Squad not strong enough * When you first walked into the job you said the squad of players here at the time was the best you have ever had. What has gone wrong? - Brian, Newcastle. What went wrong was that if you look at our results when we had everyone available, as we did when we first came here, we started off with an unbeaten run. Then just before Christmas we lost Alan Shearer, Nicky Butt and Stephen Carr and our results dipped. We got them back just after the New Year and our results picked up again. We then signed Jean Alain Boumsong, Celestine Babayaro and Amdy Faye and the results were fine again and we were going OK. But at no time have we had a squad capable of challenging on all fronts. We were fortunate enough to have a run in both the UEFA and FA Cups and that hurt our league form badly. But around the time of our quarter-final in Lisbon and semi-final in Cardiff we had a horrendous run of injuries when, because of the number of games we played, there was no time to recover. That's why the squad was never strong enough to compete on all fronts. When we have everybody fit we can compete with anyone. But when we are without three or four of our top players we struggle against the top teams. When we were going into that busy period, I was warning people we were fragile and that's the way things turned out. But we know that we have a dozen players who can perform at the highest level. I'm not a fall-out guy * Why do you constantly fall out with your players and why don't you instead try and bury the hatchet instead of putting the club in jeopardy? - Christopher Steavans. Who is constantly falling out with players? I totally deny that. The only player I have fallen out with here is Craig Bellamy. Yes, Laurent Robert is not happy because he is not in the team every week but I don't expect any player not in the team to be happy. I pick players on how they train and how they play in matches. I cannot fall out with people because our personalities are not matched. I have to be far bigger than that. That's not what management is about. What it is about is doing the best for the football club which employs you and that means picking the players you think are doing the business at the time. It's not being about a clash of personalities. I have never gone down that road. Whose are these players I have supposed to have fallen out with? Andy Cole? I rest my case. David Dunn? I rest my case. Craig Bellamy? I rest my case. Andy Todd? I rest my case. Dwight Yorke? We only fell out once at one training session. Don't forget I have managed hundreds of players in my 19 years as a manager. So I have fallen out with five of them? I rest my case. | 
