"Newcastle aren't going to challenge this season and the problem is everything is up in the sky. They're not going to threaten the top four, nowhere near. He needs his big strikers fit - Viduka, Martins and Owen - and if they are they should finish comfortably in the league.
But if they're not 100 per cent fit, he needs four or five players just to challenge the teams outside the top four. Kevin will give it a good go and he'll know more than most people about what is happening.
But if he thinks there's no light at the end of the tunnel and he's banging his head against a brick wall, he'll say so.
Kevin is the sort of guy who will turn round to the club and say, 'If you want top-six football, then I can't do it for you'. He's honest enough to do that.
There's a lot to be done. Kevin knows what's required and if he's given the opportunity he will bring it back. It's about luring players and if you've got money available that changes it."
Owner Mike Ashley on the other hand has other ideas. His aim is to break into the top four and be challenging in Europe by the end of the season. Last season Keegan made it clear the big four wasn't a possibility with the resources available to him, a comment which didn't sit well with his boss who is unhappy about pumping in the funds and not seeing the results. He recently said that his aim for this season was a top 10 finish.
In an interview this week with The Sun Ashley said:
"The top four have enormous resources but over time it must be possible to compete with them. I've invested £250m in Newcastle and so that and European nights of football must be the dream.
Compared with some of the other owners in the Premier League, I may be a middleweight taking on heavyweights but I'm building the boxer up."
Keegan learnt last season the disadvantages of a small squad - injuries hampered the side's performance and the results showed this. Unless Mike Ashley has something amazing up his sleeve the situation is likely to be the same - the squad is still of a similar size despite recent arrivals.
[color=#9933FF][/color]I think the only problem we have with Ashley is his possible propensity to make the Toon a sattelite London club. The staff he has recruited are from that area apart from Kev. I hope I'm wrong.! Edd
For far too long the club has been a laughing stock and open to sneers from the london media, it still carries on with Ashley. For one I dont think he is looking for a fast buck, but he knows that we cannot keep throwing cash at over paid stars - he has stated the club was in a mess financially and today still owes 27 mill for players bought by previous regime.
We do not a striker, cm and a left back, and we will be ok..
maybe it's simply because he knows how close our other strikers are to fitness, or how close we are to signing another, or, and this may not be to everyones taste, he may have rather lower targets for the coming season than we would all hope. we wont go down, so perhaps its all about throwing the available money towards improving our overall situation.
i've just read the post cam toon put up about ashleys meeting with the corparates, i had read it elsewhere earlier and while it may be total fiction it contains a true message. that is this, that whatever we guess at from outside, there will always be part of the true picture that we dont yet know, and so we will be lucky to ever guess correctly at the owners motivations for actions we find hard to read
I don't think it is weaker than last year, look at the players that have left or been released so far, only Rozehnal really played a part last season and we've got 3 players in who should be in and around the first team, with Guthrie and Gutierrez already impressing to some degree though I can't really say much about Bassong. None of them have a series of injuries like Carr or Emre had so not worried about that right now. We've just got some of the same problems as last year, which is the need for a creative force in midfield and injuries and problems up front. We still need to bring some players in but don't think we're worse off this year.
we had huge turmoil last year, a dead duck manager who the players stopped playing for, at least as many important injuries as any team in the league, and constant speculation as to some or other trouble at the club simply did not go away for more than one day at a time. we went from mid november to march with only one win, changed manager, had to deal with the most odious creature in the league being part of our first team squad, took some huge beatings in winter....and finished a comfortable 12th.
what a rubbish league! ethis year, even worse teams have been promoted, several of the teams who got ahead of us have been weakened, and only sunderland and fulham of those below us look any better than they were last year.
Barton featured prominently for this team in the late run that secured PL status. He's out for some amount of time.
We've lost some depth players (Ramage, Carr, Emre) as well, Milner will be in a new position, Gutierrez is untested in the PL, Butt is year older, Viduka is going to miss time to injury, Coloccini isn't going to have a preseason which means an injury to Taylor or Faye early would be devastating, and we still have Alan Smith. Alright, maybe we're not weaker, but we're certainly not any stronger.
i said we wouldnt go down, not that we'd walk into the top 6!
that said, we are only a couple of decent signings away from being better than the two teams who contested 5th and 6th last year. it is not the best league in the world, it just happens to have 4 of the strongest, deepest squads in the world playing in it. behind them, there is a load of 'meh'
by the way, would you say we performed to par last season, or better or worse, given our squad?
I wouldn't say they underachieved or overachieved last season. There was and is some talent in the squad but there was and is a lack of depth. I can't say this squad should have done better last year considering the time missed by Owen, Viduka, Emre, Duff and Martins. As I said before, injuries will happen.
I think they underachieved. We had a VERY long run of@#$%&games - with no achievement. Just because we picked up at the end it kinda overshadowed the performances put in prior to the wins.
Yeah, but didn't the run of s.hite games take place with Owen, Viduka, Emre and Duff out injured? Again, a well-constructed squad will have depth players that can fill in when the first line goes down. Consider Harper. If we hadn't had top-notch cover there, we're playing this season in the fizzy pop league.
True, without Harper we would have been in trouble.
But thats the problem, we played@#$%&because we didnt have the cover, we still dont and therefore cannot afford to be crap.
We do not have a weaker team, it may not be much stronger but its not necessarily weaker. With regards to cover? Well we are in exactly the same situation with no improvement on last season.
Oh and surprise surprise we head into another season with Owen, Viduka, Martins and Emre.....
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