SOCCER NEWS:JOEY BARTON was banned for six, rather than the anticipated 15, games by the English FA yesterday but such apparent clemency represented just about the only good news for Newcastle United as the club contemplated finding a new manager.
Barton also received a further six-game ban, suspended until the end of the 2009-10 season, for his training ground attack on Ousmane Dabo, then a Manchester City team-mate, in May 2007. But as Newcastle began the process of replacing Kevin Keegan, who resigned on Thursday evening, its board was the subject of a scathing deconstruction from Richard Bevan, the chief executive of the League Managers' Association.
Bevan, who tried to help Keegan resolve his differences with Mike Ashley, Newcastle's owner, and Dennis Wise, the director of football, insisted the club's largely London-based management structure was doomed to failure.
"I think if you look at a football club when people are running it from different parts of the country, when you've got a manager who doesn't know who is being signed, who is leaving and who is coming in, it's a recipe for disaster," he said. "It looked a bit like an orchestra with four conductors. They had everybody on the bus but they weren't in the same seats. It was going to break down sooner or later."
While the current favourite to replace Keegan remains Gus Poyet, currently Tottenham Hotspur's assistant manager and a close ally of Wise's, Newcastle directors are believed to be keen to talk to Zico. However the former Brazilian great seems a less likely candidate than one of Wise's old pals from Chelsea such as Poyet, Gianluca Vialli or Gianfranco Zola.
Guardian Service
Serbia and Chelsea defender Slobodan Rajkovic has been suspended from football for 12 months for spitting at the referee during a group stage match against Argentina at last month's Olympics.
