Chandler's charmed run

Lowestoft Town	v	Whitley Bay
	(Whitley Bay lead 2-1 on aggregate)

The FA Carlsberg Vase
Semi-Final second leg
3pm, Saturday 4 April 2009
Crown Meadow, Lowestoft Town FC
Winners will receive £7,000 from The FA

As Alan Shearer prepares to put his reputation on the line by becoming manager at the club where he was idolised, the former England captain could do worse than look just six miles away, where Ian Chandler has done just that with Whitley Bay.

Geordie Shearer scored 206 goals in a decade at Newcastle but is set to move into the dugout for the remaining eight games of the season.

It is a similar journey to that undertaken by Chandler five years ago. Having spent nine years with Whitley Bay as a player, in which he went down in club folklore for scoring the winner in the 2002 FA Vase Final, the 41-year-old accepted an SOS call to become player-manager in 2004.

The result has been a sustained period of success, including becoming Northern League Champions in 2007, victory in the Northumberland Senior Cup and excellent runs in both The FA Cup and Vase.

And now Wembley looms on the horizon, with Whitley Bay taking a 2-1 lead into the second leg of their FA Vase semi-final against Lowestoft Town on Saturday - and Chandler admits the comparisons with Shearer are unavoidable.

"I first joined Whitley back in 1989, and I think I've been there on and off about 16 years," says Chandler.

"I played here for about seven seasons on the bounce, then I left for a while and came back, and I've been here every since.

"The fans are more into hero-status than me, but they've seen the bad times and now they're enjoying themselves.

"It had never crossed my mind to go into management until Whitley approached me, and I just thought 'why not'.

"But rather than being under pressure because I had such a long association with the club, it was actually the opposite - and I'd been here so long I knew most of the people here anyway.

"But as long as you're progressing year-on-year everyone is happy, and we're playing entertaining football and delivering."

He added: "Shearer is a legend at Newcastle, and if anyone can turn them around it's him - I've got a lot of Newcastle fans here and they're all over the moon.

"But I'm a Sunderland fan myself - I hope Shearer can keep Newcastle up, but hopefully not at their expense!"

And Chandler has promised his Whitley Bay side will approach the game against Lowestoft with an attitude Shearer will recognise all too well - the 'we'll score one more than you approach'.

"We've only failed to find the net in one game all season, so I'm confident we'll score - it's just a question of whether we can keep them down to just one," says Chandler, doing a passable impression of another St James' Park legend, Kevin Keegan.

"If we don't play well but get through, then that's it. It's all about getting to Wembley at the moment.

"And I'm confident - there's no reason not to be. It's about my team and if we do well then Lowestoft will have to be exceptional to get by us."