AT THE age of 71, Sir Bobby Robson was said to be out of tune with the young players he had been managing at Newcastle United. There is no shame in that. Who would want to be on the same wavelength as Lee Bowyer, Craig Bellamy or Kieron Dyer?
There are valid reasons to think that Robson had become a man out of his time and not simply because he was old enough to be Dyer’s great grandfather. The coaching at Newcastle, or rather lack of it, was cited by Jonathan Woodgate’s closest advisers as a reason for his eagerness to escape Tyneside. There had been some illogical thought processes, including the idea of selling Alan Shearer to Liverpool last season.
Robson’s grip on the dressing-room had become flimsy but, while that made his dismissal understandable (and two months too late given that nothing has changed since last season), his departure does not end Newcastle’s problems. Not when they continue to be led by a dreadful chairman in Freddy Shepherd and are reliant on a dressing-room of spoilt brats. Dyer’s recent insubordination, when he refused to play on the right wing, was only the most high-profile example.
Mistakes, including some big ones such as the signings of Carl Cort and Titus Bramble for a combined £13 million, said loudly that Robson was past his prime as a manager, but his human qualities will endure wherever life takes him now.
He was insisting privately yesterday that the sack from Newcastle was not a brutal end to his 36-year career in management, although no one would want to see him like an old heavyweight boxer, returning for more punishment. It is surely time to retire from the dugout.
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There must be some valued role for him in football but, if this is to be the end of his coaching career, the record will state that his achievements almost kept pace with his extraordinary popularity.
As England manager, he has been surpassed only by Sir Alf Ramsey. His team were unlucky to lose the 1990 World Cup semi-final to Germany and, although he was fiercely criticised in the media for much of his reign, he should have been welcomed back in 1999 after the sacking of Glenn Hoddle. Instead, the FA allowed the national team to go backwards for two years under Kevin Keegan.
At club level, he won honours almost everywhere he went but his most impressive feat has been his longevity. On top of the strains of the job that have made far younger men age visibly, Robson had to overcome colon cancer and a malignant melanoma that required the insertion of a plastic frame that supports his face even now.
After one season at Fulham in 1968-69, he made his name by transforming Ipswich Town from country bumpkins into winners of the Uefa Cup at a time when that trophy carried real prestige. He would be welcomed back to any of his European clubs and, at a recent testimonial for Hristo Stoichkov in Barcelona, Robson’s name brought one of the loudest cheers of the night.
He was pushed upstairs at the Nou Camp within days of guiding his team to the Cup Winners’ Cup but at least that enabled him to claim, as he could everywhere he went, that he left the club in a better state than he found it.
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“When I leave Newcastle, I will leave it like I left Ipswich,” he said recently. “They were second in the league — second in the top division! Neat and tidy, everything paid for, great set of players. I left them in great shape and the same will happen here.”
With so many conflicting agendas dividing St James’ Park, the club is not as robust as it should be but Robson does indeed leave a superior outfit to the one that he inherited in 1999. The shame is that, if this was his last job in management, he should not bow out with a triumphant finale.
Newcastle have not lifted a trophy since the 1969 Fairs Cup and no one deserved to end that run more than Robson. But, as Sir Alex Ferguson may soon discover when he comes to the end of his own career, football management rarely allows even its best men to write a glorious last chapter just in time for retirement.
THE WELL-TRAVELLED MANAGER
1967: Player-coach of Vancouver Royals
1968: Becomes Fulham manager but is sacked after ten months
1969: Appointed manager of Ipswich Town
1978: Leads Ipswich to FA Cup win over Arsenal. Takes control of England B Team
1981: Ipswich finish runners-up in the league and win the Uefa Cup
1982: Succeeds Ron Greenwood as England manager
1990: Leaves England, takes over at PSV Eindhoven
1993: Joins Sporting Lisbon
1994: Leaves Sporting and takes charge at FC Porto
1996: Takes over at Barcelona
1998: Rejoins PSV on one-year contract
1999: Returns to England and takes over from Ruud Gullit as Newcastle manager in September