Newcastle, Beckham & Ireland

Howdy,
Mark here.

Things are looking interesting at Newcastle - Shepard has agreed to sell his stake in the club to Mike Ashley, leaving the billionaire with close to 70% of the shares, following his previous purchase from the Hall family. We mentioned a few weeks ago on the podcast, could we see the Geordie Chelsea? It's certainly an intriguing prospect of an underachieving 'big' club armed an owner who has £1.9bn in the bank.

Big Sam, though, seems to be carrying on as normal, so we can assume that a) he hasn't spoken with Ashley or b) Ashley has said he won't be giving him much money.

Viduka has signed today to join Michael Owen, Obafemi Martins and Shola Ameobi in the forward line, leaving the club with plenty of firepower up front. (Surely Ameobi can be whipped into shape by Sam?). The departure of Parker will result in Barton arriving for £5.5m, and the decent Ben Haim joining Taylor at the back. Steven Carr falls into the Ameobi bracket, and I'd be surprised if he didn't recapture his Tottenham form. A left back (Shorey, possibly) and the squad is looking great. Players of the calibre of a fit Duff, Emre ("some of my best friends are black") and a fit Dyer, added to the potential of Milner and N'Zogbia point to a promising future for the Toon.

Sam has an interesting first season ahead of him, challenging for a UEFA cup place will be his goal, and he is likely to achieve it.

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I am sick to my teeth of the Beckham story, sure he can put in a cross or 2, that's all he ever did for God's sake. The whole point last summer was - take Beckham out of the team because he makes the team play slow, throw in someone else and they'll be able to play differently.

This, plainly, did not happen, which is the fault of the players and management. So, Beckham is back, they need the points and McClaren is desperate, fair enough, him and Crouch should scutter England into second in the group to qualify. The same old problems remain however - slow, long ball football and set pieces. Why wasn't Big Sam hired again?

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The Euro qualifiers were good for Ireland with Germany winning both their games and the Czech Republic drawing at Wales. Ireland have a chance of 2nd, albeit one in a million. The away games to the Slovaks and Czechs will illuminate to show whether Stan learns from his mistakes.

3rd place in the group will keep Stan's job, barring a demolition job by the Germans or Czechs, Stan will feel vindicated and subject us to another 2 years of droning cliched quotes. Still, it could be worse, we could have McClaren....

Mark,
http://www.okeydokefootball.com/