Too many chiefs at Newcastle?
Kevin Keegan is back as manager, there’s still no sign of a number 2 but you get the feeling Keegan would do well to get a serious tactician on board. If there were a 2000s version of Don Howe then that’s exactly what they need.
But then Dennis Wise has come in as an ‘executive director’ with some, as yet unspecified, responsibility for transfers and the development of the youth system, Tony Jimenez as vice-president of player recruitment and Jeff Vetere from Real Madrid as technical co-ordinator.
Then you have Chris Mort as Chairman and Mike Ashley who seems to be a very hands-on owner and it looks like there are too many chiefs and not enough indians at Newcastle. With so many people all having to sing from the same hymn-sheet to be successful it just takes differences between one or two for things to start to unravel.
There’s no question Newcastle need some long-term planning and fixing, perhaps this is it, but I’m not convinced that having the ‘power’ spread so widely is a good thing. Maybe it’s a management structure thing, should one person leave then it won’t have such a massive impact on the club but I’m doubtful. The best clubs in England have always had one man in charge. Too much delegation and interference causes problems.
Can you imagine Arsene Wenger or Alex Ferguson working under such a structure? We saw what happened to Martin Jol at Spurs when faced with the same situation. Jose Mourinho, Chelsea’s most successful manager ever, had his differences with the ‘management team’ and look what happened to him.
I suppose we’ll just wait and see but Keegan is flighty, it won’t take much for him to jack it all in again, and as a guy who, above anything, loves to be loved, it’ll be interesting to see if he’s not feeling it from some of his colleagues.
