The Scenty Bottler

 Three distinguished North East writers: Dan Jackson, Joe Sharkey and Theve Broooooth. Which one of them is the least qualified to keep NUFC in the Premier League?

Be honest now; we all knew that Brooooth would be a load of shite as manager. Just because he’s been marginally less hopeless than Benitez, Carver, Kinnear and the car crash Souness administration that is no excuse for him remaining on the payroll at SJP. I was wrong to have any faith in him. The epicurean fraud should be driven out of the city with a sharpened pitchfork teasing his capacious buttocks, to school him against returning. Let the deserving poor feast upon his store of buffet Scotch eggs, mini pork pies and crates of John Smith’s.

Even less than a month ago, I still didn’t accept the stark reality of our situation. However the 90 minutes shot shy shit show at the Hawthorns saw the scales fall from my eyes, following an utterly witless non-performance where we turned up with the sole intention of grabbing a wholly undeserved nil-nil draw against a side who are even worse than us. Fair play to Brooooth; that is exactly what we got. If West Brom hadn’t been such an abhorrent load of inadequate hoofers, we’d have got turned over. The tin hat was put on our display by Fulham, like Brighton and Burnley before them, collecting three points at Anfield from the dying embers of the Liverpool supernova.

From then on, it got appreciably worse. We may look stupefyingly dull without St Maximin or Wilson, but we were a hell of a lot better than a Villa team without the Midlands Quisling, Grealish. Again though, minimal creativity and inadequate finishing saw 2 points spurned. The stunned feeling of revulsion when Clark’s unfortunate intervention hit his own net was literally nauseating. Many of us were away from the screen, choking back or clearing out vomit when Lascelles scored a bullet header at the Gallowgate for the second game running. Like Wolves, a point wasn’t enough, but it was something to hold on to as Fulham lost to Man City and then, semi-climactically to Leeds, which left many of the former NUFC Twitterati inconsolable with grief, on the Friday before we went to Brighton.  

Blind optimism made me lose the run of myself beforehand, as I was convinced we’d get all three points, despite the 3-0 annihilation we’d suffered back in September when Potter’s wizards crushed Brooooth’s lizards 3-0.  After 30 inept minutes, while Brighton toyed with us like a stricken mouse under a sadistic tom cat’s front paw, our return to the Championship was confirmed when Isaac Hayden, the only outfield player other than our injury blighted duo of Schar and Wilson, who has proved to be anything like reliable and consistent this season, crumpled with a knee injury. As he departed on a stretcher, not to be seen again this campaign, so did our hopes; three, stylish unanswered goals, including a brace of glorious strikes from Danny Welbeck (who most of us thought was probably playing for chump change in the Belgian second tier these days) saw Newcastle United collapse like the interior of the Grand Hotel after the Bhoys had done a spot of redecoration back in October 1984.

This was a bigger hammering than the pretty boy conformist Mods took at the hands of the anarchic rebel Rockers on the stony pebbles athwart the decaying pier in Quadrophenia.  Our game plan was sliced apart quicker than Spicer’s cheeks by Pinky’s shiv. So much for my theory that Brooooth’s one tactical masterstroke was to bring back Dubravka for Darlow, as I’d assumed we’d concede far fewer goals, though I don’t seek to blame the Slovak stopper for any of the goals and agree that it was time to take Darlow out of the firing line post Man United.

The final whistle, after a game where, other than the injured Hayden, not one player left the South Coast with their reputation intact, never mind enhanced, should have marked the immediate termination of the current management team’s terms of engagement. Incredibly, this did not happen, which suggests to me that our absentee owner and his underling have both lost all interest in the fate of the club, which begs the question why anyone else should care. In the week that Percy Main Amateurs announced their intention to close down after 100 years of history and tradition, it seems almost shameful that Newcastle United are continuing as a going concern. Perhaps the avarice in Brooooth’s heart is what makes him remain in situ. What else could his motivation be?

So now we sit 2 points above the drop zone, the same place as we were a fortnight ago, and still with a game in hand. Despite a potential 17 point run-in under the stewardship of any competent coach, Ashley and Charnley’s stubborn inaction, means Newcastle United look utterly shot and certainties for their third drop in a dozen years under Ashley’s ownership, whatever the current table says. Those who have been comparing the Brighton game with Southend on New Year’s Day should remind themselves that low-water mark did not signal the end for poor Ossie Ardiles, as there was the run of Watford (A; 2-2 after being 2-0 down in 4 minutes), Charlton (H; lost 3-4 to an injury time own goal, after being 3-0 up in half an hour), crowned by a 2-5 thumping at Oxford in a pea-souper that saved us frozen diehards on the Cuckoo Lane open terrace from seeing the reality of what happened on the pitch. I’ve not even mentioned the Bournemouth cup debacle. The message from history is; we might not even have hit rock bottom yet.

I’ll tell you one thing though; if we do go down, it’ll be exactly what some of the fans deserve. In some ways, I can understand the cowardly deserters who hope for the drop as they’ve now nailed their similar colours to Scott Parker’s mast. I myself cut the umbilical cord from Newcastle in 2009 and would not be anywhere near as interested in their fate, or wildly optimistic about their prospects until recently, if proper, non-league and grassroots football were available on a weekly basis. Once they are, come Easter Saturday, I will be able to walk away from the bawling, brawling Tower of Babel that the on-line world of NUFC supporters has become. I’m not just talking about the watch and sandshoe obsessed nouveau riche out in the Desert who deserve to see their empire of sand come tumbling down once all talk of a Championship takeover is stilled, but the local scourgesayers who’ve come up for air after a couple of years in social media solitary. Unsurprisingly perhaps, Moaning Minnie is wrestling with his poison pen at True Farce once again. The sheer volume of bile that drips from his nib is matched only by the repetitious nature of what he has to say. Yes dear, I know Ashley is a tyrant, Charnley couldn’t run a bath and Brooooth is a bad joke. Give it a rest eh? What I really don’t want to hear, ad nauseam, is that Brooooth doesn’t sound like “a Geordie” and may even not be “a Geordie.” Well, neither are many of our supporters by birth or, in my case, by inclination

Slightly late to the Book Club coffee morning as ever, I’ve recently read two pivotal texts about our region; Dan Jackson’s compelling The Northumbrians and Joe Sharkey’s slightly less convincing Akenside Syndrome.  At this point, I must pause to offer my sincere condolences to Dan on the recent loss of his wife.

Being honest, I initially found The Northumbrians a challenging read; Dan’s academic style took me back to those days of study when you read a book, not with the intention of enjoying it, but with a deeply critical eye in the hope of finding points you agreed with and others you took issue with. There were plenty of both. I have to say I totally concur with Dan’s thesis that the majority of those who hail from the North East are not revolutionary firebrands, but social conservatives with a small C, who show a greater allegiance to the Establishment and ruling elite than to their class comrades. Perhaps this is why the Follonsby Lodge banner is so well known and prominently displayed at the Big Meeting; the images of Marx and Lenin are as rare as streets named in their honour, such as those in wild and desolate Chopwell. As a region, it’s nowhere special. Same as the club’s support is no great shakes. We’re no better or different than anyone else really.

In the North East, on the banks of both Tyne and Wear, we hear endless proselytising about the merits of our home turf. It has never stirred me. I’m happy to say I’m from Newcastle, ignoring how my first 20 years saw me dragged up in desperately unhappy circumstances in Felling. This means I have developed a distinct loathing and a degree of fear associated with anywhere south of the river. But it isn’t just a geographical phobia; it’s an utter revulsion to and rejection of toxic masculinity with a bald head and a Stone Island jumper. For me, it is the case that, while growing up, I identified more with John Hurt’s portrayal of Quentin Crisp than Jimmy Nail’s take on the demotic yob Leonard Osborne. Oh how I hated those boorish blokes in Auf Wiedersehen Pet. Years before that, I’d only come to enjoy When the Boat Comes In after it abandoned the mean streets of Gallashield for the wide expanses of the Iberian Peninsula and the Spanish Civil War. I chuckled with glee when learning how my mam’s school pal Alex Glasgow, who sang the theme song, had immigrated to Australia and punched the air with delight as I read of James Bolam’s loathing of the North East and refusal to return.

All I wanted, once I was old enough to understand what University had to offer, was to escape the North East for a world of books.  Yes I loved Beamish Museum, but as an outsider and not a nostalgic native, for I’ve never felt that. However, there was little else bar a few friends, a ropey Division 2 football team and a few pals that I would miss. Certainly nobody I was related to.  Despite my accent, birth certificate, passport and place of residence, I’ve always gone back a generation and felt, from an early age, to be Irish. I don’t just mean I held an affinity with my ancestral homeland, but that my very essence and soul were in thrall to the kind of certainty of identification that those born in a gender they instinctively know to be unnatural feel for their actual one. However long I’ve lived, I’ve never felt any spiritual or elemental attachment to the Geordie identity. Simply put, I was born here, but I am not of this region.

In many ways, I feel Dan venerates the Stakhanovite work ethic of “the Geordie.” I’ve never felt that; long periods of time spent on tiresome labour with other grunting men, returning home filthy and exhausted, but proud of having made a rich man richer just wasn’t for me. Surrounded by books and bathing in words; that’s where I’ve spent most of my life, despite entreaties by relatives to put great works aside in my teenage years and “read more comics you headbanger.” In Akenside Syndrome, Joe Sharkey identifies such sentiments as what makes Tyneside historically an uncomfortable place for artists, intellectuals and all those who did not fit the Geordie stereotype of beer, birds and mindless violence. However, while he tells a cracking tale, it is a thin theory rather than a convincingly elucidated philosophy (everyone knows St Cuthbert’s Old Boys run this city, as most of the RGS lot head south for careers in the City or the Law); many people abandon their home town for a more congenial anonymity in the artistic milieu south of Watford. Or they did; Newcastle is a considerably more tolerant, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic city and football team compared to when I grew up. And much the better for it.

Now I don’t want to be regarded as Beatrix Campbell with bollocks, but the negative attitude to Steve Bruce in many NUFC fans’ minds, is based on his accent. The bloke who moved to first Gillingham, then Norwich, then Manchester, then Birmingham and then loads of places for about 18 months until his teams turn to shit, and has needed to communicate with players from about 50 different countries who spoke 20 different languages,  is abused, as is his son, for not having a Geordie accent. Indeed, he apparently speaks with something called a “Scenty Bottle” voice, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. So what? Theve Brooooth, as most ultra-Geordies call him, is totally unsuited to his current job not because of his voice, but because of his timid and terrible tactics and it sickens me to my core when otherwise sentient adults refer to this, then dig up aged, unfunny Oz memes to have a pop at Bruce. I don’t care that he can’t talk the talk, I’m just frustrated he won’t walk the plank.