Alan Shearer has this morning released a heartfelt, painful, brutally honest and brilliant piece for The Athletic.
In it he reluctantly criticises his ‘friend’ Steve Bruce for not only our awful results but abysmal performances of late – such as Tuesday night’s “***** awful” 1-0 defeat to Sheffield United – stating that we are currently a club that “hurts the eyes, hurts the heart and hurts the soul.”
One section also features our all time leading goalscoring call out MD Lee Charnley, questioning where on earth he has been all of this time – especially when he released a statement last year promising to communicate more with fans!
Here’s his attack on the AWOL managing director – a man he believes has left Steve Bruce to cope with everything ‘on his own’ over the past 12 months:
“What really irks me is how little protection Steve has received from the people above him. Where is Lee Charnley (the managing director)? What happened to that statement of his where he admitted the error of not communicating with fans? Where is his backing for the manager? Where is the strategy? Come on, Lee, where are you? Where is anyone, aside from Steve?
I suppose I should clarify this isn’t something I’ve spoken to Steve about and I wouldn’t want to. When we have conversations now it’s not about formations or results, it’s ‘How’s things, what are you up to?’ But I can’t believe he’s having to deal with questions about furloughing staff, giving tickets away, about coronavirus, about a takeover. These shouldn’t be issues for the manager. It’s a tough and lonely enough job as it is. The point is, he’s on his own.“
Shearer then talked about Bruce’s decision to accept Ashley’s offer and replace Rafa Benitez, insisting that Lee Charnley’s absence and the current owner’s consistently flawed and futile and frankly rude approach to running a football club would leave any realistic replacement in the same perilous position:
“This was why I said at the time that I wish Steve hadn’t replaced Rafa Benitez, that I had grave reservations about what might happen down the road. The road leads here. It would have been the same if somebody else had come in and it will be the same for the next manager and the one after that if nothing else changes, because it’s the way Newcastle are built under Ashley. The manager takes it all on his shoulders; a concentration of anger, stretching back years.
The fact that Rafa left for the reasons he did, tells you what a difficult club it is, but Steve wanted to manage Newcastle and I respected that and left him to it. I can certainly understand it. I had two months in the role in 2009 and my experience of the dysfunction was limited to hearing about how happy they were with me, to making plans for the future, to never hearing back from them again. No phone call, no postcard, no flowers. I can laugh about it now. I wasn’t laughing then.
I never got to experience their transfer policy or their interesting approach to recruitment; when Steve walked in, Newcastle were already committed to signing Joelinton at a cost of £40 million. That tells you something, too. And it tells you something else that Joelinton and Miguel Almiron — more than £60 million of forwards — stayed on the substitutes bench at Bramall Lane, when the team were desperate for a goal and for a win that did not come.“
If you are a subscriber to The Athletic, you can read Shearer’s latest piece in full here.
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Alan you can praise or stick the knife in.I totally agree with you but the only people
who can do any thing about it is the fans . Also the people who buy the merchandise.
I think all-the stay away doubters have had time to think and get used to life without football.
So they should think hard about what they really want when fans are allowed back into grounds.No good winging when its too late.
Foxy(Quote)
I understand what Al is saying but it’s a totally seperate argument.
Of course he’s right that Ashley & Charnley are a bunch of sh!thouses – but that’s been the case long before Bruce or Benitez. Ashley was a sh!thouse before Al himself was manager.
But people aren’t at Bruce because of that, people are at Bruce because of what happened at Brentford & Sheff Utd – Ashley & Charnley aren’t responsible for that.
Al is trying to be a good mate and defend Bruce, but he’s a big boy. He knew what was waiting for him as Newcastle manager. Ashley has been at Newcastle long enough for everyone in football to know what he’s about and how he operates.
Bruce went into this with his eyes open – he knew what to expect from Ashley and he knew what the Newcastle fans expected of him.
His failures can only in a small part be put at the feet of Ashley & Charnley – but the performance on the pitch is solely on him.
Sharpy17(Quote)
Its a very hard life being a Toon supporter living in Cheshire where everything is Man U (sometimes Liverpool) and the Butcher in the Village gives me stick everytime I go in and justifiably so but the last display was the pits. Sheffield must be laughing at our incompetence.
I sometimes can’t bear to watch them on MOTD
Never mind……….
Professor Peter Styles(Quote)