The Big Dog's Breakfast

 

Let’s be honest; Joe Biden might be a decent bloke, but he isn’t a Socialist. He’s a billionaire Capitalist in actual fact but, thankfully, he isn’t a deranged, monomaniacal psychopath whose final curtain call would have been nuclear Armageddon. For that, at least, we can be grateful. Also, his election may be the first indication that the age of Xenophobic autocrats may be waning. Trump has been downed, leaving a bucket of shit list of cut-throat despots comprising: Bolsonaro, Johnson, Lukachenko, Orban and Putin who all need to be dethroned. The irony of Johnson is that, if he maintains his ludicrous lockdown strategy beyond the start of December, it’ll be members of his own party who’ll be drawing their long knives on a far from Silent Night. Regardless of his dangerous desire to cover his own back, rather like Benitez in a Russ Abbott wig, Johnson isn’t flameproof.

 

This has been amply demonstrated by the simple goodness of Marcus Rashford. The Man United player’s campaign to provide free school lunches for disadvantaged children during holiday periods, despite endless sniping from self-satisfied, well-fed, Tory bastards whose primary allegiances are to their wallets and the interests of big business, has resulted in a humiliating climbdown by the Government who are now providing £396 million to fund adequate nutrition for vulnerable youths. That’s almost 10 Joelintons or, if you’ve Steve Brooooooth, 82,500 portions of fish cake and chips with a battered sausage on the side. It might even get you a watch and a pair of trainers in Dubai.

However, before the wider football community engages in a collective bout of back-slapping at Rashford’s wonderful work, it should be remembered we’re only a month on from an appalling attempted power grab by the Big Six, with the craven complicity of Everton, Southampton and West Ham. The plan was named Project Big Picture and was an attempt to silence the Football League by tossing them a few crumbs of hard cash in these days of fiscal hardship. The key suggestions were as follows -:

-          The Premier League would be reduced from 20 to 18 clubs.

-          The EFL Cup and the Community Shield would be scrapped.

-          Current one-club one-vote principle would be abolished, as would rule that 14 clubs out of the current 20 need to agree on policy.

-          Power would be in the nine clubs that have remained in the Premier League longest (Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Man Utd, Man City, Southampton, Tottenham, West Ham).

-          Only six of the nine longest-serving clubs need to vote for major change.

-          A £250m payment up front to the EFL, plus £100m payment to the Football Association.

-          25 per cent of Premier League annual revenue (up from four per cent) would go to the EFL clubs.

Despite being presented as a fait accompli in early October, Project Big Picture was dead in the water a week later. Almost incredibly, the proposals were rejected by all 20 Premier League clubs, despite having been drafted by 9 of them, with the seemingly unbelievable reason being a pronounced dislike by top flight clubs of Rick Parry, the current chairman of the EFL, former chief executive of Liverpool and original CEO of the Premier League. Whatever the truth behind the baffling volte face by almost half of the FA’s elite clubs, do not be fooled into thinking that league and financial reconstruction is over; it isn’t. The unpredictability of the current situation, in the wake of the on-going spectre of COVID-19, has stayed the hand of avarice dressed up as progress; once any kind of normality is established, things will change and not for the better.

That said, do not discount the power of supporter anger to make the suits think again. The Premier League’s predictably crass solution to the shortfall in income occasioned by the continued absence of  paying spectators in grounds was not a reasoned appeal to allow a return to the terraces; instead, they came up with the stunning idea of charging punters £14.95 for the pleasure of seeing the remaining fixtures not deemed interesting enough to be selected for live transmission by BT or Sky. To be fair to the much maligned broadcasters, this wasn’t their idea, and they didn’t stand to benefit from the monies paid. Typically, the first side to host one of these games was Newcastle, when Manchester United came visiting. Having ended the first tranche of Premier League fixtures with a comprehensive win over an awful Burnley side, there was a degree of optimism coming into this one. We were wrong, but morally in the right.

Far too often in the past, Newcastle’s fanbase has splintered in the face of situations that require principles or ethics, whether that be the proposed Saudi takeover or shirt sponsorship from Wonga. Wonderfully, the unifying organisation that harnessed and benefitted from the loud and insistent dissenting voice of NUFC supporters, was the Newcastle United Food Bank. By asking fans to refrain from purchasing this game and donating the cost to one of the finest causes imaginable, it not only raised an incredible £40,000, but also sent out a message to fans of other Premier League clubs not to legitimise this sordid income stream. 

At this point, legendary philanthropist Mike Ashley intervened, praising NUFC fans and calling for the Premier League to drop the price of each game to £4.95. What a guy eh? It’s taken NUFC 6 months to finally stop taking direct debits for games season ticket holders didn’t get to see. Apparently, the refunds are being processed, though I’d suggest you don’t hold your breath waiting for them to drop into your account.

Remarkably, the Premier League responded to fan fury and have decided to abandon this sordid project. Once the latest international break is over, Pay Per View will be no more. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Steve Brooooth, whose tactics in that Manchester United game ought to have seen him hanging from a lamppost on Barrack Road. Here we had an utterly dispirited and demoralised Red Devils, seemingly there for the taking after conceding a calamitous own goal with 2 minutes. Of course, Newcastle can be relied on to kickstart any struggling side’s season. So it was here; a timid and terrible performance, ceding possession and territory hand over fist, seemed to have garnered an unlikely point after Darlow’s superb penalty save had kept the scores level. Then the sky fell in and a triple goal salvo inflicted a sobering 4-1 hammering. I almost regretted bothering to watch the illegal, free stream. 

Mind, the performance the week after at Wolves was no better. That’s what is so maddening about Broooooth; he simply can’t learn from experience. His idiotic insistence on 4-4-2, depressing wish to introduce Carroll and Joelinton from the bench at any opportunity and failure to respond to things going against us, characterise each and every game Newcastle don’t win. Even the draws where we come from behind, such as Spurs, still feel like defeats. This was the case at Molineux where, bar encouraging performances from Lewis and Murphy, Newcastle served up another deep dish of dog shit. The stink of incompetence prevailed long after Rui Patricio set up his wall so invitingly and was not dispersed until the surprisingly fluent win over a drab and limited Everton side, denuded of their 4 best players. The tragedy was that Jordan Pickford was dropped for this one, though his childish tantrum on the bench when Wilson put us ahead was priceless viewing.

Frankly, this win was a high water mark. We played well, front to back, looked fluent, composed and incisive. In reality, we could have had more goals, but we had 5 minutes of panic at the end when Brooooth fetched Carroll on and we enjoyed about 3% possession as we rocked and reeled from self-inflicted body blows. However, we held on and the Southampton game became an intriguing prospect as Danny Ings was ruled out. Predictably, we failed to turn up and Almiron and, loath though I am to say it, Sean were foolishly caught in possession for the two preventable, goals we conceded. Despite an excellent effort from Joelinton and a more straightforward one from Sean, Southampton held firm and deservedly remained in charge, allowing them to top the table at full time. Under lockdown everyone hears you scream on Twitter, but sometimes you have to accept that it isn’t just the players on the pitch who are the difference, but the bloke in the dugout. Who would you vote for; Hassenhuttl or Brooooth?

One of the saving graces of soi disant democracy is the collective power of the electorate; voter dissatisfaction with serving politicians can be best expressed through the ballot box. Rejected, failed leaders may take defeat with as little grace as Trump, but they have no choice but to accept rejection, or be compelled to. Unfortunately, distant, dictatorial potentates tend not to suffer discontent gladly. I’m not in the business of comparing Mike Ashley with Jair Bolsonaro, but the vice-like grip that both hold over their empires isn’t going to be voluntarily loosened any time soon. However, the one advantage Ashley holds is the incompetence of his useful idiot Steve Brooooth, who successfully draws most of the ire of Newcastle United supporters by bumbling his way through a far from hilarious series of pratfalls and custard pies down the back of his groaning strides. The only reason Brooooth doesn’t wear a full clown’s outfit is that he can’t find a credible prosthetic proboscis to fit over the squashed wreck of his sneck.

Once we return, the fixtures are potentially kinder until Christmas; Chelsea (H), trips to Palace and Villa, Fulham and the Baggies at home, plus a night game at Elland Road and the potentially season defining League Cup quarter final at Brentford. At the current time, I can see collecting something between 6 and 12 points as a likely haul.