Alex Ferguson achieved not a lot as a player. Whether he was initally respected or not at Aberdeen he proved to be a damn good manager. If we had over-inflated ego superstars then it might have been a problem but we have no really 'top' players. As far as managerial experience goes Dowie has achieved more than Hughes or Strachan in winning a promotion. And as Scotty said, if any player does take that attitude then he knows where the M65 is.

I was just about to say - you stealing my posts Scotty.

Rubbish. When Moyes went to Everton the players responded to him yet he hadn't achieved what Dowie has in neither his playing or managerial career. Nor was Steve McLaren a big name apart from his Man U connection when he went to Boro. O'Leary took Leeds to the champions league semi-finals in his first managerial role. Jean Tigana bought in a load of players but they still responded to Chris Colema nd when he took over he had the added problem of having to boss his former friends and teammates. If Ferguson or any other player for that matter carries that attitude then he is living up to the overpaid primadonna hype that surrounds premierleague football these days and is as bad as the likes of Dyer. Besides it's not like the new manager has a team full of world stars like Kluiverts, Ronaldo's and Henrys is it. People like Ferguson and Amorouso have achieved very little in game hence Barrys decision to leave Rangers and 'give it a go' down here. What right would our players have to believe that the new manager was not 'big enough' for them?

Just looking at betfair it beggars belief that someone has put £20 on Howard Kendall, even at 400/1! What do they think we are ?

Don Mackay was last seen at Airdrie in 2001. The busty lass in our canteen at work has heard that Don believes it's time he made a return to management. I Wonder? Seriously I'm quite happy at the mo because the do-not wants of mine were Glenda and Houllier and they seem to be moving further out of the running. Id be happy with Hughes, Dowie and would accept Advocat. Think of all the speculation and attention on BRFC over the last few days. To think only last Sunday night we were expecting a quiet international week!

Iain Dowie Managerial record as follows. P W D L QPR 2 1 0 1 OLDHAM 82 31 28 23 PALACE 30 16 4 10 If anyone knows an easier way of laying out a table like the one above please let me know!

T4E , it's no wonder you've no money by the time the Cheltenham festival arrives!

Has he not started a new thread yet? 'Oh No Its Peter Andre'

Ian Dowie has come in for some sustained support on betfair to the shortest price he's ever been. He's currently only available at 5/1

My deceased great grandfather has just told me there's a crop circle appeared in Manxman Fields that spells out the name George Graham. It's been confirmed on football-rumours.com. Someone have a quick look in the express and see if it's gospel. Seriously I want Hughes or Jewell. However the man who is appointed may not be who we ideally want just like when Souness was first brought in. A lot of people were unhappy then but most were won around in the space of 18 months. If we get Strachan, Newell, Advocat or even someone like Hoddle we've no choice but to support the man. I really hope those saying "if we get Mr XXXXX I'm not going down again" are just making throwaway comments.

As it's a PA article it'll be most of them, all slightly reworded. However, whilst Jim's always bob-on about the artciles, the articles themself are often bobbins. No doubt Coventry and Rovers will deny the story tomorrow and as there are no quotes it's definitely a "flyer" by the paper concerned. Yesterday they had McCarthy in the frame. If even you doubt it's authenticity was it really worth a new thread?

If we did get him he'd bring his mate Stan as first team coach in his jog pants and white trainers.

Some mugs obviously believe it as he's been backed as short as 3/1 on Betfair. However he's now out to 35/1 if you want to believe tabloid codswallop.

I was thinking the same. As soon as the question came he just started talking about his Welsh players and picking them up again. No comment one way or the other. Contary to earlier press reports I certainly don't feel he's ruled himself out.

Correct me if I'm wrong Brownie but does the graph not show that there's been about 14k lumped on him in the past hour or so. Youre right, the spike is quite out of the ordinary. That's a hell of a lot of money to be throwing at such a bet. It's either someone 'in the know' or someone with more money than sense. I'm going for the former and expect him to be installed before the Portsmouth game. The grey bars on the graphs on Betfair are induvidual bets so the £14,000 is just one bet! One very plausable reason for this though is that a Bookmaker may have gone a top price about hughes on Monday (say 9/2 compared to everyone elses 4/1) and got hit quite hard. Now it looks like he is a very realistic option they could be trying to offload ttheirhere liabilities on the best price they can find which would be with Betfair. Still a staggeringly large bet though which never happened on Newcastle's Manager betting until Souness was all but confirmed. The Moyes betting pattern is similar to the Advocat betting from Monday and as we now know Advocat is interested in the job. Theres over £3,000 on Moyes now on Betfair which has practically all gone on today. This is more money than on people who have been ranked as decent contenders all week such as Glenda and Houllier. Geroge Graham and Gary Megson have just been added.

Advocaat now 8-1. You can only take what's avaliable, you can't crash in on Advocaat. Someone is taking every price that becomes available. Have to say when I made the post at dinner I'd not seen the betfair market since this morning. having looked at Advocat now I'd say he's defo in the frame. Not saying he's gonna get it by any stretch of the imagination but I bet his CV's on the table. As an alternate point these 2 days are one of the few times I've read most of the posts as they happen during the day. DO YOU LOT NOT WORK?

I think the fact we may be fired up and may actually play our best players in the correct positions will lead to us getting a 1-1 draw. Jon Stead to break his duck for the season and Shearer for the Magpies.

With regards to the betfair situation, when looking at the market click on the name of the manager to get a graph on how much money has been traded on each manager and at what price. Now I've not looked since this morning (banned at work ) but compare the amount of money on Dick Advocat to the amount of money on Mark Hughes and Strachan. If people with inside knowledge of Advocats' appointment did know anything then they are hardly getting stuck in are they. If the next Newcastle manager market is still available to view look at the graph for Souness. Ignore the looky sod who had £3 on at 1000/1 for a moment. When his price started to crash multiple bets of well over a grand were placed. By early yesterday morning bets of around £20,000 were piling on Souness albeit at small odds. One report in a Newspaper or on a trustworthy site could bring people to put there fivers and tenners on any one manager. Apart from the top few there is not an awful lot of money around trying to lay the so called outsiders. This means that if 60 people put a tenner on on the basis of one Newspaper report then £600 has been chucked on and the price could drop quite rapidly giving the 66/1 into 25/1 syndrome. It very rarely means anything until significant bets are being layed.

If thats not having a bit of a pop I don't know what is.

Bergs having a bit of a pop. http://skysports.planetfootball.com/list.a...+backs+Pedersen

I wouldn't start worrying too much yet over getting Dick as manager. There's only £350 been traded on him in total which is hardly enough money nationwide to start us panicking. Compare that to Mark Hughes where there's over £10,000 on him with single bets of over £300 regularly occuring and it puts Mr Advocat into the shade a bit. However don't get too bothered about Betfair. I remember about a year ago John Williams denying a London Evening Standard report that Souey was off to Tottenham as absolute nonsense. Souness' price still contracted to about 1.8 where I layed him for a nice sum. he was back out to 5's the day after.

Interesting thread on the Toon Fansite. Looks like the geordies are trying to imply there's more to Soueys signing than meets the eye later on!

JW says that the appointment will take a couple of week.s Maybe thats because certain people are away managing on international duty this week.

Thats normal when a new market like this first appears. Any significnt move would probably be seen on Betfair and as yet thats pretty quiet. So far £14,300 has been staked on the market with over £5,300 on Mark Hughes who is 9/2 fav. Strachan next best at 6/1 with Newell attracting interest at 7/1. Some suckers have backed Glenn Roeder at 90/1. Whats all that about then. The other fancy prices include Craig 'cuddly bear' Brown at 65/1, John Gregory (please god no) at 35/1 and P Taylor at 50/1. I presume thats Peter Taylor but you never know, maybe The Power fancies trying his hand at another sport. If Clive Woodward can do it!!!

Sorry Dwight , too much of this. and not enough of this Bye Bye