Everything's Getting Older

At 11.25pm on Friday December 21^st, David Charlton (25) was stabbed to death at the junction of Stanhope Road and Boldon Lane in South Shields, having recently left the Last Orders pub with his girlfriend; two teenagers have been charged with his murder. On Saturday December 22^nd, 33 year old David Scott died of knife wounds he suffered in an attack in the back lane behind Rose Street in Stanley; police are looking to speak to two men seen running away some time close to the discovery of Mr. Scott’s body shortly before midnight. On Sunday December 23^rd, Lee Houchin (35) died on his way to hospital, having been stabbed on Wallsend High Street at 4.00pm; a 29 year old local man has been charged in connection with this death. At 10.40am on Monday December 24^th, police were called to a property in North View, Hunwick near Crook, where they found the body of 48 year old Lesley Caile; her 46 year old partner, who was taken to hospital with self-inflicted injuries, has subsequently been charged with her murder. As I type, we remain in the midst of what we must call the Festive Season, when drink, drugs and knives combine to create individual human tragedies of unimaginable sorrow and emotional desolation for the loved ones of those who lost their lives. Even petty criminal, heroin addict and alleged child abductor John the Badge didn’t deserve the fate that befell him the week before, when he was found dead of head injuries in his house in Winlaton, though seeing an effusive, mawkish web eulogy to him was more than a mite excessive. Still, Merry Christmas everyone and Happy New Year to you all.

My Christmas present to myself was triple pronged; Laura and I had arranged the Christmas shop trip to Sainsbury’s for Thursday December 20^th, meaning I couldn’t get to Newcastle University 5 Cullercoats 0 on the Coach Lane AstroTurf under lights, so I had to be satisfied with a trident of selfish treats.  Firstly, a trip to Hebburn against Team Northumbria on December 18^th; what a tremendous game it was. Ending 2-2, the contrast between Hebburn’s muscular, macho, no-nonsense approach and Team North’s cerebral passing game was a joy to behold. Secondly, Roddy Doyle’s mini-book, Two Pints; 90 pages of a year’s worth of Irish news, told entirely in dialogue between two middle aged blokes in a Dublin pub. Published in weekly instalments on Facebook, it is laugh out loud cynicism and naivety in equal measures; never mind the quality, feel the innovation. I read it on the Metro to Hebburn, while listening to my final purchase of the year; Everything’s Getting Older by Bill Wells (National Jazz Trio of Scotland) and Aidan Moffat (Arab Strap), which is by turn, the most beautiful, melancholy and disturbing record I’ve heard in a long, long time. The elegiac instrumental Tasogare is followed by the superb observational ordinariness of the spoken word The Copper Top, which gives way to the menacing, fearful narrative of Dinner Time, meaning I can understand exactly why this was named Scottish Album of the Year for 2011, which makes the realisation I didn’t catch them in Newcastle on October 15^th 2011 even harder to take. It was the day we drew 2-2 with Spurs and Shola’s superb equaliser must have turned my head, deflecting me from attending the show.

Shola scored a similarly sublime winner against QPR on Saturday 22^nd December. Feeling decidedly ropey (though not as bad as poor norovirus-stricken Laura) after a terrible, terrible Olympic themed work Christmas do that was followed by a pub crawl around the decent, if packed, bars by the station and a wonderful curry at Akbar’s, where my stand-out starter was rabbit tikka, the QPR game did nothing for my mood. At first we had to endure some Carol singers at the side of the pitch; naturally, as an atheist, I found this deeply offensive and began booing them. An arsey steward came over to question me about this, asking if I had a problem, so I explained I had. Not only was this the nadir of the modern football experience, it was also in direct contrast to my personal beliefs; he requested me to stop booing immediately “or else.” I asked him whether he’d be saying the same to the 45,000 who’d be booing Williamson the minute the game kicked off and he shrugged his shoulders, wandering away, muttering I needed to take it up with the club.

For the first hour, I was deeply regretting not taking in North Shields Athletic Reserves versus Wooler in the NFA Minor Cup at Valley Gardens School on the 4G pitch (it ended up 3-2) or Benfield’s away trip to Durham City, even if they lost 4-0. Indeed I was only at SJP because everything else was off on account of the rain, which fell like the tears of all the angels in heaven, crying over John the Badge, and my time could have been better employed by writing out Christmas cards or a letter of complaint to the club about the Christmas carols, until Pardew realised his tactics weren’t working and took off Cisse, to a storm of boos, for Shola. The booing was not for Cisse, but in relation to the introduction of Shola; then again, you can never discount any outbreak of mass idiocy among our lot if things aren’t going well. There’s always the chance, if the amount of fools on the way up to the ground who were discussing Ba as if he’d already left the club or wasn’t trying all game was anything to go by, that some people actually want Pardew removed.

However, the boss showed he’s still got the ability to pull rabbits out of hats; the appearance of Marveaux and Obertan for Tiote and Jonas sparked the team in to life and for the last 30 minutes we were at least two goals better than a hopelessly tame QPR, though only one goal came; great work by Shola as well. While I think both him and Jonas are probably better served in ambassadorial roles, handing out Christmas presents to sick bairns in the Freeman or RVI, the goal today won us 2 valuable points and probably delayed his inevitable free transfer for another 12 months or so. An important victory or a pyrrhic one; time will tell us.

And so to Boxing Day; what a terrible disappointment that was as well. The news came through on Christmas night that Benfield v Whitley Bay had been postponed, which didn’t seem right to me. Frankly the weather had been dry for over 2 days; so to say the game was off because of a waterlogged pitch appeared to be a smokescreen for the fact that Woodhouse feared a severe stuffing by a rampant Bay side. Still, there was always the Shields v West Allotment game to fall back on, with Knaggsy prepared to give me a lift. Sadly that fell by the wayside because of standing water on the pitch. I tried to persuade him that Jarrow Roofing v Horden was a good third choice; it ended up 10-2, but he said no and opted for the Man United v Newcastle game in the pub, while I made do with Final Score. I’m not sure what was worse, the gut-wrenching, inevitable disappointment of their late winner or the smug grins on the dials of the loathsome Robbie Savage and Michael Gray.

Match of the Day did confirm that we’d been heroic in defeat and could have claimed a deserved point, even if they missed several good chances. The usual shambolic dithering by Danny Simpson undid all the good work we’d put in before then. My hope was that they’d take it as a good performance and not as another setback, going in to the Arsenal game (who comes up with this fixture list?), but that was all forgotten about in the shitstorm following Ferguson’s tirade of abuse aimed at Pardew, which must have marked the final death knell of the FA’s Respect campaign.

I can’t say I like Alex Ferguson, but I do admire what he’s achieved in the game; 12 titles speak for themselves. As a fan of The Fall, I see a lot of Mark E Smith in him; megalomania, paranoia, a dishevelled appearance and the effects of too much drink. Also, like Smith, he has the ability to make ridiculous pronouncements that have absolutely no basis in reality (such as Pardew being in the officials’ faces every game or that he has helped our manager to get where he is today), which are then treated by a reverential media as if they are completely truthful (Newcastle is a “wee” club), despite contradicting almost everything he’s said on the subject in the past. Ferguson’s genius is that in acting like this he doesn’t just have influential people in the media who accept his word as law, but that he can distract attention from the actual truth, keeping both heat and light away from his team and their performances. The nonsense about van Persie being at risk of death when Ashley Williams blamed the ball off him deflected any criticism of Man United’s woeful performance at Swansea. Even worse, his tirade on Friday 28^th meant that Ferguson’s own conduct on Boxing Day, not to mention van Persie striking Colo in the face before the third equaliser or Valencia’s thuggish challenge on Anita were all forgotten about. He’s a cantankerous, intolerant liar, but he’s also Bismarck, Machiavelli and Freud rolled in to one. The bastard. The evil, bastard genius.

No-one could accuse Pardew of being a genius; nor would people claim he is an idiot, but he made an absolutely idiotic decision away at Arsenal, when substituting Bigirimana for Shola when we were 4-3 down with 10 minutes to go. The resulting hole in midfield saw us collapse and lose 7-3, against a side who’d benefitted from a rest on Boxing Day when we’d been engaged in the battle at Old Trafford. Having attended the thoroughly enjoyable Northern League Division 2 game that ended Horden 1 Morpeth Town 3, courtesy of the kindness of the Hudson brothers, I got back in time to watch the second half, before the Percy Main Christmas do. In the end, I didn’t go; too miserable at the result, but not as miserable as some of the Samaritans season ticket holders and kneejerk nappy wetters on Twitter, whose responses were worse than our defence in the last 10 minutes.

Obviously hysteria is easy after such a result; the most important thing, as far as I’m concerned, is Pardew keeps his nerve and reflects on his substitutions and the deleterious effect they had on the game. Without the changes we would probably have lost anyway, but going so gung-ho in search of an equaliser, when we failed to have any further possession in their half, caused the late collapse. This must never happen again; otherwise I may start to wonder about his judgement. I hate to say that, but we simply can’t afford such a demoralising humping again, though I wonder whether Paul Lambert feels the same way after most games? It should be remembered that in the midst of the defensive carnage, we scored 2 truly excellent goals in the second period. In December 2000: Arsenal 5 Newcastle 0 was a far worse battering than the one we endured on December 29th. In addition, don’t forget than in 1976/1977 we let in 7 at Man Utd and 5 at Arsenal, but finished 5th, so don't despair!!

While at any ordinary club, such a result as the 7-3 would be seen as reason to sign players to strengthen the team, Newcastle United are far from an ordinary club; as I type news is coming in about Ba meeting with Chelsea to discuss a transfer, explaining why Shola has been dissuaded from going to the African Cup of Nations with Nigeria, while the deal for Debuchy seems to have been completed and encouraging noises are being made over Remy’s potential arrival. I think it best not to talk about transfers until some have actually taken place.  Fundamentally, all that matters now is we beat Everton. That will not happen unless Pardew keeps his job and his temper and the team step up. The manager knows what he has to do is pick the players up, put the obvious faults right and hope for some good luck; if that happens on Wednesday and for the next month or so, we're fine. If it doesn't and he panics or has the rug pulled from under him in any way, we're screwed.

My contribution to the cause is to head to either Airdrie United v Cowdenbeath or Dunfermline v Raith Rovers with the Hudson brothers on Wednesday, with Dunston Fed v West Auckland if I get back in time, rather than watching the Everton game at SJP. The stakes are too high to allow me to attend; the ticket will be better used by my son. His heart is stronger.