Hughton can now start to put his own stamp on things at Newcastle.
Posted on June 5th, 2010 | 43 Comments |
The latest one to break rank was Alan Thompson, who relinquishes his role as reserve-team coach in favour of a move up to Celtic where he will become Neil Lennon’s new less than glamorous assistant.
Thompson’s departure follows hot on the heels of another one of our backroom staff, Kenny Wharton, and that leaves us with only a manager, an assitant manager and a goalkeeping coach working behind the scenes with the players. So is this little backroom reshuffle Hughton’s chance to get his own men in? Something he didn’t have a chance to do when he first took on the role as manager.
Word on the street is that John Carver could be in line for a return to the St James’ Park coaching setup. Carver is currently at Plymouth, and is awaiting a new manager to work under after the sacking of Paul Mariner. Could he decide to upsticks and return to his home town if the opportunity arose? I would imagine so.
Carver is a widely repected coach in footballing cirlces, and he was assistant to Bobby Robson in those heady days when we were flirting with the Champions League. Such an addition would be ideal as the experience he would bring to the club in a coaching capacity would be immense, and that would be something that would help Hughton along the way.
Whether or not Carver does return to Tyneside is something that will only be revealed as time goes on. But the fact remains that the coaching side of Newcastle United will need to be beefed up. One of the supposed new initiatives is to promote our youth academy and get our own conveyor belt of talent up and running. That will need youth coaches, something that we don’t have many of at the minute.
We also need to concentrate on bringing in coaches for the first-team and reserve-team. Hughton is only one man, and he can only do so much. We need people in behind Hughton who he can rely on to do the job and allow him to concentrate fully on the next match.
This is where I think this is a subtle reshuffle from behind the scenes that will give those people that Hughton knows he can rely on the chance to become coaches. In a way, I was surprised that Nicky Butt wasn’t retained as a coach as I think he would have been ideal, and Hughton knows him and knows what he is like to work with. You can say what you want about Nicky Butt as a player, but as a professional he never put a foot wrong. That is a trait that would come in useful as a coach.
We need more than two coaches in, but those would be my initail picks. Hughton will have his own ideas of course, and yet again we will need to wait and see what happens over the summer. We already have Martin Scott coming to the club in a coaching capacity, apparently.
I still think we need more than that though.
NUFCBlog Author: toonsy
toonsy has written 643 articles on this blog.
22nd!!