With today’s news that Newcastle United have received a special dispensation to allow them to appoint Glenn Roeder as their new manager despite his lack of a FIFA Pro coaching licence, the race to identify just who will be taking the reins at St. James’ Park appears to over.

With Newcastle having performed so well under Roeder’s stewardship it would have been a disaster for the club to not have been able to consider him for the role full-time and although the ruling hasn’t received the backing of the League Managers’ Association, it will surely have the full backing of the Toon Army.

Freddy Shepherd has hit back hard at the LMA for their comments about Newcastle trying to bend the rules to appoint Roeder and makes a very definite case for why his club have fought so hard to ensure that Glenn Roeder is able to take up their manager’s post.

“I am very unhappy at some of the comments coming from the LMA in recent weeks surrounding our efforts to find the right man for the vacant managerial position at Newcastle United,” he told the club’s official website, www.nufc.co.uk.

“Glenn himself was a member of the LMA while at West Ham, and is about to begin the Pro Licence course again, so I find it both disappointing and surprising that they should take such a stance.

“There is only one vacancy at Newcastle and we can only appoint one person.

“Whoever we decide is the right person to become the next manager at St James’ Park, we would fully hope and expect him to receive the complete backing of the LMA and his fellow managers.”

Roeder is now expected to be unveiled at a press conference at St. James’ Park on Monday.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 at 6:19 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.