Premier League 2021/22

[Naitch]

Has Chris Wilder been talked about as the next Newcastle manager? I reckon him or Eddie Howe would be the best choices. Whoever it is will be the Mark Hughes (at best) of Newcastle's rise in stature, so I certainly don't expect them to get anyone like Conte.

Looking forward to Bruceball finally coming to Carrow Road when Daniel Farke gets sacked after 0 league wins by the end of the season.

[gunnar hendershow]

I'll be shocked if he lands another Premier League job, he's just not cut out for the top flight. But a lot of the bottom table clubs tend to also lack imagination...

[Cymbols]

I don’t think Norwich will be a Premier League job, somehow.

[DavidMarrio]

Honestly, I think Newcastle should make a play for Graham Potter. 

No chance they're getting anyone like Conte at this stage. 

[Adam]

54 minutes ago, Naitch said:

Has Chris Wilder been talked about as the next Newcastle manager? I reckon him or Eddie Howe would be the best choices. Whoever it is will be the Mark Hughes (at best) of Newcastle's rise in stature, so I certainly don't expect them to get anyone like Conte.

Looking forward to Bruceball finally coming to Carrow Road when Daniel Farke gets sacked after 0 league wins by the end of the season.

I'm really not sure that Eddie Howe or Chris Wilder would suit what Newcastle need, in my opinion. Premier League recruitment at the clubs they managed previously was arguably the main downfall of those teams, and I think both have shown they are better at fighting from underneath, which is no longer anything like what Newcastle will be doing.

[Lineker]

Alan Curbishley is available.

[Gazz]

46 minutes ago, Cymbols said:

I don’t think Norwich will be a Premier League job, somehow.

He wasn't exactly setting the Championship alight either at Villa and Wednesday.

Edited October 20, 2021 by Gazz

[Szumi]

Paulo Fonseca is the current front runner, apparently, the almost Spurs manager this summer.

Well, one of the 13 almost Spurs hires this summer.

[Lineker]

 

[Colly]

To suggest people wanted him to fail is absurd. Yes there was some resistance when he played the "boyhood club" line after some of his comments at Sunderland, but the vast majority of fans wanted him to succeed. I only decided he was a tactically inept cabbage head when he made it perfectly clear with his tactical ineptitude. 

It's also a bit rich to blame the fans when the vast majority of the last season and a half have been played behind closed doors anyway.

[DavidMarrio]

You've broken the poor man into thinking he has a cabbage head....

He's got Theme Hospital Bloaty head not a cabbage head!!!! 

 

[Gazz]

It wasn't even us who chucked a cabbage at him.

[Colly]

Love that caveat.

[The Lusophone]

There was a clear undercurrent of Newcastle fans wanting him to fail from the moment he got appointed, because they still wanted Rafa, so not all Newcastle fans were as reasonable about him as others.

Bruce certainly didn't help himself and his son joins Karl Oyston and Kim Kim as football related offspring who should never be allowed to speak.

[Lineker]

Quote

Paulo Fonseca is in advanced talks with Newcastle United after emerging as the leading contender to replace Steve Bruce, who departed St James’ Park by “mutual consent” on Wednesday morning.

Fonseca, a 48-year-old Portuguese previously in charge of Shakhtar Donetsk and Roma, is out of work and keen on working for Newcastle’s new Saudi Arabian-led owners. He came close to taking over at Tottenham in the summer and is believed to be admired by Amanda Staveley, the minority shareholder and director with responsibility for day-to-day running of the club.

Although Fonseca has been in contact with Newcastle’s owners since late summer no final decision has been made and other managers, including Roberto Martínez, Frank Lampard, Lucien Favre, Steven Gerrard and Eddie Howe, remain under consideration.

Martínez, the Belgium coach, is thought to be interested in a job which would reunite him with his former assistant Graeme Jones. Jones, most recently Bruce’s No 2, has been placed in caretaker charge of Newcastle and is set to be in the technical area at Crystal Palace on Saturday.

Bruce kept Newcastle in the Premier League for the past two seasons but has proved deeply unpopular with fans left heartbroken when his predecessor, the much adored Rafael Benítez, resigned in June 2019. As the team have struggled this season – failing to win a game – the hostility towards the 60-year-old intensified.

On Wednesday Bruce – who presided over his 1,000th match as a manager when Newcastle lost 3-2 at home to Tottenham last Sunday – said he would probably retire as he was reluctant to put his wife and family through the sort of extreme stress they have endured over the past two years.

Although Bruce’s hurt will have been softened by a generous payoff agreed with the previous owner, Mike Ashley, and believed to be in the region of £7m, the experience of managing the club he supported as a boy has clearly been painful. “It has been very, very tough,” he told the Telegraph. “To never really be wanted, to feel that people wanted me to fail, to read people constantly saying I would fail, that I was useless, a fat waste of space, a stupid, tactically inept cabbage head or whatever. It was ridiculous and persistent even when results were good.

“I think this might be my last job. It’s taken its toll on my whole family and I can’t ignore that. They’ve been worried about me – especially my wife Jan.”

Bruce, though, was not without support inside St James’ Park. Allan Saint-Maximin, Newcastle’s French winger and a player vital to the head coach tasked with steering the team out of the relegation zone, tweeted that it had been “an honour and a privilege” to be coached by the former Sheffield United, Huddersfield, Birmingham, Crystal Palace, Wigan, Sunderland, Hull, Aston Villa and Sheffield Wednesday manager.

“You are, without doubt, one of the most gentle people that I have met in the world of football,” wrote Saint-Maximin. “You have been a man of your word, a caring man and a fair man who never hesitated to protect us. I will never forget how you treated me.”

Saint-Maximin could also relish playing for Fonseca, a coach who has built his reputation on constructing attack-minded sides. The Portuguese is understood to have done extensive homework on Newcastle and devised potential gameplans for impending fixtures. The club’s decision makers – the Saudi-based nonexecutive chairman Yasir al-Rumayyan, Staveley and her fellow director and minority shareholder Jamie Reuben – would prefer a swift appointment but they are determined to conduct exhaustive due diligence.

Meanwhile Newcastle have announced that the fan who collapsed with a cardiac arrest during the Tottenham game is progressing well and looking forward to returning to St James’ Park. Alan George Smith, 80, is alert and walking in the specialist heart unit at the city’s Freeman Hospital and hopes to be discharged soon.

 

[METALMAN]

They were really nasty to Bruce. I felt sorry for the guy.

[Colly]

Literally played in front of empty stadiums...

[METALMAN]

OH SORRY COLLY I FORGOT THE ONLY WAY OF INTERACTING WITH PEOPLE OR OF EXPRESSING OPINIONS ABOUT THEM IS IN FOOTBALL STADIUMS AND THAT THINGS LIKE SOCIAL MEDIA OR RADIO PHONE-INS OR ANY FORM OF DISCOURSE OUTSIDE THE STADIUM ARE JUST MERE FIGMENTS OF MY IMAGINATION

THANK GOODNESS I AM IN A FOOTBALL STADIUM RIGHT NOW OTHERWISE THERE WOULD BE NO WAY FOR ME TO GET THIS POST OUT THERE

[Colly]

Social media of course being an absolute bastion of reasoned debate. It's ridiculous, at most other clubs he wouldn't have lasted this long, at Watford we'd have had six managers in the period, but apparently Newcastle fans are the only ones who've ever had the nerve to criticise an utterly useless manager.

Horrible record aside, he played the "everyones against me card" from the first season, and his mates in the media swallowed it up. At times it was embarrassing watching Shearer trying to balance analysis with not being too mean.

[hugobomb]

Bruce seems to be the new version of Gordon Strachan. Tactically useless and the fans know it but plays the "everyone was against me, never had a chance" card at every opportunity and his mates in the media nod their heads and talk about fans being "entitled".