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Perhaps we have done this or something similar before, but not for some time, and I think it's good fun. I will not attempt to delimit the thread at all: you can utilise any formation you choose; you can give an eleven, a match-day squad of sixteen or eighteen, or a full squad of twenty-two or more; and you can pick players who came before your time, who never featured for your first team, or alternately those who featured lots.
I am more inclined to select players who were either comically bad in some way, or who were terrible over an extended period. I am amused by the former, and come to detest the latter; whereas I never care quite so much about players who, for instance, waste the club's money by never playing, feign injury, don't settle, and so on (Newcastle have a history of these including Marcelino, Luque and Xisco).
GK: Mike Hooper - at the time, around 1993, Pavel Srnicek was our first choice goalkeeper and Hooper came in as his competition. Our fans loved Pav, whereas Hooper looked very uncertain in his first few appearances for us; and owing to this he became a figure of fun and didn't respond particularly well to it. I remember attending a reserve game in which Hooper played where a small group of fans maintained, throughout the match, an ironic chorus of 'Super Duper Hooper'. He did produce one positive memorable moment when, Pav having been sent off during a league game against Tottenham, he came on and, to everyone's astonishment, saved a Klinsmann penalty.
RB: Stephen Carr - Carr came to us from Tottenham with a decent reputation (I think TS even put him at right-back in his 'Best Ever' Tottenham XI a short while ago) and he seemed to manage a few decent years in the Premier League with Birmingham after he left us; but for us he was terrible. He routinely cost us goals and was responsible for the maligning of several centre-backs because he would come inside from his right-back position, losing his man and muddling things in the penalty area. He played for much of his Newcastle career alongside international teammates like Shay Given, Andy O'Brien and Damien Duff, and though he seemed to get on with them off the pitch, on the pitch it was as though he didn't know them and held them in suspicion, bearing a sort of startled, confused and angry expression as he messed us up time and time again. He also had a habit of receiving the ball up the pitch only to turn and kick it out of play, as though contriving to show solid defensive play from a promising attacking position.
LB: Celestine Babayaro - the formation I have selected dictates the selection of a left-back, and in a sense it feels a little harsh to put Babayaro in here because he did have injury problems and personal problems during his time with us; but he was pretty much useless for us on the pitch, and did seem lacking in commitment as well as in fitness.
CB: Jean Alain Boumsong - Boumsong's signing was investigated by the Stevens Report since Graeme Souness persuaded us to pay £8 million for him only a few months after Rangers signed him on a free transfer. Whatever, he was very poor for us from the start, very slow, not particularly strong, and we sold him for a £5 million loss a couple of seasons later.
CB: Andy O'Brien - I think for much of his career our fans considered him unspectacular, even at times insufficient, but still thought of him as fairly reliable, honest and professional. I always thought he was useless, lacking ability in every area - he was weak physically, poor in the air especially given his height, very clumsy with and without the ball, lacked positional sense, and towards the end of his time with us was costing us a goal a game via blatant errors. I regard him as the worst centre-back we have had in my time as a supporter.
CM: Nicky Butt - I loathed Nicky Butt whilst he played for Manchester United, thought of him as a cynical fouling cheat with no footballing ability whatsoever, and was horrified when we bought him and sold Gary Speed. He lived up to my expectations, a fouling cheat who couldn't pass the ball five yards, either lofting it out of play or blasting it into Shearer's shins whenever he strayed beyond our half-way line. It was infuriating having him in our team for so long.
CM: Alan Smith - a kind of black hole whenever he plays for us, sure to drag the team's performance down numerous levels and to cost us significantly whether by giving the ball away, conceding a foul in a dangerous situation, or just sitting so deep that it destroys our shape. He hasn't had a good game for us since we signed him - even in the Championship all he did was sit deep and head balls back to the opposition.
RM: Lee Bowyer - most indicative of Bobby Robson's wrong-headedness towards the end of his time as Newcastle manager is the fact that, less than twelve months after we finished third in the league in 2003, we had replaced Nobby Solano on the right of our midfield with Lee Bowyer - and were on course towards replacing Laurent Robert down the other flank with Darren Ambrose and James Milner. Bowyer was an awful right-midfielder, but he improved little on those occasions when he played in a central position, and in addition he was obviously a generally unpleasant character.
LM: Daniel Cordone - he had two or three good games for us when he arrived early in Robson's reign and I think some of us thought we had signed a good, modern, goal-scoring wide player. However, after those few good games he was awful, and began to seem quite comic because he was so bad, had a terrible and bizarre haircut plastered to his scalp, and was nicknamed 'the wolf'.
FW: Michael Owen - Owen had his good games for us and scored some goals; he played well for us under Kevin Keegan, operating in a role behind Mark Viduka and Obafemi Martins; overall, collecting together all of his performances, he wasn't the most useless of all the strikers we have had over the last twenty years. But he's the former player I detest most, deserves a place on this sort of list for the contempt he showed for the club throughout his time as our player, and was an awful signing in terms of value for money - we got so little back from him in performances and effort for the money we paid. He was entirely a waste of space during our relegation season, happily led us down, and I think the attitude he's held since then, happily remaining sixth or seventh choice at Manchester United, demonstrates well the type of vacuous character he is.
FW: Jon Dahl Tomasson - he went on to have a successful career, and was perhaps unfortunate in his time at Newcastle because injuries often left him leading the line up front, where he was more suited to playing off a striker. However, he was dreadful for us. His movement was insufficient and I remember that his shots seemed always to take an age to end up in the opposition keeper's hands, floating ineluctably to a sorry conclusion.
Assorted squad players:
Lionel Perez (GK) - we signed him from Sunderland as a back-up goalkeeper, and he was thoroughly disliked owing to this connection and never played a game for us. He was just a silly signing.
Marcelino (CB) - signed for close to £6 million and only played a handful of games over the course of three or four years, finger injuries ruling him out of action for months at a time. In the end we released him on a free.
Wayne Quinn (LB) - if I recall, he came to us touted as a potential future England left-back, but turned out to be very poor and seemed to linger for years without playing games for us.
Franck Dumas (DM) - came to us labelled 'the best player never to have played for France', which I suppose is fair enough if a matter of fact, but its not the type of tagline you want your players to come with. He wasn't very good and managed only a few games.
Fumaca (CM) - he only played a few times for us, but he's often referred to by Newcastle fans as 'the only Brazilian who couldn't play football'. I remember him doing repeated pointless step-overs just outside our penalty area in the last few minutes of a game which we were losing.
Joey Barton (RM) - he had half a good season for us as a right-midfielder, which does not make up for all the rubbish he produced on and off the pitch in the three years prior to this: from refusing to join us until we paid him directly the £300,000 'loyalty' bonus Manchester City declined to pay; to assaulting someone and getting sent to prison; to the numerous self-absorbed, self-aggrandising comments made via the press and Twitter. He was invariably awful when played in the middle of the pitch.
Darren Ambrose (RM/LM) - he was transparently inferior to the foreigners Robson bought him to replace, but Robson used him anyway. I remember in his first match for us, his first action saw him knocked off the ball easily, and he became very embarrassed and blatantly fouled the player involved a little while later in an attempt to make amends.
Stephane Guivarch (FW) - we spent £3.5 million on him, he came to us as a World Cup winner, but he looked terrible and played four games before being sold.
Andreas Andersson (FW) - he was one of a trio of bad forwards bought in quick succession comprising also Tomasson and Guivarch. He ran more than the others, so he seemed interested at least, but he was very clumsy. The only goal I remember him 'scoring' for us involved him, one-on-one with the opposition keeper, falling down, the ball hitting his knee as he did so and bobbling over the keeper into the net.
Ian Rush (FW) - contemptuously brought to the club by Kenny Dalglish at the very end of his career, along with the similarly pointless John Barnes.
I am more inclined to select players who were either comically bad in some way, or who were terrible over an extended period. I am amused by the former, and come to detest the latter; whereas I never care quite so much about players who, for instance, waste the club's money by never playing, feign injury, don't settle, and so on (Newcastle have a history of these including Marcelino, Luque and Xisco).
GK: Mike Hooper - at the time, around 1993, Pavel Srnicek was our first choice goalkeeper and Hooper came in as his competition. Our fans loved Pav, whereas Hooper looked very uncertain in his first few appearances for us; and owing to this he became a figure of fun and didn't respond particularly well to it. I remember attending a reserve game in which Hooper played where a small group of fans maintained, throughout the match, an ironic chorus of 'Super Duper Hooper'. He did produce one positive memorable moment when, Pav having been sent off during a league game against Tottenham, he came on and, to everyone's astonishment, saved a Klinsmann penalty.
RB: Stephen Carr - Carr came to us from Tottenham with a decent reputation (I think TS even put him at right-back in his 'Best Ever' Tottenham XI a short while ago) and he seemed to manage a few decent years in the Premier League with Birmingham after he left us; but for us he was terrible. He routinely cost us goals and was responsible for the maligning of several centre-backs because he would come inside from his right-back position, losing his man and muddling things in the penalty area. He played for much of his Newcastle career alongside international teammates like Shay Given, Andy O'Brien and Damien Duff, and though he seemed to get on with them off the pitch, on the pitch it was as though he didn't know them and held them in suspicion, bearing a sort of startled, confused and angry expression as he messed us up time and time again. He also had a habit of receiving the ball up the pitch only to turn and kick it out of play, as though contriving to show solid defensive play from a promising attacking position.
LB: Celestine Babayaro - the formation I have selected dictates the selection of a left-back, and in a sense it feels a little harsh to put Babayaro in here because he did have injury problems and personal problems during his time with us; but he was pretty much useless for us on the pitch, and did seem lacking in commitment as well as in fitness.
CB: Jean Alain Boumsong - Boumsong's signing was investigated by the Stevens Report since Graeme Souness persuaded us to pay £8 million for him only a few months after Rangers signed him on a free transfer. Whatever, he was very poor for us from the start, very slow, not particularly strong, and we sold him for a £5 million loss a couple of seasons later.
CB: Andy O'Brien - I think for much of his career our fans considered him unspectacular, even at times insufficient, but still thought of him as fairly reliable, honest and professional. I always thought he was useless, lacking ability in every area - he was weak physically, poor in the air especially given his height, very clumsy with and without the ball, lacked positional sense, and towards the end of his time with us was costing us a goal a game via blatant errors. I regard him as the worst centre-back we have had in my time as a supporter.
CM: Nicky Butt - I loathed Nicky Butt whilst he played for Manchester United, thought of him as a cynical fouling cheat with no footballing ability whatsoever, and was horrified when we bought him and sold Gary Speed. He lived up to my expectations, a fouling cheat who couldn't pass the ball five yards, either lofting it out of play or blasting it into Shearer's shins whenever he strayed beyond our half-way line. It was infuriating having him in our team for so long.
CM: Alan Smith - a kind of black hole whenever he plays for us, sure to drag the team's performance down numerous levels and to cost us significantly whether by giving the ball away, conceding a foul in a dangerous situation, or just sitting so deep that it destroys our shape. He hasn't had a good game for us since we signed him - even in the Championship all he did was sit deep and head balls back to the opposition.
RM: Lee Bowyer - most indicative of Bobby Robson's wrong-headedness towards the end of his time as Newcastle manager is the fact that, less than twelve months after we finished third in the league in 2003, we had replaced Nobby Solano on the right of our midfield with Lee Bowyer - and were on course towards replacing Laurent Robert down the other flank with Darren Ambrose and James Milner. Bowyer was an awful right-midfielder, but he improved little on those occasions when he played in a central position, and in addition he was obviously a generally unpleasant character.
LM: Daniel Cordone - he had two or three good games for us when he arrived early in Robson's reign and I think some of us thought we had signed a good, modern, goal-scoring wide player. However, after those few good games he was awful, and began to seem quite comic because he was so bad, had a terrible and bizarre haircut plastered to his scalp, and was nicknamed 'the wolf'.
FW: Michael Owen - Owen had his good games for us and scored some goals; he played well for us under Kevin Keegan, operating in a role behind Mark Viduka and Obafemi Martins; overall, collecting together all of his performances, he wasn't the most useless of all the strikers we have had over the last twenty years. But he's the former player I detest most, deserves a place on this sort of list for the contempt he showed for the club throughout his time as our player, and was an awful signing in terms of value for money - we got so little back from him in performances and effort for the money we paid. He was entirely a waste of space during our relegation season, happily led us down, and I think the attitude he's held since then, happily remaining sixth or seventh choice at Manchester United, demonstrates well the type of vacuous character he is.
FW: Jon Dahl Tomasson - he went on to have a successful career, and was perhaps unfortunate in his time at Newcastle because injuries often left him leading the line up front, where he was more suited to playing off a striker. However, he was dreadful for us. His movement was insufficient and I remember that his shots seemed always to take an age to end up in the opposition keeper's hands, floating ineluctably to a sorry conclusion.
Assorted squad players:
Lionel Perez (GK) - we signed him from Sunderland as a back-up goalkeeper, and he was thoroughly disliked owing to this connection and never played a game for us. He was just a silly signing.
Marcelino (CB) - signed for close to £6 million and only played a handful of games over the course of three or four years, finger injuries ruling him out of action for months at a time. In the end we released him on a free.
Wayne Quinn (LB) - if I recall, he came to us touted as a potential future England left-back, but turned out to be very poor and seemed to linger for years without playing games for us.
Franck Dumas (DM) - came to us labelled 'the best player never to have played for France', which I suppose is fair enough if a matter of fact, but its not the type of tagline you want your players to come with. He wasn't very good and managed only a few games.
Fumaca (CM) - he only played a few times for us, but he's often referred to by Newcastle fans as 'the only Brazilian who couldn't play football'. I remember him doing repeated pointless step-overs just outside our penalty area in the last few minutes of a game which we were losing.
Joey Barton (RM) - he had half a good season for us as a right-midfielder, which does not make up for all the rubbish he produced on and off the pitch in the three years prior to this: from refusing to join us until we paid him directly the £300,000 'loyalty' bonus Manchester City declined to pay; to assaulting someone and getting sent to prison; to the numerous self-absorbed, self-aggrandising comments made via the press and Twitter. He was invariably awful when played in the middle of the pitch.
Darren Ambrose (RM/LM) - he was transparently inferior to the foreigners Robson bought him to replace, but Robson used him anyway. I remember in his first match for us, his first action saw him knocked off the ball easily, and he became very embarrassed and blatantly fouled the player involved a little while later in an attempt to make amends.
Stephane Guivarch (FW) - we spent £3.5 million on him, he came to us as a World Cup winner, but he looked terrible and played four games before being sold.
Andreas Andersson (FW) - he was one of a trio of bad forwards bought in quick succession comprising also Tomasson and Guivarch. He ran more than the others, so he seemed interested at least, but he was very clumsy. The only goal I remember him 'scoring' for us involved him, one-on-one with the opposition keeper, falling down, the ball hitting his knee as he did so and bobbling over the keeper into the net.
Ian Rush (FW) - contemptuously brought to the club by Kenny Dalglish at the very end of his career, along with the similarly pointless John Barnes.
