While Alan Shearer hogged the headlines, Iain Dowie was also confirmed as Newcastle’s new assistant manager on Wednesday night. Chief Sports Writer Scott Wilson profiles the man Shearer has chosen to help engineer the Magpies’ climb up the table.

TO the untrained observer, football management is hardly rocket science. In the case of new Newcastle assistant Iain Dowie, however, that is something of a shame.

As the holder of a masters degree in engineering from the University of Hertfordshire, and a former employee of British Aerospace prior to the start of his professional football career, Dowie is quite adept at discussing the science of rockets.

Supporters of Newcastle United must now hope the 44- year-old is equally well trained in the art of propelling football clubs in an upwards direction.

On this score, however, the evidence is mixed. For every successful take-off there has been a less rewarding plummet back down to earth.

After a playing career that saw him make his name as a muscular striker with Southampton and West Ham, and that brought 59 caps for Northern Ireland, Dowie made his managerial debut when he replaced Mick Wadsworth as boss of Oldham Athletic in May 2002.

He guided the Latics into the Division Two play-offs at the end of his first full season, but financial problems soon materialised, and after months of not being paid his full salary, Dowie resigned from his position citing the need to support his family.

He moved to Crystal Palace, and inherited a side that were 19th in the Championship and careering towards relegation.

What happened next will surely act as the template for the survival campaign he will mount alongside Alan Shearer in the next two months.

With a combination of astute man management and back-to-basics tactics, Dowie inspired his players to a run of 17 wins from 23 matches that took them into the play-offs.

They beat Sunderland in the semi-finals on penalties - something that can only earn Dowie brownie points on Tyneside – and went on to beat West Ham to earn a place in the Premier League. Escapes don’t come much greater than that.

The following season was a struggle, with Palace hovering around the bottom three for the majority of the campaign.

They were relegated when they drew 2-2 with Charlton on the final day of the season, but Dowie emerged with his reputation intact, and as the inventor of a word that has subsequently found its way into the Collins Dictionary.

If ever a club needed “bouncebackability”, it is surely Newcastle in their current condition.

Dowie remained with Palace following their drop into the Championship, but left the club by mutual consent in May 2006 following a series of discussions with chairman Simon Jordan.

He reappeared at Charlton eight days later - much to Jordan’s discontent - but suffered a dreadful start to the season that saw the Addicks plunge into the relegation zone.

With results showing little sign of improving, Dowie was sacked after just 12 Premier League matches. Prior to his appointment as Shearer’s right-hand man, he had never been back in the top-flight since.

Unsuccessful spells at Coventry and QPR did little to rebuild his managerial stock, and Dowie, who had been based in Dorset, was primarily working as a Sky Sports pundit before he received a call from the North-East this week.

His relationship with Shearer was formed during the season they spent together at Southampton, and honed during shared sessions of punditry for the BBC, but most observers were surprised when he was confirmed as Newcastle’s new assistant on Wednesday.

He is respected throughout the football world as a talented coach, but has spent most of the last decade attempting to carve out his own managerial niche.

However, for the next eight weeks, he will be Shearer’s right-hand man, dealing with the nuts and bolts of the club’s training sessions and pre-match preparations, while his associate takes a step back to focus on the bigger picture.

“I can take all the mundane things that sometimes drive you mad as a manager away,”

said Dowie, as he sat alongside Shearer at this week’s introductory press conference.

“Organisational stuff which has no massive effect at the time.

“It’s important that Alan is very clear and single-minded about team selection and getting performances.

“I’ll be working with him, but anyone who knows me will tell you I’m not a yes man.

We’ll have very frank discussions and then Alan will choose the team - that’s very clear. Then, we’ll look back on the week, revisit it and think about what we could have done better.”

With Shearer at the head of Newcastle’s team, Dowie will take a step back from the limelight for the next eight weeks, but the ambitious Ulsterman insists his determination to guide the Magpies up the table is as strong as if he was the out-and-out boss.

As his engineering training will have taught him, you need more than one chemical agent to launch a rocket. And as Shearer was quick to realise this week, you also need more than one coach to propel a football team up the table.