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Originally Posted by Nufc.com
Spiteful Red infiltrates the Beeb
Strange that on a day when most of the football world seems United in their approval of Alan Shearer's decision to postpone his retirement, this spiteful invective appeared on bbc.co.uk:
"Alan Shearer is the finest English striker there has been, according to Newcastle boss Graeme Souness and ex-Magpies manager Kevin Keegan.
That is the pair's verdict on the 34-year-old, who has 250 Premiership goals to his credit and is about to prolong his player career for a further season.
But is he really the best?
For all his league goals - and no-one can argue that his achievement is not remarkable - there is not much silverware on the Shearer mantlepiece.
Maybe, once the boots have been hung up and all that is left of Shearer's career are videos of his goals, the Geordie legend may regret that the shelves are not stacked with medals instead.
Shearer won the Premiership with Blackburn in 1995 but that remains his only honour.
Twice he snubbed the overtures of Manchester United - first in 1992 when he joined Blackburn from Southampton for £3.3m and then in 1996 when he signed for Newcastle for a then world record £15m fee.
And while Shearer never arrived at Old Trafford, eight Premiership titles, the Champions League and four FA Cups did.
Maybe, after he has finished kicking the ball around St James' Park, Shearer will spend his retirement kicking himself.
He will have plenty of time to 'guesstimate' how many more goals he could have scored had he been the target for David Beckham's pin-point crosses.
With his fantastic ability in the air and tenacity and predatory instinct in the box, Shearer would have thrived on the service.
It was a combination that worked well at international level.
For England, Shearer led from the front - captaining his country 34 times and scoring 34 [sic] goals in 63 appearances.
Shearer shone at Euro 96 but England lost in the semi-finals
He was inspirational in England's march to the semi-finals of Euro 96, where he won the golden boot after top-scoring in the tournament with five goals.
But England's exit at the hands of Germany in a penalty shoot-out seems to typify Shearer's career - with it possibly being the sort that never quite fulfilled its promise.
Shearer was the first striker to reach the landmarks of 100 and 200 Premiership goals and he remains the league's all-time top scorer.
But it is likely he would have swapped that in an instant to match Geoff Hurst's hat-trick in England's World Cup final success in 1966.
Okay, so who wouldn't?
But Souness insists Shearer "is the greatest centre-forward England has ever had - he is a phenomenon".
And aren't players judged on their successes?
Shearer will be remembered as a top-class finisher but how does he rate alongside former England strikers Nat Lofthouse, Jimmy Greaves and Gary Lineker?
Of the three, Lofthouse scored as many and Greaves and Lineker scored more international goals than Shearer - and each of them had a more impressive goals-to-games ratio.
Undoubtedly, Shearer occupies a space among the very elite of English strikers.
But you can not help wondering what might have been had he joined Manchester United and regularly tested himself against the very best in Europe."
Oh dear, what a nasty piece of writing from Ian Hughes - surely a Southern-based Manchester United fan.
What Ian failed to point out is that he wrote this piece at the start of February following Shearer's 250th Premiership goal against Manchester City and posted it on the Beeb website then.
It was inaccurate tripe when he wrote it and it remains so. Why he felt the need to inflict it on us again is a mystery. The whole premise of the article is deeply flawed: to be a great footballer you have to have a full trophy cabinet.
So, Phil Neville is one of the greatest defenders we've ever seen then? Diego Forlan must be as great as Shearer and Jesper Blomqvist is one of Europe's finest?
Did Geoff Hurst's hat-trick and medal mean he was a far better player than Jimmy Greaves?
Was Matt Le Tissier a great player? Of course, he was. Did he need to have a stack of medals to prove it? Of course, not.
Manchester United fans will never understand why Shearer turned them down, twice, because the concept of regional loyalty is one that is alien to all but a handful of them.
Shearer was prepared to gamble a guaranteed sack-full of medals at Old Trafford with the chance of winning just
one piece of silverware for his hometown club.
It's a sad old world that pillories someone for not taking the easy option. Again, a difficult thing for all glory-seeking
Manchester United fans to comprehend.
Hughes concludes by saying, "But you can not help wondering what might have been had he joined United". I think you'll find he did join United and became an absolute
legend amongst his own kind. That's worth much, much more than any shiny silver thing.
And who knows? Perhaps Shearer might well have gone to Old Trafford had they got a set of fans worth playing for....
ound for being a tough taskmaster and one of footy's strictest managers
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16-04-2005, 21:51
