No - I think Souness has left Newcastle with a pretty good squad.

Central defence excluded, of course. Jury's still out on Luque, but Emre looks an exceptionally good find.

However, he'd have done well to keep Bellamy onside, really - he's looking fantastic at Blackburn, and Mark Hughes clearly knows how to get Bellamy playing well, whatever his horrendous psychological problems (currently rearing their ugly head at the moment).

Robert I agree about - nowhere near good enough to compensate for his capricious tantrums.

Souness should have got rid of Bowyer too, though, I reckon, and obviously Boumsong has proved to be ?8m very badly spent. I think he spent well over the odds on Owen too - twice what Madrid played for a player who had a fairly disappointing season, looked below-par in Euro 2004 and has a very bad injury record.

Then there's the constant injuries, of course, the incessant blaming of poor results on those injuries and the referees, and what looks like very poor man-management.

I hope Roeder does well, I think he's a good coach and a good bloke. Too nice to be a successful manager, though, I think - he looked horrendously out of his depth at West Ham. Going down on 42 points was tremendously unlucky but a squad with James, Glen Johnson, Kanoute, Defoe, Cole, Sinclair, Repka, Dailly, Carrick, Breen (just before he went s**t) and di Canio really should have been in the top half.

Posted By: Ottosson Foxtrot, Mar 8, 00:52:25