Souness: I’ll help guide ‘Brat Pack’

NEW Newcastle boss Graeme Souness will enlist the help of Alan Shearer and his senior team-mates as he attempts to get to grips with the St James’ Park “Brat Pack.”

The 51-year-old Scot walked into St James' Park yesterday promising to do everything within his power to bring silverware to Tyneside after 35 years without a trophy.

Talk of dressing-room rifts was rife as Bobby Robson's five-year reign came to an end with Shearer, Kieron Dyer and Craig Bellamy among others having their say over different issues and to markedly differing responses.

Souness played down the existence of a "Brat Pack," but drawing on his own experience as a player, said he would use the senior men within the squad as role models.

"There has been a lot of talk about the so-called 'Brat Pack,' but I don't see it like that," he said. "Let me tell you what my belief on football is.

"It's quite simple. I can only relate to my experience and my experience when I was a young man going to Liverpool at 22. I went there thinking I knew all the answers and I was a proper football player and nobody could tell me anything.

"I learnt far more from the senior players there about both football and how I lived my life away from the football ground.

"I was beaten up not physically, verbally on a regular basis for the first few months by the senior players at Liverpool.

"The senior professionals at a football club, if you have good senior professionals, you have a chance of achieving things because, if you analyse a manager's job, I might have them for two hours a day six days a week.

"That's 12 hours a week. I can influence them so much. The senior players have a big part to play at this football club in terms of educating the younger ones, whether it's playing golf or going to restaurants, whether they go out to shop together.

"Spending time with senior professionals, and if they're good senior professionals, that can help them enormously.

"I don't see they're a wild bunch here. I think there's a group of young lads here who just need educating and I see that as a big part of my job and a big part of the Alan Shearers, the Shay Givens, the Robbie Elliotts, the senior players at this club. They've got to help me."

Souness will lead his side for the first time when Israeli minnows Hapoel Bnei Sakhnin visit St James' Park in the UEFA Cup on Thursday night, and while he knows he has a huge task on his hands to fill the shoes of the man he replaced, he is confident that he can do it.

"They're big shoes to fill and I think whoever was going to get this job was going to be a very, very lucky manager," he said. "And I regard myself as lucky because there's been so much work done at this club in the last five years under Bobby.

"It's hard to fill it, but at the end of the day, I've never been shy of a challenge and I can't tell you, if I use the words that are on the tip of my tongue, I'd be extremely corny, but I can't tell you how excited I am by the prospect of working here."

Souness, who signed a two-year deal which will be become a 12-month rolling contract on expiry, is attempting to recruit former Manchester United and Aston Villa defender Ronny Johnsen as a stop-gap replacement for Jonathan Woodgate and is likely to be handed some of the proceeds from that sale to strengthen is defensive resources when the transfer window opens in January.

However, in the meantime, his mandate from chairman Freddy Shepherd is short and sweet.

"Simple," said Shepherd. "To win something. That's what we need and that's what the Newcastle supporters are expecting. Graeme is well-experienced, he knows the brief."