Image from BBC Sport

Following another heavy defeat against Manchester City last night, Newcastle United have terminated manager Graeme Souness’ contract with immediate effect. With only one point from their last six Premiership games and now sitting in a lowly 15th position in the table, the Newcastle board have finally given in to the pressure being exerted by their fans over the past few weeks and parted company with the fiery Scot.

Backroom staff member and former Newcastle United player Glenn Roeder has taken temporary charge of first team affairs with captain Alan Shearer as his assistant as they try to negotiate a path away from the prospect of an almighty relegation battle in the season’s run-in.

Despite spending over ?50m in his time on Tyneside on established internationals such as Michael Owen, Scott Parker and Emre, Souness has been plagued with injury and discipline problems both on and off the pitch, most notably the on-field punch up between Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer last season. With results also not going to plan it has seemed inevitable this season that there would be a parting of the ways and, despite receiving several votes of confidence from Newcastle chairman Freddy Shepherd in recent weeks and riding the storm of a very vocal fan protest outside St. James Park last week, the club have taken the initiative in an attempt to save their Premiership status.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2006 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Newcastle United. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.