Boro On Right Track For Immediate Return

by Chris Rivers on June 26, 2009 · 0 comments

ff1 300x225 Boro On Right Track For Immediate ReturnThings at the Riverside Stadium were always going to be overshadowed somewhat by events further north at St James Park. While the Toon are still figuring out who is going to be in charge at the start of next season Gareth Southgate has quietly gone about his business.

Life for a newly relegated club will never be easy, no matter what division you are in, and clearly there will be a number of departures from Teeside before the Boro squad for next season is sorted. Southgate will have known this and will be frantically trying to keep some of the top, young English talent Boro are in the midst of producing.

One player who sticks out in that category is David Wheater, a central defender who has attracted a lot of admirers through his displays in a Middlesbrough shirt. The 22-year-old no-nonsense centre back has been linked with Aston Villa, but has yet to pledge his future to anyone. Wheater is the kind of player Southgate will need to keep hold of for the forthcoming struggle.

Matthew Bates is another player who Southgate will be glad stuck around and in signing a new contract has shown some of the commitment that Middlesbrough perhaps lacked last season. Too many of their players drifted through games without a care in the world. Those are the types of players who Boro don’t want in their side next season, despite that extra bit of quality they may possess.

Southgate needs to go back to home grown talent, be it from the Teeside area or from Great Britain in general. Looking at the sides that came up last season a lot of their star players were home grown boys. Michael Kightly and Sylvan Ebanks-Blake stared for Wolves while Chris Eagles and Clarke Carlisle were pivotal in Burnley’s success.

Southgate has already taken a risk on young talent in the Premier League, a gamble which never really worked out for the former England international. However, the gulf in class between the Premier League and the Championship is still huge. The likes of Andrew Taylor, Adam Johnson and Tony McMahon will look much better players in the second tier of English football.

What Southgate needs now is some experience to bring the youngsters together, and I feel sure he knows that. It is still only June and a lot will change before the big kick-off on August 8. Yet looking at the three sides who came down I feel if Southgate can get the balance right, despite having not managed in the Championship before, his Boro side may finally steal the headlines in the north-east.

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New Newcastle Football Shirt Sums Up Clubs Plight

by footballnewsblog on June 23, 2009 · 2 comments

Newcastle United yesterday unveiled their new away football kit for the 2009-10 Championship season. In what can only be described as a truly awful effort - arguably one of the worst football shirts of the 21st century - it is yet another example of how the club just seem to manage to get things so wrong.

The only thing consistent about Newcastle United is their ability to mess things up on a grand scale. The two-toned yellow jersey may appeal to a small minority, but the reality is it is yet another reason for the football world in general to laugh at Newcastle United.

Relegation to the Championship, confusion over the future of manager Alan Shearer and a number of “stars” on ridiculously high wages (even for the Premiership) means a summary of misery for the Toon Army and a very difficult route back to the Barclays Premier League.

The departure of the club of Michael Owen on Monday told a story in itself. Signed in a blaze of glory from Real Madrid by Freddy Shepherd, Owen left St James Park with barely a whimper - which ironically summed up his participation in a Newcastle shirt.

Long gone are the days when Newcastle were the most exciting team in England, thrilling fans throughout the country with top stars like Shearer, Les Ferdinand, David Ginola and Faustino Asprilla.

The current team is a far cry from the great team built by Kevin Keegan and Philippe Albert’s exsquisite chip over Peter Schmeichel to put Newcastle 5-0 up against the Champions seems a lifetime to go.

Nobody would love to see Newcastle turn it around more than me - I was a huge fan of Keegan’s side and consider Newcastle one of my favourite clubs in the English league. However, the reality is for Newcastle to bounce back, it’s going to take a change much bigger than on the football pitch itself.

The whole club is a joke and needs an overhaul from top to bottom. Summed up by chairman Mike Ashley swanning about in a replica kit drinking a beer in the stand, Newcastle United lack professionalism and failure to change this image drastically and urgently could very well lead to much bigger problems for the club than relegation to the Championship.

Leeds United are an example of just how far a club can fall from grace - lets hope Newcastle don’t suffer the same fate.

Written by Danny Watson, a professional sports writer who blogs about football news.

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Newcastle The New Leeds? Eight Reasons The Championship Will Not Be A Walk In St James’ Park

by Dan Trelfer on June 1, 2009 · 0 comments

Will Shola Ameobi be enough to fire Newcastle back to the EPL?

Will Shola Ameobi be enough to fire Newcastle back to the EPL?

Newcastle fans must have watched Leeds United’s loss to Millwall in the League One play-offs and shuddered. It was like watching The Ghost of Football’s Future. Two clubs of similar size with similarly raucous fans, they are teams that by rights should never experience relegation from the top flight, let alone into League One. But it happened to Leeds. And it could happen to The Toon.

There can be no doubt that the steep road Leeds followed during their rapid decline could be one that Newcastle are already barrelling along themselves. The similarities, from playing staff, to wages, to financial excess, to a quick succession of managers, is almost eerie. To a Newcastle fan it should be downright terrifying.

The Championship is an unforgiving place - graduation is difficult, expulsion is effortless. Here are eight reasons why Newcastle will find next season to be the toughest battle the club has faced since before King Kev’s revolution in 1992:

1. Expectation: Birmingham faced their fair share of expectation last season and only just managed to cope with it. They went up, but with the players at their disposal it was hardly inspiring. Newcastle have an even larger mountain to climb. Pundits and the Newcastle public, regardless of who stays and who joins, will expect Newcastle to not only win the league, but to win it in style and with games to spare. Newcastle failed to deal with the pressure last season - can they reverse that next season?

2. The Bus: Fans, management, players and directors are going to be desperate for their club to beat Newcastle.  No other team in the league has the cache of the Toon. At St James’ Park teams will, as they say, park the bus in front of the goal. Away from Newcastle, teams will fancy themselves to take a black-and-white scalp in front of their biggest crowd of the season. Every game, from Doncaster to Blackpool to Peterborough, is going to be a scrap. Are they up for it?

3. The Manager: As things stand, Newcastle do not have a manager. In fact, they have not had a permanent boss since the Keegan debacle at the start of last season. Alan Shearer looks likely to take the role and perhaps given a blank sheet of paper he may thrive where this season, to be blunt, he ultimately failed. Yet even with the talismanic Shearer Newcastle could struggle as they come to terms with the take-no-prisoners nature of the Championship. To overcome that, Newcastle need stability on and off the field, which leads us to…

4. Ownership: Mike Ashley wants to sell and says he wants to sell fast. Few could blame him. Newcastle have a large squad full of players on extensive wages that cannot be supported in the Championship. Not only will the new manager need to be rid of a substantial portion of the playing staff, he’ll also need to pick up a few players who will help guide them through the second tier. The longer the sale of the club drags on, the more difficult this will be and the more unprepared the club will become for the new season.

5. Middlesbrough: Newcastle will be favourites, but in reality Middlesbrough will, gallingly, probably be in better shape than their local rivals. Steve Gibson manages the finances of the club well and always backs his managers. The team should really only lose one or two of their better players and, due to injury, they may even hold on to Stewart Downing for the whole campaign. If Middlesbrough do storm the league it will heap pressure on the Toon and leave just one automatic promotion spot up for grabs.

6. Unpredictability: The Championship is an odd league in many ways. It has become a cliche to say that any team can beat any other, but it is close to the truth. Last year, mediocre Coventry beat Birmingham home and away, while Wolves were battered 5-2 against the usually-feeble Norwich. The gap between the top and bottom of the table is nowhere near as large as it is in the Premier League.

7. Goals: Having a Kevin Phillips or a Sylvain Ebanks-Blake in the squad can pay dividends for any Championship team. Newcastle need to act quickly. Michael Owen will be gone, as will Mark Viduka and Obafemi Martins. Peter Lovenkrands may look for a transfer, which means only the terminally under-achieving Shola Ameobi will be left of Newcastle’s senior strike force. That seems unlikely to be enough.

8. Referees: We often hear how bad the standard of refereeing is in the EPL, but whatever the real truth, it cannot be denied that those in the Championship are, by definition, worse. The Championship, for example, boasts ‘phantom goal’ referee Stuart Attwell. They are not referees impressed by reputation and the Magpies may find it tough to struggle in the more physical second tier.

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How the mighty have fallen as former Premier League sides face the abyss

by Chris Rivers on April 29, 2009 · 1 comment

championship football 300x225 How the mighty have fallen as former Premier League sides face the abyssThere was once a time when Charlton, Norwich and Southampton all graced the Premier League and enjoyed some form of success. Whether that was a top half finish or even challenging for the Premier League title in Norwich’s case back in 1992/93. Things have gone steadily downhill though for all three teams from being established names in the top flight to promotion contenders in the Championship and now all but relegated to the delights of League One football.

We already know that Charlton and Southampton are down, with the Saints’ future looking increasingly uncertain on and off the field. The Canaries’ defeat at home to Reading on Monday night means they now need a miracle to keep their place in the second tier of English football. The side that could replace Norwich in the drop zone is also another Premier League side, albeit just for a season: Barnsley.

It’s not the first time a former Premier League side has been relegated from the Championship with Bradford City, Swindon, Leeds, Manchester City, Sheffield Wednesday, Oldham, Notts Forest, QPR and Leicester City all having to endure the indignity of being relegated. However, out of all of those sides only one has managed to bounce back to the top flight and upset the football odds by becoming an established name in the Premier League.

That will be a worrying trend for three out of the four of these clubs who could be making those dark and lonely trips to Yeovil away on a cold Tuesday in February or watching Stockport come away with a point on their own patch (no offence to those sides). Norwich, Charlton and Southampton all spent big trying to regain their place in the top flight and it failed, leaving them with empty pockets and a reliance on youth and experience which clearly hasn’t worked for those three.

They say that the Championship is the most unpredictable league in England and probably rightly so as I don’t think many of us out there will have picked any of those four teams to face the drop, maybe with the exception of Barnsley. Being a supporter of a club still in the top flight I can remember at least one occasion when my side was beaten by Charlton, Norwich and Southampton and always thought they would one day return to the Premier League.

Perhaps that is the problem, maybe trading on your name and history in the Championship doesn’t work and instead of attracting the young, hungry types of player you want you get those who are just looking for a pay day. You have to question where all the money went that each club made from selling their big stars when they went down, especially Southampton with their sales of Theo Walcott, Gareth Bale and Kenwyne Jones.

It seems then that going on recent history we will be unlikely to see any of the four potential relegation candidates back in the top flight for some time and perhaps now it is the turn of a smaller club to enjoy its time in the limelight and develop themselves into an established top flight club.

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Southampton and Charlton’s Demise Is Nothing New

by Dan Trelfer on April 28, 2009 · 0 comments

St Mary's Stadium will host League One football next season

St Mary's Stadium will host League One football next season

Sheffield Wednesday, QPR, Manchester City, Wimbledon (aka MK Dons), Leeds, Oldham, Nottingham Forest, Swindon, Leicester, Barnsley, Bradford. Soon to be joined by another two and probably three in Charlton, Southampton and Norwich. All these clubs have tasted the sweet nectar of life in the Premier League only to later sup at the workaday bitterness of League One. In Bradford’s case, even League Two.

If Norwich go down, as seems likely, that’s 14 teams who have played against the best and slipped to the third tier of English football in the last 17 years. In a game full of startling statistics, that seems pretty mind-boggling. It might hearten fans of Saints and Addicks that a decent portion of those teams have at least made it back to the Championship. Indeed, this time last year Leicester were belly-up and now they are like a horny young salmon, leaping back upstream to play with the bigger boys and girls once more.

In a sense, this shows the outstanding strength in depth of the English leagues. Unlikely teams including Bradford, Swindon, Hull, Stoke, Wigan and Reading all made huge strides in the last decade and a half to reach the top of the mountain. Yet it does not take much to find yourself back at base camp in double-quick time.

It can be put down to poor money management. It can be blamed on carelessness and poor decision-making. But the shocking thing this year is that two clubs who have often been held up as excellent examples of how a medium-sized club should be managed are either already down or simply waiting for the trap door to open.

When Sheffield Wednesday, Man City, QPR, Leicester and Leeds fell into League One, the structure at the clubs was poor and all of them had dealt inadequately with the money the EPL gave them. But Charlton and Norwich do not seem to fall into this category. Charlton have cleverly developed a fanbase from all over Kent and steadily improved a stadium that was derelict 20 years ago. Norwich had more than their fair share of problems in the boardroom in the 90s, but they have a city dedicated to the team, a real sense of community and Delia Smith providing heart and soul as well.

For those two clubs, the short term might be unpalatable, but the feeling is that the long term might be rosy. They are sensible clubs. If they cut costs, appoint the right managers and keep expectations sensible, they could return a stronger unit, like Leicester appear to be doing.

Southampton, though, could be a different story. Not so long ago they had a new stadium, Gordon Strachan had taken them to the Cup Final and they were the latest in a long line of clubs hoping to break into the top six of the EPL. Now the money is gone. The stadium is not being filled. The stars of their youth system have almost all been sold in an effort to balance the books. Rumours of a takeover notwithstanding, it seems likely that Andrew Surman and Adam Lallana will now have to be sold as well.

Around this time of year a lot of pundits make long faces and say it’s a shame for this team or that team to go down. They are saying it about Newcastle now, but is it a shame when clubs the size of Southampton are relegated to League One? Would we prefer to see the smaller clubs, like Doncaster or Blackpool, get relegated, to keep the status quo?

I don’t think so. I think it’s a healthy situation that big clubs occasionally taste life in the bottom half of the Football League. It’s good for football that so-called small teams like Peterborough can play at Championship level.

With dreams of winning the Premier League unrealistic for fans of all clubs except perhaps five - six at a push - the dream has perhaps been downshifted to glory in the Championship and a chance to merely get in the ring with the big boys.

The difference this season compared to others is that three clubs who have all played at the top level within the last four years are (probably) heading down. Not only should that be a lesson to clubs currently happy in the Premier League, it should be a warning. There are at least half-a-dozen Premier League clubs who could be facing the same crisis as Southampton in three or four years time.

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