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SOUTHGATE'S BIGGEST GAMBLE 31-1-08
Toby Higgins
Right, here's the thing. Alan Shearer, if you believe what Kevin Keegan, Harry Redknapp and the host of other names who have said it, is going to be a great Newcastle manager because he was a great Newcastle player.
I can't agree but it's fair to say he wouldn't be that bad a choice, given how many high profile coaches have failed there before him. After all, he's got just as good a chance as any of them. Which, sadly for him, is still none.
Aside from that, appointing a manager straight into the top flight is a sizeable risk so Shearer will learn his trade elsewhere, presumably before he takes charge at St James'. If he wasn't such a pompous, arrogant bastard, that is.
Hey Alan, you know your old club, Southampton? They're looking for a manager, why not put your name forward?
Not your club? Don't want to get your hands dirty in the Championship or the lower leagues, or jeopardise your chances of getting the Toon job in the future?
"I couldn't see myself working at a League Two club". His words, not mine. Pratt.
It takes a special kind of man to be able to hang up his boots and come straight in at the top. No, scratch that. It takes two.
The partnership Steve Gibson forms with his managers is a truly special one - it's one of Gibson's overwhelming qualities as a chairman.
The financial support, as well as loyalty, that he gives his manager is something Gareth Southgate will have known was coming, and is almost certainly what convinced him to take the job in the first place.
After Gibson has picked his man, he puts all of his trust in him, and in his own decision to select this man in the first place. Of the ten teams who are currently in the bottom half of the table, only three have the same manager who started the season in August. The Boro are one of them.
Southgate's team and approach to the game differs from that of his predecessor in many ways. Steve McClaren's team was known, at times, to be dull and unattractive. Often decisions like playing one striker at home or baffling substitutions meant that McClaren hardly endeared himself to the support.
Southgate attempts a more expansive and pacey style of play, full of flair and swagger. And we're getting there, too. Southgate is honest and upbeat in his post match analysis whilst McClaren was often wide of the mark with his "magnificent" gibberish.
The change in personnel has been significant in Southgate's short time at the club. Robert Huth, Gary O'Neil and Luke Young are very "Southgate players" - reliable, hard working, solid and consistent. These are four attributes that would sum up Southgate the player perfectly.
Add to that the speed of Jeremie Aliadiere, the craft of Julio Arca and Tuncay, and the bulk of Mido (ahem) and Southgate has created a decent looking team in a relatively short space of time.
The season thus far has gone how everyone expected, more or less. For every disappointing away slump at Wigan or Birmingham, there has been a home success against Arsenal or Liverpool.
The 0-0 away draw at Bolton, a daft cup run, and Boro's current occupation of thirteenth in the league makes this a very, very ordinary season.
There are teams in the league whose seasons have not gone as they had expected. Tottenham Hotspur, for example, were tipped by many in the media to give the league a "top five", if not actually managing to break into the Champions League places. After twenty-four games, they sit sixteen points and seven places behind fourth placed Everton.
Spurs wisely need to invest in defenders. The three they've picked up at the time of writing, including Jonathan Woodgate, suggest they are not content with finishing in the bottom half of the league. Fair play to them, they are trying to save a season.
The only other team to have spent big on one transfer this January is Chelsea, the anomaly to almost every football "rule" going. Their £15m purchase of Nicholas Anelka from Bolton shows that they too are looking to improve their league standing as they quite clearly don't think that Andrei Shevchenko can score the goals while Didier Drogba is in Africa.
Other teams in the league have added new faces: Sunderland, Birmingham, Bolton, Fulham, and other teams around the bottom of the league who are looking for a few extra bodies to help keep them in the league.
None of them, though, have shattered their transfer records or paid anywhere near eight figures for a player. Yet they are the teams in real trouble, without the quality our squad has got.
Clubs spend the summer lining up transfers and spending the megabucks (which ranges from £5m to £50m depending on which club you are) to bring in quality that will help them achieve their seasonal ambition. This could be anything from winning the league, qualifying for Europe, or simply staying up.
If the big money gamble doesn't work, January is a time to remedy that with proven Premiership players. See the Anelka and Woodgate examples.
Some gambles do work. Tuncay, McCarthy, Santa Cruz and Kenwyne Jones have proved that. It's why we haven't see Blackburn and Sunderland frantically rushing out and buying strikers.
But a glance at players like Rolando Bianchi, David Nugent and the aforementioned Shevchenko demonstrate that the gamble can go wrong.
Manchester City started using Darius Vassell's experience, Portsmouth have loaned Milan Baros and obviously Chelsea have Anelka. There is not a big risk amongst them as these teams try to compensate for their misfiring strikers. They have also done this at no great cost, given their respective budgets.
Those three are just examples from this season. Premiership history is riddled with names of strikers like Maccarone, Crespo, Rebrov, Guivarch, Kezman, Casiragi et al.
The decision even to contemplate blowing our transfer record out of the water for an unproven Brazilian in January of all times, is something that doesn't sit right at all.
Sure enough, we need a striker. But to gamble what will probably be most of next summer's transfer budget on one guy, who will take at least the rest of this season to settle properly, if he ever settles at all, is nothing short of ludicrous.
Realistically, we are going to finish where we hoped and expected - somewhere between eleventh and seventeenth. Spending upwards of £10m on a striker is not going to change that.
At least with Maccarone we made our mistake in the summer and could do enough to stay up.
But of the £8m we paid for him, how much did we get back? Unless Alves plans on scoring last minute winners in European quarter-finals, and then semi finals, it'll be a lot harder to justify his departure on a free transfer should it ever happen.
As a fan I am very excited and Christ do I want him to do well. But having never seen him play, and with the gulf in class that he must adapt to, I have no idea what to expect. That last sentence alone is enough to cause concern when you look at his price tag.
The signing of Mido shows that Southgate is prone to the odd panic and probably the odd mistake. Gibson's trust in him means that Southgate normally gets his man. But Southgate is taking the biggest gamble of his managerial career to date and it's not inconceivable that the signing of Alves could be the worst bit of business the club has ever done.
I hope I'm wrong. I don't think I will be.
Same time next week.
Up The Boro
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A GUARANTEED PROFIT OF AT LEAST £41.00 ON THE FA CUP FINAL
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