The Newcastle United Blog

As expected Gerry Francis will not be able to help out Joe Kinnear at Newcastle in his short reign as interim manager.

Gerry Francis - unable to help Joe at Newcastle

The Newcastle United interim manager had wanted the experienced former Premier League manager to help him with the training since Keegan, McDermott, Round and Adam Sadler have all left and only Kinnear has come in, since last season.

Kinnear told the Chronicle today:

“A lot of it has been blown out of proportion.” “I was surprised to see it all over the TV. We had a casual chat about things.” “He is already doing two days a week at Stoke.” “Gerry doesn’t want to be involved with football on match days.”

“It was a difficult one for Gerry because I can’t give him a contract in any form or way. I think he has one at Stoke.” “So he doesn’t want to burn his bridges.” “If something happens here in the next month and the club is sold, he knows that if the new people come in and don’t want you that is the end of it.” “I told him that and he had to know that before he came in.”

“In theory, it wasn’t worth his while to leave his job at Stoke.” “The job there is more permanent.” “He was very interested, but there was no contract and certainly nobody is getting any contracts at the moment.”

“Nobody knows how long anybody is going to be here at the moment – and that includes me.”

It’s a very difficult situation for Kinnear and Newcastle right now, with so much uncertainty surrounding the club, and this will only go away when new owners are named.

Until then it’s unfortunate, but Joe will more than likely having to manage with the paper thin coaching squad he has. Given all that’s happened Joe, Chris Hughton, Richard Money and the rest of the coaching staff are doing a stellar job in very difficult circumstances, and they deserve the full support of the Newcastle fans.

We know they’ll get just that, starting with our game on Monday evening.

Comments welcome.