The dominoes fall in TFC land

No more TFC today, I promise. But, this has a few things that will be of interest...

Soccer by Ives (a place you might just see some of my writing next spring) is reporting that Joe Kinnear is staying put in Newcastle (well, SBI isn't breaking that, it's just putting the MLS spin on it).

That spin is that it means that it's almost 100 per cent certain that John Carver will be back as the Reds head coach in 2009. He was under contract, but widely linked with Newcastle. You see, he's buddies with Alan Shearer (a man that should talk to DOUGIE! about the value of going to a lower league to learn how to coach before shooting for the big time) and Shearer told some British media types that he planned to hire Carver as an assist when he was anointed at Newcastle (which seems a bit like tampering, but maybe they do things differently over there).

At any rate, it looks like Shearer isn't going to need to hire any assistants now.

Carver will probably head back to England in the next year or two. It's pretty clear that he views this as a stepping stone, rather than a long-term move. And, he has stuff to learn. Toronto fans love his passion, but his tactics occasionally left a little to be desired (to say nothing of his squad selection). But, it would have been a loss if he had gone back. Three coaches in three years doesn't inspire confidence.

Notes: Also of interest in the Ives article is that Toronto has $1 million in allocation for 2009. That's the number that had been rumoured, but the article was the first I've seem that spells it out.

That's a whole lot by MLS standards, by the way. It's almost 1/3 of the whole cap.