Seems to me since Shepard got rid of Bobby Robson its all gone downhill for them since then, dont think its all Ashleys fault IMO, dont know when he took over but i think hes only been there about a year at the most, Newcastle have been in decline for a good 2 or 3 years

Anybody watch the Ac Milan vs Roma match ?

Paolo Maldini was jeered by his own supporters at the final whistle after 25 years service for the club.

They apparantly think that he as never respected them.

Compare that to Sami's great send off

Having collected my thoughts over the past 30 or so hours, relegation feels the same as it did as soon as the full time whistle blew on Sunday. Yes, it hurts, but I'd accepted it for a while so it didn't really come as a shock to the system, although there was always a little bit of hope still there that we could turn it around. Still, it wasn't to be and we're down. We deserve to be relegated, no complaints here. I'm delighted it's over now; no more worrying, we know we're down and it's time to focus on next season. This season has been an absolute disaster but it's been coming from the day we sacked Sir Bobby and replaced him with Souness. If a proper replacement had been found, the club probably wouldn't be in the mess it's in now.

People pointing the blame at Shearer are deluded. He had eight games to turn it around with some absolutely shambolic players with little heart or fight. If you want to point the blame at someone, there's a long list. Shepherd, Ashley, Llambias, Mort, Allardyce, Keegan to name a few. Yes, Allardyce is in there. After reading some of the posts on here stating that if Allardyce was still in charge, we'd never have been relegated this season. Those who said that, you're right - we'd have been relegated last season. Have those people forgotten that he managed us to a whole one point, home and away, against the mighty Derby County? Whilst he was in charge, we had our easiest period of fixtures but he failed to pick up anywhere near enough points to leave us safe. To sum him up (and the main reason we decided to bring in a DoF was because of his shortcomings in the transfer market. Ashley backed him to go out and spend cash, both in terms of fees and wages, but he brought in average players on huge wages. Alan Smith, Geremi, Cacapa, Joey Barton all flopped. Mark Viduka is on huge wages but despite his talent, has hardly played. José Enrique and Habib Beye were his only two decent signings. To sum Allardyce up, we'd agreed a fee with Sevilla for Ivica Dragutinović. When Dragutinović flew in for talks with Allardyce, he demanded to be the second highest earner at the club behind Michael Owen, wanting to be paid £95,000 per week. Allardyce told the club to pay it in order to sign him - Ashley quite rightly refused to pay it and the deal fell through.

Some of the wages being branded around on here are brilliant too, Nicky Butt on £75,000 per week, deary me.

Class.

City did the double over us last year, means fck all.

The Blackburn Rovers 2009-10 Premier League campaign says otherwise. Allardyce's reign at Bolton Wanderers says otherwise. Allardyce's points total while at Newcastle (27 points from 21 games), says otherwise.

NUFC have got exactly what they deserved for getting rid of Allardyce.

Some good points in there Ash but your obsession with blaming Allardyce is your undoing. Yes he made mistakes but his are the only ones you highlight, Ashley made the biggest mistakes yet has about two words devoted too him. Allardyce had nothing to do with your relegation. Yes you have been on the slide for a while but had Keegan not been undermined by Ashley then Newcastle would still be in the PL.

Funny how Blacburn were in worse trouble than you yet Sam managed to save them fairly comfortably.

Have you honestly seen anything in Shearer to suggest he could be a top manager other than it's Shearer, change of style? Galvanising the side? As an outsider he seems to have had little impact, not his fault you went down but his appointment seemed to bring little to the team in terms of immediate impact.

do we think liverpool will do as well next year?

do we think United will venture out of 2nd gear more often?

I'm wasn't sure United could manage 28 reasons to be proud of their league campaign so I started my own list:-

1. United are Premier League Champions.

I stopped after that, didn't seem much point.

Same applies to all the promoted sides, Liverpool's title aspirations, and Villa and Everton's chances of breaking the top 4. It was also said last year about the 3 who got promoted, with the only possible chance given to West Brom.

I really don't see the point in making predictions before a single move in the transfer market has been made. Yes the squads don't look good enough on paper, but they're as unlikely as possible to be the squads that start the season.

It'll be interesting to see what moves are made though, because I can't see the usual tactic of raiding the relegated clubs being as fruitful this time.