Glenn Roeder has resigned as Newcastle boss after reaching the
point of no return.
PA Sport understands the 51-year-old parted company with the club
today after 15 months in charge at St James' Park including his
spell as caretaker.
He made his decision in the wake of yesterday's dismal 2-0 home
defeat by Blackburn which ended the Magpies' faint hopes of
claiming the Intertoto Cup route into Europe for the second
successive season.
The club are yet to confirm Roeder's departure, although are
expected to do so within hours.
Rumours that he had been summoned to an emergency board meeting had
been circulating throughout the day, with some suggesting he had
been sacked.
Roeder was in defiant mood after yesterday's game, which extended
his side's run with a Barclays Premiership goal at St James' to
five games - their worst return since 1951 - and a staggering seven
hours and 51 minutes.
He said: 'I am very much the same person who was here last year who
had a fantastic finish to the season.
'I have not changed as a person. Of course I understand, 100%
understand where the fans are coming from.
'They want a winning Newcastle team and I also want a winning
Newcastle team.
'At the moment, we have not been winning and I understand their
frustration.
'To win matches, you need to score goals and we have not done that
for four, five, six weeks now, and that has cost us greatly.
'I do understand their feelings.'
His change of heart sparks yet another search for the man to bring
success back to Tyneside for the first time since they lifted the
Fairs Cup in 1969, with their last domestic success coming in the
FA Cup 14 years earlier.
Roeder's departure comes at the end of a week which has seen
frenzied speculation about his position and the availability of Sam
Allardyce. However, chairman Freddy Shepherd had earlier insisted
he had never spoken to Allardyce, who turned the job down before
Graeme Souness was appointed in 2004, about the matter.
He said: 'I have never spoken to Sam Allardyce. I don't know where
all this is coming from.'
Shepherd, who has also dismissed suggestions that former England
boss Sven-Goran Eriksson could be heading for Tyneside, will now
start the process of looking for the sixth manager of his reign and
the fifth he will have appointed.
He fought to be allowed to give Roeder the job last summer, a
battle which has since resulted in a change to the Premier League's
rules, despite the fact he did not have the necessary UEFA Pro
Licence.
Roeder won his chance after inheriting Graeme Souness' dispirited
side and dragging it into seventh place at the end of last season
with a return of 10 wins and two draws in 15 league games.
Despite being linked with several bigger names - he insisted he
would not consider Allardyce again after his earlier refusal -
Shepherd went with the groundswell and handed the former West Ham
manager, who had been working as his Academy manager, his
chance.
But Roeder was hamstrung even before he began in earnest by the
knee injury £17million striker Michael Owen picked up during
England's World Cup finals campaign, and injury woe was to become a
familiar theme at St James' as 12 bouts of major surgery robbed the
manager of key players for extended periods.
In addition, a relative shortage of cash following Souness'
£50million spending spree limited the club's recruitment plans both
during the summer and in January with Obafemi Martins and Damien
Duff accounting for the manager's entire £15million kitty as Mark
Viduka and Robert Huth among others getting away.
On the pitch, performances were patchy, although results in Europe
were good until the Magpies squandered a 4-2 first leg lead in
Alkmaar to miss out on a place in the UEFA Cup
quarter-finals.
By that point, they had been dumped out of the Carling Cup by
eventual winners Chelsea and exited the FA Cup at the first hurdle
when Coca-Cola Championship Birmingham inflicted a hugely
embarrassing 5-1 third round replay defeat on them on
Tyneside.
Newcastle fared reasonably well against the top four, defeating
Liverpool and drawing with Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal
at St James'.
However, home defeats by Fulham, Bolton, Sheffield United,
Manchester City and Blackburn left the fans in militant mood.
