Who should be our next captain? Vote now!

One of the things that Kevin Nolan will leave behind when he moves to West Ham will be the Newcastle captaincy.

Nolan always said that he was very proud and honoured to wear the armband of our, and so he should be as he joins illustrious company such as Peter Beardsley, Alan Shearer, even going as far back as Bob Moncur. Unfortunately though our captaincy has also had the unfortunate honour of being worn by Michael Owen. As you can see, there are right and wrong choices in terms of picking a captain.

If there is one thing that us NUFC fans are good at it is dealing with catastrophe. We lurch from one thing to the other and have done for years. In fact most of my life we've stumbled from one disaster to another. Initially losing Nolan was a disaster, but with recovery mode kicking in I guess we just have to move on.

The appointment of a successor to Kevin Nolan is going to be a very important one. They will need to try and maintain some form of dressing room camaraderie and team spirit amongst the rest of the team aswell as help any new signings bed in and feel comfortable in their surroundings. Granted that kind of thing is more than a one man job, but picking the right ring-leader is fundamental in the continuation of at least some team spirit.

So who would you pick? Who do you think is the right man to take us forward and be the boss on the field of play? I think we already have a couple of potential captains in our squad already, so picking one of them seems to be the logical thing to do.

My first instinct would be to choose Cheik Tiote. He is involved in the middle of the park and there is no doubt that he is passionate about the game and the way that the team are performing. There are severe doubts over his temperament though. I mean is it worth having a captain that is going to miss a quarter of the season through suspension?

How about Fabricio Coloccini? Cool at the back and one of our best performers surely Colo would be an ideal choice? He can see everything that is in front of him and has played at the highest level so has the experience to do the job. My only worry is that he doesn't seem very vocal on the pitch, but with a captaincy that could change. He'll lead by example anyway.

Joey Barton would be another choice, although to be fair I'm unsure if he'll even be here next season or whether his recent outbursts on Twitter will have scuppered those chances. If they have been scuppered the how about Steven Taylor? Knows the club, loves the club, and it would mean a lot to him no doubt, although I'd want to see more performances like the ones he put in at the back end of last season before I'd give him a chance of being captain.

Personally speaking I would much rather give the captaincy to one of our current players over a new face. I don't think that would happen anyway, but this is Newcastle and you never know! I just think giving it to a current player would maintain some stability in a dressing room that looks to be getting the hatchet treatment.

It's early days yet of course and there is still some way to go before we need to name the captain, but I would like to see the issue resolved before we start pre-season so that we have at least some sense of direction on the pitch. In fact a better idea may be to give people a trial run in pre-season maybe?

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