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Steve McClaren sacked as Newcastle United 'Head Coach' (Manager)


Tooj
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Steve McClaren has spoken to the club's official website and says Newcastle face a "real test".

United have a tough start and McClaren says it will give pre-season a "real edge".
"Last week I was appointed head coach and that was a great moment, but when you get the fixture though it really hits home and creates that extra buzz and excitement," he has told the club's official website. Read their article here.
"We have a home game up first, which is always good.
"It is a home game against a top-eight side and a very good team. Southampton had a tremendous season and probably over-achieved from what they thought at the beginning, so it is certainly an exciting fixture for us. You want to test yourself against the best straight away, especially if you are ready.
"The first four (games) are key. Then the international break comes along, so you can have a breather and a break and have a look at things.
"But to have last season's top four inside those opening couple of months is going to be a real test, but one we will relish.
"It gives us a real edge going into our pre-season schedule, knowing that the work every day is vital and you have to be ready."
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It's worked well against Man City in the past few seasons like.

Promoted sides tend to do well early games against anyone they play I think there are stats for that somewhere...Man U and Arsenal have have both had hiccups early doors. But aye there is never a good time to play Citeh. :) Think some of the CL and EL sides start to suffer toward the end of the year Oct/Nov and that is probably a better time to play them...

Edited by Park Life
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Wonder what sort of "package" they're offering new staff?....if it's the same sort of derisory shit that Pardew (and no doubt Carver, Stone etc) put up with then I'm not surprised there's no takers. The game is awash with money but it would appear that Ashley is more interested in stuffing it all into his back pocket rather than paying the going rate for decent coaches. Suffice to say there's not many of us that were taken in by that mealy mouthed interview he gave.....

 

:CT:

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Of course, to suggest anything else would be crazy, but McClaren hasn't yet taken a training session and people are already talking about his eventual departure.

Edited by The Fish
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We'll have to see who is brought in.More french shite and we'll struggle again.More english shite like Iron Mike and Sammy and we'll struggle.

 

So, you're saying we shouldn't sign shite players, and instead, we need to concentrate on buying good players?

 

Well, shit the bed lads, we've just had a eureka moment!

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We're being heavily linked with Ian Cathro, Assistant Manager at Valencia

 

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/latest/interview-coach-ian-cathro-on-why-he-left-scotland-for-portugal-1-2575585

 

MARK Wotte accused him of not being committed, and Ian Cathro couldn’t agree more. The 26-year-old was back in Scotland this week after deciding to turn his back on the SFA and taking his undoubted coaching talents to a country more willing and able to match his ambitions.

Wotte, the SFA’s performance director, was quick to criticise the youngster for leaving to become assistant coach of Portuguese side Rio Ave earlier this year, questioning his commitment and saying he hadn’t been disappointed to lose him.
But despite Wotte’s protestations, the loss of one of Scotland’s brightest young coaching stars has prompted a period of introspection in the Scottish game.
The single biggest problem for Cathro was that he felt he would never get the chance to reach the very top if he stayed because the culture in Scottish football dictates that to become a manager, you must once have been a player. Having never kicked a ball professionally, it ruled Cathro out of ever leading a team. All of which conflicted with the path Cathro wanted to follow. He was regarded as the future of coaching in Scotland when he was first plucked from obscurity by Craig Levein, pictured inset. He had been working as a kids’ coach in Dundee when he was spotted by the then United boss, who quickly appointed him head of the Tannadice club’s youth academy at the age of just 22. He was then fast-tracked into the SFA and placed in charge of the regional performance school in Dundee.
Back in Scotland this week for a catch-up coaching session with many of the youngsters he had worked with at Dundee, Cathro agreed with Wotte’s comments on his commitment to the SFA cause.
He said: “It was not a reflection on the SFA coaching sessions. From my side of things it was entirely about me turning the page. The feeling was so strong inside of me. I felt that if I made the commitment then it would need to be a ten-year commitment because of what we were doing. It’s all or nothing and I knew I had to start the new chapter now or wait ten years and ten years seemed a long time.”
Originally not interested in the management side of the game, or even working with first-team players, he said his opinion had gradually changed as the youngsters he was working with grew up and his training had to evolve. But given an old boys network he says still exists in this country and the fact that there remains a reluctance to appoint a young manager and certainly not one without a playing pedigree, he feels Rio Ave was one of the few avenues open to him.
In Portugal, as part of a continental coaching team hand-picked for their credentials rather than their shared histories, he says he has the chance to prove himself. Full of self-belief, he is extremely focused. And having prompted some changes to the way youth football was coached in this country by embarrassing others into following his example, he hopes he can force a switch in the way people perceive our game and the abilities of those involved in it in the future.
“I just don’t think the opportunity would have come for me here. The only way I would find that sort of employment here is to leave, prove a success and then people here might start to open themselves up to it.
Cathro added: “In Portugal, the culture and the way the clubs are run from a coaching point of view, the way the technical teams are built, that suits me.
“It’s not like here where it’s the manager and the guy he played with 20 years ago. In Portugal, the idea of a technical team is to get the right people.
“None of us knew each other but basically Nuno [Espirito Santo Porto’s former Champions League winning goalkeeper and current Rio Ave head coach] identified what attributes he has, what was still required and then found the best guy for each of the other things and put us all together.”
Cathro is a big believer in stepping out of our comfort zone and testing ourselves. And he believes that he is not the only one who could graduate from the Dundee academy to the top European leagues. Back when Levein placed him at the helm of the Dundee United Academy he wanted it written into the targets that they would produce a world-class player by 2020. People just laughed.
“I think that is a problem. They don’t believe it because it doesn’t happen that much, but just because something doesn’t happen that much, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Or that it can’t happen. We have to really start believing these things are possible. I think, very possibly, there was a player among the group I had today who could be a World Player of the Year. He needs things to go his way, he needs circumstances to go for him, he needs to work, it needs the timing to be right but it could happen. But if everybody just keeps saying, ‘no, no, no, no,’ then we beat him before he even starts.”
He added: “At Rio we have 1,800 people who come to the games but we have lost a player to Real Madrid and there will be others who could move on to that level. The football is good. But only 1,800 people go. I think that while Portugal is a strong football country, it’s not as deep into the culture as it is here. It doesn’t quite mean as much as it does here and I didn’t really respect that enough until I saw the other side. But instead of questioning things constantly, let’s just all get behind it and do it.”
He says the encouraging thing is that things are more positive and proactive in Scotland and believes we are moving forward in our approach to coaching.
He said: “Craig made people look at what I was doing. I was just as good a coach before I went to Dundee United as I was after I went there but people didn’t know. He gave me a platform to really work and learn what the inside of a club is like. By giving me that opportunity it gave me the chance to build something.”

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/31807179

 

Spain-based Scot Ian Cathro continuing to attract admirers

By Richard Wilson
BBC Scotland
Ian Cathro has not followed a conventional career path, but he has still encountered lingering assumptions.
During his first pre-season as assistant coach at Rio Ave in Portugal, a training session based on running rather than ball work prompted some players to cast withering glances his way.
As a Scotsman, even one whose very presence in the Portuguese top-flight at an age when he was younger than many of the players in the squad was unorthodox, still prompted stereotypical thinking.
"I wasn't responsible," he laughs. "It was the Portuguese fitness coach, but that was a little indication of what others think of us."
Cathro has been working against the grain. His story has been recounted often enough: setting up a coaching school while he was still in his teens; an injury-curtailed career in youth football; a skills and vision-based approach that developed players of such obvious ability that the Dundee United manager, Craig Levein, took Cathro as well as some of the players to Tannadice.
Following that, a spell working for the Scottish FA's regional coaching set-up, then Nuno Espirito Santo appointing him as his assistant at Rio Ave having met Cathro while both were working on their coaching qualifications under the SFA.
The interest around Cathro now is where the next stage of his career takes him. He is only 28 but has a growing reputation as a coach.
He concedes that there has been contact from clubs in recent times but will only reiterate that there has been none from Rangers, to whom he has been most closely linked in Scotland.
Cathro certainly meets the criteria laid out by Dave King, who led the new boardroom regime into power at Ibrox, that the next appointment should be more of a coach than a manager, somebody who is able to work on player development and creating a style and identity for the team, almost entirely from scratch.
"You project forward to the types of job you want to do," Cathro said. "I want to fill a stadium and make people excited about coming, feeling that as an enjoyable thing to watch and embrace, whilst being able to do something of significance at a club that leaves a structure and a system so that it continues to profit from beyond my period of time.
"That's the types of jobs that are more appealing and more natural to me. You're paid a lot of money, football gives you a lot of good things, and it's the club's position in society that gives you that. It's important that the club gets its value from you.
"In a lot of aspects, I feel entirely ready. The exact moment and when I make that step will be more about the details of the opportunity, the conditions and circumstances that you would be working with."
Cathro would make some demands of potential employers. Despite now being comfortable expressing himself in Portuguese, and making progress towards learning Spanish, he wants his first management job to be in an English-speaking country and he wants a full pre-season to start with.
He recognises his own intensity and driven, almost blinkered, commitment to his work. "When family and friends come across, you're obliged to at least find a restaurant to go to," he said.
Mostly, though, Cathro is wholly engaged in his work at Valencia and has spoken about his time in La Liga effectively being the Masters degree of his coaching education.
Valencia have impressed enough for Santo to have been linked with the Barcelona job should Luis Enrique's reign come to an end in the summer. Valencia have defeated Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid this season and are fourth, five points clear of Sevilla, with Champions League qualification the goal.
The club is now owned by Peter Lim, the Singapore billionaire, and Santo was brought in to oversee the rebuilding of the team. He and Cathro are effectively in the midst of a two-tier process, balancing short and medium-term aims.
"I know that 'project' is an overly used term, but this genuinely is and the first step has to be to achieve your objectives," Cathro said. "If we don't, the project dies.
"We're trying to do two things: project ahead, planning a squad and parts of our playing identity, which will go on to be the foundation of the next steps in the project, whilst needing to be responsive and adapting, sometimes week by week to the opponent, to ensure that we meet our first objective.
"You need to grow all aspects of your club and be a lot more careful and skilled, not only in the recruitment of players but when you do that.
"You can't do it all at once and you need to be looking two or three transfer windows ahead of yourself, as well as the development of the younger players at the club, and the eventual playing identity whilst going to Cordoba away and making sure that you win."
Cathro has prompted curiosity throughout his career. His approach to training young players in Scotland stood apart from the tried and tested ways.
His youthfulness and lack of a playing career also meant that the normal career path wasn't open to him. He has made a virtue out of his background and commitment to certain values, although he recognises the benefits that time in the professional game would have brought to his coaching knowledge.
He also acknowledges that the tactical styles he has encountered in Portugal and Spain would not directly transfer to British football. Every aspect of his current job is about preparing and developing for his next step, though.
"If someone was to say to me, 'if I could magically give you a five-year career as a footballer', in terms of preparing a management career, then yes, all the time," he said.
"There are things that the players feel and sense and recognise in the middle of competition on the pitch, when you're isolated, that are valuable and that analysts and people who haven't lived those situations find difficult to add to themselves.
"What's different now is that I haven't lived through those things on the pitch, but I've lived beside people who have and had a close working relationship around all of these situations in two different leagues.
"Those experiences go a long way to filling in some of the blanks. It provides a self-assurance which is comforting - that you've already lived through those things."
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He sounds remarkably intelligent for a British coach. He would also need to get rid of these ideas of squad building and long term projects and get used to the concept of "can we flip this lad for a profit in 18 months time?"

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