Well, fuck it. In case you were wondering where I've been during my relatively long absence from all things bloggingly self-indulgent - and I'm the first to admit you probably weren't - I've been away, writing. I know it's nothing and any old bastard can sit down and bang out some guff about the government that might pass for satire at a playschool party, but I like to show off and flounce around my own private corner of the internet telling all and sundry that I'm a writer, and as such, I occasionally go out and write things, so that's where I've been.
I'm back, however, because, like clockwork, just a few months after the previous world-ending disaster, once again a subject I've covered frequently has been brought to it's knees by the sheer brain-swelling insensibility of everyone involved. It's not the marvellously-named Credit Crunch, though the Lehman brothers have done a fantastic job of fucking everybody in the entire world over quite nicely, because it's Newcastle United. Forgive me if it looks like I'm reacting with glee to the entire black and white debacle, and please don't think it's because I'm anything so lowly as a Sunderland fan, but I can't help but laugh raucously to myself - and anyone else who will listen - every time I see a Newcastle fan interviewed on the telly. It's not because I enjoy the demise of the biggest club in the north east since Nottingham Forest went to the dogs, or because I feel it gives my club a league advantage in any way - it's simply because you're all such unadulterated idiots.
Mike Ashley might be a businessman with nothing but profit in mind and Dennis Wise might be a hideous little troll and of absolutely no use to anyone, but that doesn't make Kevin Keegan any less of a rediculous bottler, or Alan Shearer any less right in saying that he wouldn't touch the manager's job at Newcastle - even with a new board in place - with a barge pole. Keegan completely failed in both spells as manager to bring any real success to the club and has left under a cloud every job that he has ever taken the minute any sort of pressure shows up, and the Newcastle job has to be the most pressured job in football. I'd rather be the bloke in charge of pushing the big red 'NUKE' button if Medvedev wakes up with a headache one day and decides to obliterate Surrey than be in charge of the shambles by the Tyne, where if you don't win each game eighteen nil and have both your wingers backflipping up and down the pitch with the ball between their knees, you're out inside a month.
No wonder Shearer likes it in his nice warm studio, because you're all bloody mental. I heard a caller on Sky Sports' phone-in show about new manager Joe Kinnear being "just another member of the cockney Mafia" - he's from Dublin. How big do you people think London is? I heard another say that Londoners are all out to ruin your club because you don't want it threatening the dominance of the London teams - you weren't anyway. Not only is there no dominance to threaten - only eight times in the last forty years has the English title made it further south than Birmingham - but if there was truly a conspiracy to ruin all non-London clubs with a chance of taking silverware away from the capital, there are far more pressing targets than Newcastle. Maybe Ashley just wants to make sure a club finishes below Spurs this year, but you'll be pleased to know that's not working out so well for him.
The problem with Newcastle United, or, rather, the problem with the Newcastle United fans, is that they are under the impression that finishing second ten and eleven years ago somehow gives them the right to be up with the 'big four' and challenging for the Champions League, but the year before Newcastle's first 2nd-place finish, Blackburn Rovers won the league, and they aren't under the same sort of delusion. They finished second the year before, and Norwich bloody City finished third the year before that, and none of their fans are screaming from the rooftops demanding a free passage into Europe every year just because they were quite a good team once upon a time.
I understand the frustrations of the Newcastle fans, and I get that they think that their club deserves better, but they are going about it all wrong. The constant diet of change and upheaval means that the squad is hugely disjointed and unsettled as each manager ships out half the previous managers' players and brings in his own, and soon the dressing room is a hodge-podge of styles and signings, and with each new manager more than aware that if his team doesn't manage to beat 6 - 0 Man United away while all standing on their heads two weeks after taking over the fans will be calling for his head, it means everyone is perpetually nervous, and nobody plays to their best when they're nervous - it's why Robert Green shits himself and concedes four goals every time Fabio Capello looks at him. You need to sit back and let whoever comes in when this Nigerian/South African/Martian consortium takes over and give them a couple of seasons - they won't get success right away, even if it is 'King Kev' - you simply can't refloat a boat that's floundering as badly as Newcastle is that quickly.
Alan Curbishley would be a good choice, if he's allowed to sign his own players, simply because there's no better consolidation manager in the game - he'll get you 10th place from here until doomsday. Martin Jol would be another good pick for what he did for a club of similar stature in Tottenham, but I can't see him surviving his Spurs connections after the Ashley saga. Keegan would be a bad choice, because all of a sudden his 'messiah' appointment leads people to believe they're going to win the league by 50 points, and when they don't they will turn on the new owners as well; any new board is going to realise that the 'no man is bigger than the club' rule doesn't apply to Kevin Keegan, and the majority of fans on Tyneside are bigger fans of him than they are Newcastle United, so they would do well to keep him well away and pack him off back to his Scottish soccer circuses.
Still, whatever happens, I wish Newcastle's players all the best. I don't have any time for Ashley or Wise, because they have both been immensely stupid time and time again, but then I don't have time for the fans either - you've all been far too fucking obnoxious. If there were a way to keep your long-suffering team in the Premiership - where their talent means they deserve to be - and relegate you lot, I would. But your team can stay, so long as you still beat Spurs twice.
With billy-clubs.
Goodnight.
I'm back, however, because, like clockwork, just a few months after the previous world-ending disaster, once again a subject I've covered frequently has been brought to it's knees by the sheer brain-swelling insensibility of everyone involved. It's not the marvellously-named Credit Crunch, though the Lehman brothers have done a fantastic job of fucking everybody in the entire world over quite nicely, because it's Newcastle United. Forgive me if it looks like I'm reacting with glee to the entire black and white debacle, and please don't think it's because I'm anything so lowly as a Sunderland fan, but I can't help but laugh raucously to myself - and anyone else who will listen - every time I see a Newcastle fan interviewed on the telly. It's not because I enjoy the demise of the biggest club in the north east since Nottingham Forest went to the dogs, or because I feel it gives my club a league advantage in any way - it's simply because you're all such unadulterated idiots.
Mike Ashley might be a businessman with nothing but profit in mind and Dennis Wise might be a hideous little troll and of absolutely no use to anyone, but that doesn't make Kevin Keegan any less of a rediculous bottler, or Alan Shearer any less right in saying that he wouldn't touch the manager's job at Newcastle - even with a new board in place - with a barge pole. Keegan completely failed in both spells as manager to bring any real success to the club and has left under a cloud every job that he has ever taken the minute any sort of pressure shows up, and the Newcastle job has to be the most pressured job in football. I'd rather be the bloke in charge of pushing the big red 'NUKE' button if Medvedev wakes up with a headache one day and decides to obliterate Surrey than be in charge of the shambles by the Tyne, where if you don't win each game eighteen nil and have both your wingers backflipping up and down the pitch with the ball between their knees, you're out inside a month.
No wonder Shearer likes it in his nice warm studio, because you're all bloody mental. I heard a caller on Sky Sports' phone-in show about new manager Joe Kinnear being "just another member of the cockney Mafia" - he's from Dublin. How big do you people think London is? I heard another say that Londoners are all out to ruin your club because you don't want it threatening the dominance of the London teams - you weren't anyway. Not only is there no dominance to threaten - only eight times in the last forty years has the English title made it further south than Birmingham - but if there was truly a conspiracy to ruin all non-London clubs with a chance of taking silverware away from the capital, there are far more pressing targets than Newcastle. Maybe Ashley just wants to make sure a club finishes below Spurs this year, but you'll be pleased to know that's not working out so well for him.
The problem with Newcastle United, or, rather, the problem with the Newcastle United fans, is that they are under the impression that finishing second ten and eleven years ago somehow gives them the right to be up with the 'big four' and challenging for the Champions League, but the year before Newcastle's first 2nd-place finish, Blackburn Rovers won the league, and they aren't under the same sort of delusion. They finished second the year before, and Norwich bloody City finished third the year before that, and none of their fans are screaming from the rooftops demanding a free passage into Europe every year just because they were quite a good team once upon a time.
I understand the frustrations of the Newcastle fans, and I get that they think that their club deserves better, but they are going about it all wrong. The constant diet of change and upheaval means that the squad is hugely disjointed and unsettled as each manager ships out half the previous managers' players and brings in his own, and soon the dressing room is a hodge-podge of styles and signings, and with each new manager more than aware that if his team doesn't manage to beat 6 - 0 Man United away while all standing on their heads two weeks after taking over the fans will be calling for his head, it means everyone is perpetually nervous, and nobody plays to their best when they're nervous - it's why Robert Green shits himself and concedes four goals every time Fabio Capello looks at him. You need to sit back and let whoever comes in when this Nigerian/South African/Martian consortium takes over and give them a couple of seasons - they won't get success right away, even if it is 'King Kev' - you simply can't refloat a boat that's floundering as badly as Newcastle is that quickly.
Alan Curbishley would be a good choice, if he's allowed to sign his own players, simply because there's no better consolidation manager in the game - he'll get you 10th place from here until doomsday. Martin Jol would be another good pick for what he did for a club of similar stature in Tottenham, but I can't see him surviving his Spurs connections after the Ashley saga. Keegan would be a bad choice, because all of a sudden his 'messiah' appointment leads people to believe they're going to win the league by 50 points, and when they don't they will turn on the new owners as well; any new board is going to realise that the 'no man is bigger than the club' rule doesn't apply to Kevin Keegan, and the majority of fans on Tyneside are bigger fans of him than they are Newcastle United, so they would do well to keep him well away and pack him off back to his Scottish soccer circuses.
Still, whatever happens, I wish Newcastle's players all the best. I don't have any time for Ashley or Wise, because they have both been immensely stupid time and time again, but then I don't have time for the fans either - you've all been far too fucking obnoxious. If there were a way to keep your long-suffering team in the Premiership - where their talent means they deserve to be - and relegate you lot, I would. But your team can stay, so long as you still beat Spurs twice.
With billy-clubs.
Goodnight.
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