Euclidian Space Cadets

 And here's to Matt Ritchie with Steve Brooooth's teeth in his hands....

I didn’t have the pleasure of seeing the Mighty Magyars of the Aranycsapat or the revered Austrian Wunderteam either in the flesh or on film while they were in their pomp. Although the famed Brazil 70 outfit is only a distant memory from my early childhood, Holland 74’s Total Voetbal left a lasting impression on me, as had the Ajax team on which they were based. The glorious, romantic failures that were Brazil 82 and the triple tournament-winning Spanish tiki taka generation are both close to my heart as well. When I think of club sides, everything from Liverpool’s Red Machine to the Barca way, with nods to the sublime catenaccio of Milan and Juve in their pomp and the joyous invention of Pep’s Manchester City, not to forget Keegan’s fabulous, flawed Entertainers will always provoke bouts of misty-eyed, nostalgic sighing. However, not one of those sides can hold a candle to Colonel Scott Parker’s legendary footballing artistes Real Fulham whose achievements are rightly lauded by their massive Geordie on-line following. The Tweets, as Parker’s perfects are known, are good enough to play Spurs in the Europa League on a Thursday, gaining 20 points for heroically losing 1-0, before coming back on the Sunday to face the dying embers of what were once Liverpool in the Champions’ League. Gannin’ along the Hammersmith Road, to see Scott Parker’s Geordies…

Actually, questions about places of birth and allegiances can throw up some pretty strange paradoxes. Steve Brooooth is certainly an incompetent football manager whose sides have the milk of human invention ruthlessly squeezed out of them, but he is a Geordie, even if he was born in Corbridge. As I’ve grown tired of telling people, Newcastle’s capacity for maternity units at the turn of the 60s was minimal at best. If the old lady didn’t get her name down for bed, board and birth at the Princess Mary in Jesmond, it was off to the Tyne Valley for countryside confinement. Brooooth may have been born in bucolic Northumberland but he was raised up on the rough pavements of Walker, attending Benfield School.

Matt Ritchie is a Scotland international, though he was born in the Hampshire highlands in Gosport. Not even Gosforth, home of high horses and even higher dudgeon, but Gosport. When Ritchie and Brooooth butted heads this week, courtesy of a story spread by the Geordie Luke Edwards, that notorious doom-monger Craig Hope, NUFC’s Fulham focussed Twitterati immediately took Ritchie’s side, demanding the manager’s instant dismissal. I don’t recall Kieron Dyer getting such social media acclamation when he fell out with Bobby Robson, or George Eastham with Charlie Mitten (although that was before I was born). Personally, I’m behind the manager in this instance, at least until he’s sacked (which must happen at season’s end in any circumstance), mainly because I have little sympathy with Ritchie on account of that own goal versus, you’ve guessed it, Fulham. You’d be forgiven for wondering if that’s why Newcastle’s on-line support has abandoned the club in their hour of need to engage in a spot of Cottaging.

The truth is, Newcastle United’s support has adopted this craven attitude because it contains a large percentage of vain, spoilt, virtue signalling brats whose sense of entitlement is enough to make you throw your guts up. If our club goes down, the ownership, management and players will take the blame, but it is the support who will deserve vicious and vituperative criticism more than anyone. Euclidean geometry states that two points a fixed distance apart, will maintain that gap after they have gone over the horizon and headed onwards to an infinite place in the future. This is the nature of the relationship between Newcastle United fans and reality. They are the people who blame Brooooth’s training methods, which I’m reliably informed involve letting Agnew and Jones get on with it while he takes his dog for a walk or sits in the office chaining Chocolate Digestives and watching the cricket,  for injuries to Wilson, ASM, Manquillo and Almiron. To be fair, Brooooth knows a fair bit about cricket, while the NUFC Twitterati are probably now demanding Root gets the sack and Mark Wood opens the batting in The Ashes. Sacking the captain in cricket would be an act of crass folly. Similarly in soccer, giving the manager his cards doesn’t always work, but I hope it does at Kilmarnock where Tommy Wright is now in the hot seat, after Alex Dyer was relieved of his duties, with chairman Billy Bowie stating he wanted to make some “Ch-ch-ch-changes.”

Now back to Newcastle United’s injury list; admittedly the first two’s absences have left the club woefully short of credible attacking options, though I’d counsel that without Almiron, we will be a stronger side, benefitting massively from Fraser’s presence in the side, as can be seen from his cross for the goal against Wolves. The problem with a squad on the bones of its arse is that it reduces the options for vicious on-line abuse of perfectly good players, limiting the potential targets to the likes of Hendrick or Sean Longstaff. Thankfully Brooooth stepped up to the mark, throwing Dubravka, Joelinton, Lascelles and Ritchie under the bus after the Wolves game, probably in an attempt to curry favour with the Fulham Fallout Squad (FFS). Anymore of this and we’ll need to build a couple of inspection pits at the bus stop opposite Crosslings, since half the squad are to be found getting challenging coiffures at Tom Baxter’s barber shop, 177 Coast Road, killing time on the dozens of days off they’ve been granted. This is why, in my eyes, Jeff Hendrick and Andy Carroll are beyond criticism; DeAndre Yedlin too. But it is criticism that we must turn to in analysing the seven Premier League games that garnered seven precious points, since we were last here:

Villa – woeful

Leeds – encouraging

Everton – joyous

Palace – deflating

Southampton – delirious

Chelsea – drab

Man Utd – infuriating

Wolves – ominous

Yes, this is crap form, even if Fulham’s win by the same score at Everton was hailed on Twitter as equivalent to a Champions’ League final win. Yes, if we maintain a point a game for the last dozen we’ll undoubtedly stay up, even if Twitter thinks Fulham deserve a dozen for each of their 4 (count ‘em) wins this season. Yes, it is utterly unacceptable and a clear sign that Brooooth is useless and would get chased by most Sunday morning sides. I know a dozen blokes in the Alliance who could make us more adventurous going forward, effective in midfield and robust at the back, but we are where we are.  I know I’ve been wrong this season, spectacularly so when I felt having a week’s break between Southampton and Chelsea meant we could get a few back and head there with a better perspective on what’s need, taking advantage of playing last in the set of scheduled games. True to type, we rolled over and had our belly tickled in the first half, before Chelsea got their slippers on after the break and we went for it with the aggression of a gang of nonagenarian Quakers in a pub brawl.

I mean, the Wolves game, despite the subsequent kerfuffle, wasn’t a bad performance. We’d had a nice, quiet build up and there was a palpable sense of disappointment at the result. However, looking at it objectively, the Fulham performance v Palace and then v Spurs aren’t really much to worry about; are they? Brighton and Burnley have had more calamitous and dispiriting results and performances than us of late, so we should have enough to stay up. Surely? I believe so.

There have been far more distasteful things related to the club in the media of late than the annual late Winter, early Spring flirtation with relegation. As my pal Tom points out, the dossier following the investigation into Jamal Khasoggi’s murder should make those whose Twitter avatars carried a Saudi flag bury their heads in shame. It won’t, though neither will the revelations about further legal actions against George Ormond, that the club are refusing to accept liability for. Perhaps it’s because they’re too busy trying to find a defence for the catastrophe involving the Joyce family and the Academy. Thank God there are Northern Alliance games on April 3, 7, 10, 14, 17, 21 and 24 to distract me. Thank God there is more to football than Newcastle United.

In reality, we have no serious choices. Let’s gird up our loins and stick with Mr Fishcake & Chips until season’s end and then try to find a proper manager; ideally, a young, ambitious bloke who is hungry for success and not battered sausages. I have to say James McClean or Scott Brown would be great shouts if we want a player manager, as they’ve shown such dignity and fortitude when standing up against unwarranted and excessive abusive. Then again, if it’s under Ashley; what’s the point in dreaming?