Guest Blog: Laurent Blanc To Become The Next Newcastle Manager?
Posted on January 8th, 2013 | 219 Comments |
Apologies for the sensationalist headline but bear with me there’s a point to it. My patience with Alan Pardew has been down to a thread for most of this season (just have a little look in my archive section to see the proof), but since that Brighton humiliation the thread has snapped. For good. The man is totally incompetent at his role and how he manages to get away with it without any real criticism in the footballing world is astonishing. His greatest talent is being soaked in Teflon it seems.
To the eye of the realistic, honest and well informed Newcastle United supporter, his incompetence does not go unnoticed however. In fact, it drives us up the wall! When you look at every aspect of the Newcastle Utd managers responsibilities he holds, it is quite reasonable to say that the one we have in place has failed at almost every single one of them. I’ll name a few and you decide whether he gets a ‘pass’ or a ‘fail’:
- Tactics
Team selection
Substitutions
Use of the squad
Motivation
Organisation
Set pieces
Media Handling
Player recruitment (partly)
Staff recruitment
Team morale
Player confidence
Clubs league position.
Club’s domestic cup run.
Club’s European run.
I’ve named several there and apart from the European qualification (only just in the end), and his ability to avoid any criticism of himself through the media rather than actually help the team, I would say Mr Pardew gets a big fat ‘F’ overall. I would expect him to get the team right on a few occasions (even Joe Kinnear could do that) as well as a substitution coming off now and again, but it has to be said you are clutching at some very shaky straws to suggest he has been up to the job this season.
I don’t honestly believe he has known his best team all season long and still doesn’t as I write this. The amount of times he has changed the team during the game this year has been astounding, sometimes as soon as half time and sometimes after just half an hour! We had to suffer through 4-4-2 hoofball nonsense for most of this season before suddenly he saw the light and switched to 4-3-3, but even then he still hasn’t done it properly. Jonas LW with Cisse RW? Are you sure? Have you seen our squad play before? You were here last season weren’t you?
I think that LMA Manager of the year award has gone to his head, or should that be ego? We all know he has a problem with arrogance, which in turn can manufacture into complacency and stubbornness. There is only one thing worse than a man who gets it wrong and that’s a man who is not prepared to admit it. I am sure the captain of the Titanic was still adamant going that little bit faster was the right thing to do in last dying breath. Plus the 8 year contract in the back pocket sent his demons into over drive.
Telling a man like Pardew he can do what he likes and only get sacked under remarkable circumstances is like telling Adam he can live in total paradise but only if he doesn’t eat from one specific tree. You know he’s going to focus on it, ignorant to the Babylon around him. But moving on from bashing Pardew again, let’s offer an alternative. If we were to (rightfully) sack a man who has seen this massive proud football club lose 10 games out of 12, including being dumped out the FA Cup with the barely recognisable smallest of whimpers, then who could replace him?
In my eyes we would need somebody with a continental style and outlook all round to match our continental squad of players. We would need somebody with success and a track record to admire to warrant replacing our current manager. We would need somebody who could get the best out of the big French speaking contingent in our squad. We would need somebody available and who would realistically come to our football club. One man stands out above all to me and that man is Laurent Blanc.
Since he won the French league and cup double with un-fancied Bordeaux and took over the complete shambles of the French national team with great success (he went over 20 games unbeaten), he is at this moment without a job. It is understood he is learning English in preparation to come to the Premier League at some point in his managerial career. If you can also tell me someone who is more suited and qualified to bring the best out of Yohan Cabaye, Matt Debuchy and Ben Arfa then I would like to hear it. He had a squabble with Benny in the Euros but the fact he picked him in the first place says a lot.
For me, I would be on the phone to him right now to see if he fancied taking on the challenge of Newcastle Utd in the Premier League. He already knows some of the key players, along with others like Gabriel Obertan who he had at Bordeaux for example. The shoe fits perfectly for me and under any other (normal) circumstances, this appointment would be not just likely but at least have the odd small whisper about it. But that is the major stumbling block isn’t it? We aren’t in normal circumstances. We are still in the Ashley/Llambias era.
They don’t want the best manager possible, they want a puppet. They don’t want the best possible squad to compete, they want assets to be sold on. They don’t want to spend money we can afford to make the football club stronger, they want to squeeze every penny and spend nothing if they feel they can get away with it. No matter how much I slate Pardew, it’s these two clowns which are the incurable cancer that sits deep within our football club’s cells. I don’t care what you say these men have done, this football club can never prosper under Laurel and Hardy’s leadership. It’s just plain impossible.
They are incapable of making rational, intelligent, well thought out decisions. When they come close to one, they then destroy it by not seeing it through properly, or compromise it with a counter productive bad decision. In the 5 or so years Ashley has been here there are catalogues of examples that I am not prepared to waste my time going over again. We all know them (or you should).
Our manager position through Alan Pardew is merely a puppet to speak for Mike Ashley’s plaything with Derek Llambias in place to be the middle man to filter the propaganda the club is run on and to polish and glitter up the turds it produces. All of which us fans are required to swallow and chow down on without complaining otherwise you are somehow ‘against’ the club. ‘Let them eat cake’ one out of touch monarch once famously said. Our illustrious leaders aren’t that optimistic. ‘Let them eat sh*t’ should be our club motto right now. We may as well change the club badge to a Magpie crapping over the fans as he perches on the stadium roof.
Our club is still being ran by men who took this club to new depths and are threatening to do it again all too soon. All of which is done with the best intentions. That’s the true scary part. If they were meaning to ruin our club then at least that could be stopped somehow and would actually make some sense. Seriously what actually goes on at their board meetings? A Mike Ashley strip tease or Big Derek running naked across the pitch?
Let’s finish 5th and not invest the money we made into the squad shall we? Let’s sell a player for a ridiculous price of £35 million (net profit) and not invest it efficiently in the squad shall we? Let’s acquire a football club to play with but then actually make money through club transfers instead of spending, even though I am recognised as a billionaire shall we? If our football club was that of make believe on the scale of that of Harchester United on Dream Team I wouldn’t believe it. I would question the reality of the story line. Because when a club gets relegated after a billionaire takeover, it really is that ridiculous.
We can only hope for normality when Ash sells up and ****’s off. Only then could we dream of having a proper manager in place like Laurent Blanc for e.g. Only then could we regular challenge for European places and cup competitions. Only then could we have a season where we didn’t have to be dreading relegation to the Football League…for the second time!!
An appointment like Laurent Blanc would be seen as logical in years gone by, now it is impossible. That says a hell of a lot.
Happy New Year.
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Quote …
“.. but since that Brighton humiliation the thread has snapped. For good.”
Can I just ask which team you would have played?