Shearer speaks a few home truths about NUFC

Aug 10 2009 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal

IT was never going to be anything but awkward.

For weeks Newcastle United fans hoped Alan Shearer would be at The Hawthorns to kick off the fightback. But all that time there was the nagging realisation he could just as easily be there as a bystander to the continuing malaise.

Fans often find the long football-free summer days difficult, but for Magpies supporters this off-season has been purgatory. It should have been a time to forget about football and bury the memories of a terrible 2008-09. Instead it has been a long, tortuous wait for the news that the misery is over. The new season has started, but the wait has not yet finished. If it has been hard for the fans, one in particular must have found it horrendous to endure.

If there was one place Shearer probably did not want to be on Saturday, it was the temporary television studio at the West Midlands ground. But as cruel fate would have it, this of all seasons would be the one when the BBC began televising Championship football. And Shearer’s beloved Newcastle would have to be the big draw in it.

After the way Auntie has bent over backwards to accommodate Shearer while he waits for someone – anyone – at St James’s Park to choose a manager, the former England captain could hardly ask for the weekend off. Shearer had to front up in the way Mike Ashley never has and hand his employers their money’s worth by giving some opinions instead of dodging the questions Gary Lineker put to him. The trouble for Shearer was he was expected to say what he thought about footballers he hopes to soon be in charge of.

Just examining the eight teamsheets Shearer was responsible for last season was enough to tell you he does not think an awful lot of Fabricio Coloccini as a Premier League defender. Saturday confirmed he holds him in no higher regard as a Championship one. Shearer was scathing of Coloccini’s non-involvement in the goal former Darlington defender Shelton Martis opened the scoring with for West Bromwich Albion. “Coloccini’s left his man once again,” he said, exasperated. “His man’s two yards from goal.” As Shearer pointed out pre-match, he has given Ashley a list of players he thinks should not be playing for Newcastle and the shaggy-haired Argentinian is almost certainly on it.

But unless the club can find anyone in the next 21 days willing to buy or loan the centre-back, Coloccini will come with the job Shearer so badly wants. And right now buyers do not appear to be queuing round the block.

It could be an interesting conversation if the man from Gosforth has to ask the most expensive member of his squad to go the extra mile for him.

Damien Duff and Jonás Gutiérrez were criticised for their lack of end product and, along with Kevin Nolan, for not making enough runs into the box. The midfield in general did not fare too well. “There’s a lack of creativity with Kevin Nolan, Alan Smith and Nicky Butt being the central midfield,” he said, confirming what all Newcastle fans already knew. As an afterthought, he added the name of Joey Barton – another from his “to sell” list. Ryan Taylor, Shearer told us, was “not a right-back” which is interesting, because that is precisely what the Merseysider thinks he is.

Even praise can be tricky. Shearer joined the chorus of approval for Tim Krul’s brilliant performance. Reasonable enough, but what will Steve Harper, who Shearer also criticised for his part in West Brom goal, make of his old team-mate bigging up his rival on national television?

The other problem in speaking your mind halfway through the match is it can embarrass you by the end. At full-time Shearer pointed proudly to the fact that Duff and Nolan had done just as he had told them in the build-up to the goal the former scored. But he quietly ignored how Duff had found the net with the same right foot Shearer had a quarter of an hour earlier criticised Andy Carroll for laying the ball on to.