Is Shearer Lacking Tactically?
Last updated : 05 May 2009 By Footy Mad - Editor
Steve Claridge: "Newcastle are certainly capable of better than what we've been seeing.
"Alan Shearer is a great lad and I think everybody likes him. He's been a fantastic servant to the game. But that doesn't mean he's going to be a good manager. It doesn't mean it's the natural progression for him.
"It's been a realisation tactically for him.
"What hasn't helped him is that he hasn't had a left back and they haven't been able to combat that with Gutierrez one side, Duff the other and Butt and Nolan in the middle with Martins and Owen up front.
"You've got to fill in at left back but I think that team would be good enough to get them out of it. But they are not.
"They're playing different systems and different formations - 5-3-2, 3-5-2, 4-3-3 - and I'm not sure at this stage if that fits particularly well.
"I wasn't overly impressed with the Portsmouth game and I was certainly very unimpressed with the Tottenham game from an organisation perspective.
"They've got to be more organised. The thing that gave it away in the Tottenham game was that after five minutes Vedran Corluka kept coming out with the ball and nobody knew who should go and confront him - Duff was marking Lennon, Gutierrez was the inside of the three and nobody knew who should release themselves.
"That was a worry for me because that's something you should do on the training ground.
"As soon as that situation happens somebody should know their job. They didn't and after 20 minutes we were still talking about them trying to sort it out."