Deak’s Football Blog

Back in January 2008, Sam Allardyce had just begun the enormous task modernising the antiquated infrastructure of Newcastle United; something, even though he had finally been able to put the right personnel in place, that could not be done in a single season. In the view of James Milner, now at Aston Villa, Allardyce’s project was not a small one:

The way Allardyce came in at Newcastle, he was planning for the long-term. The staff he brought in, he was looking at a bigger picture. The plan might have taken three, four, five years.

To take Newcastle forward, Allardyce identified two primary needs: first, a focus on footballing basics, like fitness and discipline, which had been neglected under previous managers; second, a radical reassessment of the club off of the field. For years, Newcastle presented the thin veneer of being a top modern football club: big name signings, a great stadium, and high attendances; but, beneath the surface, things were quite different.

Allardyce — just as he did at Bolton — assembled an enormous backroom staff, including specialist coaches, dietitians, and a sports psychologist. He knew that fundamental, ground up, changes were needed to the way that Newcastle operated.

Back in May 2007, Newcastle had some talented players; however, they were variously unfit, undisciplined, unmotivated, and unprofessional. They were failing to perform as individuals or as a team. Sam Allardyce knew that the club needed a revolution to take the big step up to compete with the Premiership’s best. Unfortunately for everyone involved, this revolution was not given sufficient time to come to fruition.

A lot has been said about the merry-go-round of managers at Newcastle in recent years, it’s an obvious thing to point out. However, I believe this is a symptom, not a cause of the club’s problems. In my view as a neutral — I don’t support any Premiership side — two main elements led first to the Allardyce regime’s failure, and then the subsequent decline of Newcastle United.

Cause 1: The Fans

No-one doubts the passion of the Toon Army and their love of the club, however their impatience with Allardyce — and their dislike for his style of play — seemed irrational, even hysterical at times. It unquestionably damaged the club.

Newcastle United is a big club, they would moan, we should be higher in the league.

Both true, naturally, but years of expensive signings at the cost of more fundamental investment in the club had only ever led to erratic form.

We used to play attractive attacking football under Kevin Keegan but Sam Alladyce plays ugly donkey football, was another frequent lament of Newcastle fans.

This, to me, is the most ridiculous complaint of all against Allardyce’s time as manager. It demonstrates a misunderstanding of what Big Sam was trying to achieve and the nature of Premiership today.

Newcastle fans pining for the free-spirited attacking football of Kevin Keegan is a bit like your grandmother lamenting how no-one serves dripping sandwiches any more. Yes, they probably tasted great at the time, but these days we know about cholesterol and we know that dripping sandwiches are going to kill you.

To put things into perspective, Keegan’s first reign lasted from 1992 to 1997; over a decade before Big Sam took charge at Newcastle. Make no mistake, these were, if not simpler, then remarkably different times in Premiership football.

It may be hard for Geordies to accept, but by 2007 Keegan’s brand of naïve, seat-of-the-pants, attacking play had long since had its day. We saw this during his time at Manchester City, where, despite not winning a single game for three months in 2003 to 2004, Keegan — either through belligerence or incompetence — did not change City’s playing style. We saw it even earlier than this with England in Euro 2000, where, despite having leads against Romania and Portugal, we lost both of the matches 3-2.

Today we live in the age of the counter-attack; the ebb and flow of a Premiership match now has different demands upon players and coaches. To get to a position where you can play attractive attacking football within the context of a counter-attacking system, very firm, almost instinctual, positional understanding must be in place. There must be real discipline and fantastic levels of fitness within the team, and this does not happen overnight.

The football under Allardyce was not pretty, but James Milner confirms that was not his intention:

He [Allardyce] never told us to just hit it. We had the players to play and Allardyce wanted us to do that.

Getting the basics right was something Newcastle had neglected for years, and Big Sam recognised that this was the overriding reason for the club’s erratic and worsening form. It had to be addressed. The fan’s misunderstanding of what was happening at the time, their reaction to it, and the reaction of the board, was the turning point in the club’s fortunes. It was the key moment, a point where progress or decline hinged on a single decision; the firing of Sam Allardyce.

Cause 2: The Chairmen

At the start of the 1990s, Kevin Keegan being allowed to abandon development of a competitive reserve team was an astonishingly stupid move by Sir John Hall. Make no mistake, having no route for fringe players to develop their form, and having no bridge for youth players to the first team, set Newcastle back a decade. It was a catastrophe.

With Keegan’s blinkered focus on the first team, youth development from 1992 to 1997 bore almost no fruit. Keegan’s attempts to buy success failed, and only now are Newcastle gradually clawing their way up to the level of youth development they should have.

If Sir John Hall was merely a servile to Keegan’s myopic vision for Newcastle United, then what came next was — amazingly — even worse.

Freddy Shepherd got his foot in the door by virtue of two things: 1) the signing Alan Shearer for a then world record fee; 2) no small amount of nepotism. Whatever the reasons for his appointment as chairman, the Shearer signing, for a period, made Shepherd popular with the Newcastle fans.

It didn’t last.

Freddy Shepherd and Douglas Hall (son of John, natch) were exposed by the News of the World — in the famous “Fake Sheik” story — deriding the club’s supporters for the money they wasted on merchandise and calling Geordie women “dogs”. Shepherd also labeled Alan Shearer the “Mary Poppins of football”; a statement which I still can’t figure out if it’s offensive or not.

Following the scandal, both Shepherd and Douglas Hall stood down from their positions; however, just 10 months later, they voted themselves back on the board.

There’s a reasonable list of Freddy Shepherd’s controversies whilst Newcastle United chairman, but, for me, the one that bites the most is the firing of Sir Bobby Robson just four games into the 2004 season.

On top of all the bad press Freddy Shepherd courted, by the time his era ended there were bigger problems at Newcastle United. The club, according to current chairman Chris Mort, had incurred such toxic debts that it was just six months from folding.

Despite this, with new owner Mike Ashley came an initial wave of optimism. He wore the club shirt, stood with the fans, drank beer, and most importantly — thanks to his lack of due diligence! — grudgingly shored up millions of the club’s debt.

However, for all the good Ashley did, he shot himself in the foot with the re-appointment of Kevin Keegan as manager.

Keegan’s return was a massively popular move with the Toon fans, but a shockingly naïve one by Ashley. Keegan had effectively retired from football management following his departure from Man City, instead he was focusing his efforts on the white elephant that is his Soccer Circus. He had walked away from football, become even more out of touch, and done nothing to improve his coaching skills or develop his knowledge of the game.

Keegan’s appointment, unsurprisingly, did not last. He failed to win any of his first eight matches in charge and, not for the first time, seemed to cast a sad and abject figure in interviews.

Despite managing to avoid relegation, Keegan quit the club following a frustrating close season in the transfer market, saying:

A manager must have the right to manage and clubs should not impose upon any manager any player that he does not want.

Not for the first time in his career, Keegan found himself out of step with the modern game and Mike Ashley must take a large amount of blame for not having the foresight to see that he was wrong type of manager for Newcastle United.

The Future

No club is too big to be relegated, and Newcastle United’s fate seems sealed to me. As a Coventry City supporter, I can offer some comfort.

Large cash injections to keep big earners onboard, despite the huge reduction in television revenue, cannot be sustained for more than a season. If you don’t go straight back up, the Championship offers other opportunities.

Life outside the topflight of English football can provide you with a stronger focus on the fundamentals of running and managing a modern football club. It has taken the Skyblues a few years, but we have made fantastic progress on the infrastructure of our club and our finances are now secure. Not many clubs can say that. Our focus is on youth, and this, to my mind, is the right platform for sustainable development and, hopefully, success.

We’ll see you at the Ricoh.