Shear stupidity

Mike Ashley and Newcastle United are clearly entities with vastly superior intelligence to me; they certainly seem to know something I don't. To my obviously untrained and naive eye, I see in Alan Shearer a man who was the most prolific English striker of the last fifteen years, and a great servant as a player to the Toon. I also see a man with no coaching qualifications, who managed to mastermind a grand total of one victory in eight matches as interim coach at United (against a Middlesbrough team who were an utter joke), whose side, frankly, collapsed as soon as the going got tough in their final match, who constantly changed tactics and played players out of position, who also didn't seem to realise that the rest of the world has worked out how to annihilate a three-at-the-back system.

Also, for what it's worth, I do not recall ever hearing a single insightful contribution from Shearer on the Match Of The Day sofa. If you were going to pick a BBC pundit to be your manager and save your team from the drop, quite frankly, I would even take Mark Lawrenson and Martin Keown.

But obviously, I'm an idiot. For what appears to me to be a complete and utter failure is in fact being construed as reason to give Shearer a bumper contract and the responsibility of taking Newcastle straight back to the big boys.

In conclusion, the best candidate to win promotion from the cut-throat, ultra-competitive Championship, while needing to overhaul a squad containing too many overpaid, vastly under-performing prima donnas, with not very much money at all, is a man with no previous managerial experience at all, who has also never played in the lower divisions, and through his punditry wasn't even covering football in the lower divisions.

Best of luck there, chaps.

Newcastle United v Peterborough United; when was the last time that happened?

L.