The start of a beautiful new era?

Well, there’s never a dull moment with the toon is there?

As a hardened Newcastle United supporter, I thought that by now I had reached the stage where nothing in this world could surprise me any more.

And yet Tyne and Tyne again they somehow manage it!

Yes Mike Ashley, the gambling man has taken his latest, and perhaps final, roll of the dice. As an avid supporter I just hope to God he scores a perfect six…

Only last Sunday Nicky Butt gave an interview to a national tabloid in which he stated that confidence and morale within the club had hit rock bottom, that the club needed someone to come in and “sort the club out right through from top to bottom”.

Rumours were doing the rounds that NUFC was a club which was fragmented, the players weren’t happy with the management and Michael Owen has in recent months increasingly looked like a lost soul.

Then at 11pm last night, all that changed. Alan Shearer has taken the mantle at the helm of the football world’ infamous “poisoned chalice”. If any appointment could save this great, proud club from relegation to the Championship then this was the one.

Lets get one thing straight from the off shall we? I am a massive Alan Shearer fan. He is my all time hero – as a young boy I can recall running around the streets kicking a tennis ball about wearing the “Shearer 9” Newcastle Brown Ale sponsored black and white stripes and dreaming about one day becoming a Newcastle legend just as he is.

I always believed that he would manage the club one day, probably sooner rather than later. But for some reason I didn’t expect that time to be now. However there is never a perfect time to join a club as manager – as for whatever reason the new man is given the job, there is always a reason for why the previous bloke needed to be replaced.

This could just about be the best possible time for the Shearer era to begin though.

Expectation levels of the supporters are at an all time low; we no longer expect big name (or big money) signings, title challenges, or trophies. We would be happy just to have a club to be proud of, that was consistent and with a settled management and good honest, hard working players.

It may be the case that the saviour has arrived too late to save us this season, but if that is the case, there will be no blame put onto “Big Al”, after all he’s only got eight very difficult games left – starting with Chelsea at home.

It is important that we supporters remember that we will possibly only get one chance to make it work with Shearer as manager – and we have to make it count.

So much now plays into Shearer’s hands – the supporters will always give him time and by now Ashley must realise he is in the last chance saloon and to chase another messiah out of the toon would be as bad as suicide, the supporters would not take it.

And so it would seem that after 9 permanent managers in the last 13 seasons we have now reached the point where we have finally found the right man to give longer to get it right. It will take time, five years at least for Shearer to get us back up there and challenging for honours – but if any one can do it, it is Big Al.

If we do stay up incidentally then I would like to make my predictions for the summer early (tempting fate maybe):
Owen will sign a new deal (lets face it he’s Shearer’s best mate and who else would offer to match his wages) – Shearer could do for Owen’s career what Sir Bobby Robson did for his own, in my opinion.
Rob Lee will be made Shearer’s assistant manager.
Shearer will sign a new deal as permanent manager – Again lets face it, if he keeps us up there’s no way the Toon Army will let him get away again that easily!

Come on the Toon – KEEP THE FAITH!