Alan Shearer may not keep Newcastle in the top-flight, but perhaps the one thing he will achieve is to finally convince club chairmen that The Premier League, like Downing Street, is no place for a novice.
One has to feel some admiration for Shearer and his decision to prise himself from the cosy MOTD sofa for the grubby reality of a relegation battle. But in his short time in charge, Shearer has completely failed to galvanise The Magpies into any sort of attacking unit, has had public rows with two of his better players and shown himself to be naïve when it comes to tactics.
His decision to deploy a three-pronged strike force of Michael Owen, Mark Viduka and Obafemi Martins was a simplistic attempt to replicate a ploy which worked for Kevin Keegan at the back end of last season. One year on, with all three a long way from full fitness after injury-plagued seasons, the strategy was totally ill-conceived. Watching the toiling trio getting in each others’ way as Newcastle struggled in vain for a goal against Portsmouth was one of the more desperate sights of the season.
A week later at Anfield, Owen was dropped to the bench to make way for Joey Barton. But the decision to retain a front three, with Martins and Peter Lovenkrands offering little cover to the fullbacks, still left Newcastle’s defence cruelly exposed. Meanwhile, Shearer’s body language on the touchline looked more that of a fan than a manager, his frustrations at his players’ inadequacies all too apparent, suggesting that he’s yet to acquire that air of cool detachment required to make decisions which can change the outcome of a match.
While Barton’s actions during and after the game were indefensible, Shearer’s decision to hang him out to dry, just as he did Martins when he declared himself injured on the day of the Stoke match, was surely ill-judged. Perhaps Shearer’s media background is working against him. For by answering every question and discussing his rifts with players, he’s actually encouraging journalists to paint a picture of a club in crisis, with a divided dressing-room, doomed to the drop. Surely the best ploy would be to keep disciplinary matters in-house, in a bid to keep everyone pulling in the same direction, with the focus on survival and nothing else.
Perhaps Shearer’s one remaining hope is that his side’s next match is against Middlesbrough, a side managed by a man who has proved himself equally under-qualified for the desperately difficult task of Premier League management.
Gareth Southgate has been in charge of Boro for three years now, but having taken the job without serving an apprenticeship in a lower league, or acquiring all the necessary coaching badges, he doesn’t seem to have developed the tactical acumen to succeed at the top level.
Southgate the player was a 110% man who, through determination and will, reached the very highest level in the game. But as a manager, he seems to have been unable to invest Boro with the same fighting spirit. Southgate’s men have shown themselves capable of great performances (the 2-0 victory over Liverpool), only to follow them with displays of abject ineptitude (a 4-0 hammering at White Hart Lane.) And as for Southgate’s record in the transfer market, I give you one name: Afonso Alves.
It’s no coincidence that two of the clubs currently inhabiting the league’s grotty underbelly are managed by former players who took over Premier League sides with no previous experience of management. Throw the disastrous appointments of Tony Adams and Paul Ince into the mix, not to mention Roy Keane’s ultimate failure at Sunderland, and you have a powerful argument that experience and pedigree are what’s really required at the top level.
When Fulham were on the brink of relegation last season, they turned to Roy Hodgson, a man whose managerial CV reads like an Easyjet timetable. In 30 years of management, Hodgson has dealt with hundreds of players from all corners of the globe, schooling himself in how to mould a coherent unit from whatever the eclectic array of talents as his disposal. The result: a masterful escape from the brink of oblivion. How close Newcastle were to landing Terry Venables we’ll never know, but it’s hard to imagine they would be in quite such a sorry state with the former England coach at the helm.
So when Monday night’s business is complete, and Shearer and Southgate settle down over a pint to reminisce over the dizzy heights of Euro 96, perhaps they’ll reflect that in management terms they are still very much at ground level.