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Newcastle United in trouble

There’s no denying it’s been one of the worst starts of a Barclays Premiership season in recent times for the Magpies. After a promising start of pre-season games with wins against Valencia and a draw with PSV Eindhoven, followed by their first win in the league against Bolton, things were certainly looking up.

Kevin Keegan had a promising squad of players and the club was being backed by a financially strong Chairman with strong ambitions. Even Dennis Wise seemed to be playing to his side of the bargain by not interfering with players transfers (as promised) and the fans were expecting. Dreams of perhaps top 6 finish and a Carling Cup victory were not out of the question.

However the recent well publicised departure of Kevin Keegan, and the huge backlash from the fans which has resulted in Mike Ashley attempting to sell the club, has had a massive impact on the stability of the club both on and off the pitch.

On the pitch the players, as much as they’d deny this in the press, have obviously been hit hard by the recent turmoil. The recent loss against Tottenham at home in the Carling Cup only highlighted the lack of confidence in the team.

Off the pitch Mike Ashley seems desperate to sell the club and articles are being generated daily by the papers as to who’s interested in buying the club. The most recent being a Nigerian consortium.

Most recently even El Tel (Terry Venables) has turned down a reported offer of £100,000 a game to manage the club temporarily as he wanted something a little more permanent. This is a huge blow to Mike Ashley and to the club as it shows a lack of confidence from a well respected figure in football.

The longer Newcastle seek to both sell the club whilst at the same time try to find a decent replacement manager the longer the problems will last on the pitch. The club are in real danger of getting themselves in a position in the table (i.e. the very bottom end) that will eventually become impossible to get out of. Relegation, too far off to seem possible, could well be a likely outcome.

pushfootball.com

Last week saw the launch of of the preview site for pushfootball.com and give’s you the opportunity to sign up for access to the private beta in a couple of weeks.

The aim of this site is refreshing. It intends to report on all the football stories out there and gather them all in one place. Some nice features include;

Automatic feed importing and categorisation.  This process pulls in all the latest football stories from multiple reputable sources and automatically categorises them based on the content. For example, all stories on Manchester United are gather together.

Story Submission.  As with other social book marking sites out there (Digg, StumbleUpon etc) it allows site members to publish stories to the site. Stories are then categorised and displayed on the site with algorithms controlling how the stories are displayed in terms of popularity keeping the content fresh.

Full Comments Facility.  Again, as is common on other sites of this nature the ability is there for members to add their comments to any story on site. Bring on the football banter.

Homepage Filtering.  As a site member you can configure your default homepage to filter stories on your team thus saving time every lunchtime at work hunting down the stories you’re interested in.

In summary this site is targeting all football fans out there ranging from the fanatics on the forums to those who just want the latest news stories in a glance.

Sign up now to keep informed of the site release date.

Well it’s being reported today in all the papers that Terry Venables is the favourite to replace Kevin Keegan at Newcastle;

Links: BBC, The Telegraph, The Times.

Is this a Wise decision (definate pun intended)?

Firstly…the recent track record;

England 1993 - not a bad record. We beat the Dutch 4-1 under him.

Australia 1997 - pretty crap really, lost to Tehran in a World Cup Qualifier at home.

Middlesborough 2000 - co-manager with Bryan Robson. Did nothing significant.

Leeds Utd 2002  - yep, you guessed it, did nothing significant although to be fair players were being sold like hotcakes at the time.

So NUFC fans, a worthy manager after King Kev. I doubt it, he should stick to TV.

And more importantly, can he work with wobbly eyes Dennis Wise?

wow - you're expensive mr Kaka.

Yep - how many times has this story been floated about recently.  According to The Telegraph Chelsea are preparing this world record bid for the Brazilian Kaka.

On top of the fee is also a £200,000 pound a week deal. Incredible. Can anyone turn that deal down?

Should they land the playmaker Chelsea would surely have the most impressive team in the country packed with world class talent especially if they also sign Robinho for a reported £26m.

If Man United manage to sign Berbatov will this be enough to compete with the blues? Only time will tell I guess.

Can you imagine the wage bill at Chelsea.

mikael silvestre

Interesting article in The Guardian that Mikaël Silvestre is a potential target for Wenger.

He’ll be the first player sold to Arsenal from Man Utd for 34 years. Good value for £750,000.