Football’s crazy ins and outs are talk of the Tyne and Tees

Oct 22 2009 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

Middlesbrough are looking for a new manager while Newcastle United appear to have found theirs more by default than design. Chief Sports Writer Luke Edwards reports.

IT says much about the volatile nature of football management that Middlesbrough have sacked their manager after a solid home win and Newcastle United are about to appoint theirs after four games without one. Perhaps both men deserve our sympathy.

Gareth Southgate was a good man who ultimately did a bad job at the Riverside. He approached the task with intelligence, commitment and passion born from a genuine affection for the club he managed.

He was an idealist with strong principles about how the game should be played, who tried his best with a young squad shorn of its best senior players following the relegation he had overseen last season.

It will be interesting to see if his replacement – widely tipped to be the former Celtic boss Gordon Strachan – fares any better, although the new manager will take control of a team which is just one point behind the league leaders. A rare luxury indeed.

Chris Hughton, on the other hand, is a good man about to take a bad job. The manager’s position at Newcastle United is widely perceived as English football’s poisoned chalice, a wrecker of reputations, a destroyer of dreams.

The permanent position he is about to accept at St James’s Park could be seen as a thankless task, a mission which has perplexed so many famous men with their big reputations and even bigger egos.

Most, though, have at least embarked on their fateful journeys at a football club which has a semblance of stability in the boardroom and a vague idea of what the future holds.

Hughton is having the caretaker bit removed from his job title just as the team he leads has started to wobble on the pitch and angry supporters are forced to swallow the unpalatable prospect of yet another failed takeover attempt.