999 Emergency

 I am 100% against the Saudi funded takeover of Newcastle United on moral grounds -:

Currently, we are in the midst of a break for autumn Internationals or, as Steve Algarve-Bruce calls it, his annual holidays. At the time of writing, the bit of Newcastle United we all care about, namely the first XI, are ticking along nicely, in the manner of Ronnie Drew’s famed couple of sticks of gelignite and an auld alarm clock. Since I last had cause to consider the fortunes of our club, they have slipped one place to 19^th in the table (that’s second bottom in old money), having accrued 2 points from the 12 available, in between Brucey Breaks. As yet, with the leaves falling from the trees during shortening days of mellow fruitlessness, the Mighty Mags are still to win a game. Such footballing brilliance can only be attributed to the innovative coaching methods of Steve Algarve-Bruce, revitalised and rejuvenated by 10 days of Sagres, chicken piri piri, Super Bock and the odd round of golf.

Contrary to popular belief, football managers aren’t born with the innate ability to bluster, obfuscate and deflect all criticism onto someone else, be they fans, local journalists or previous incumbents. Such effortless bullshitting skills have to be honed over time; in Algarve-Bruce’s case, we are talking 999 games at the helm of a litany of small to medium clubs; not forgetting sunderland of course. That propitious number tells us that we need this preposterous, fraudulent windbag out the Emergency Exit now; providing another untenable Paper Tiger like Chris Wilder doesn’t take his place. Of course, regime change, whereby Newcastle United exist only as an investment project for Saudi Arabia’s billionaire elite, makes it more likely that someone of the stamp of Antonio Conte could come in. Ask Ruud Gullit just how well our last former Chelsea manager did. I digress…

Looking back, the first game after Algarve-Bruce’s flight touched down from Faro last month was Manchester United away. As it was Ronaldo’s second debut, Algarve-Bruce no doubt seized the opportunity to practice his faltering Portuguese on the preening narcissist; Duas cervejas grandes e um enorme tonel de cataplanya, por favor ... Você sabe onde fica o campo de golfe?

I’d had a ludicrous premonition that we’d win 1-0 and Ronaldo would be sent off for spitting at referee Anthony Taylor. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. I attempted to factor the whole circus out, by watching Tynemouth away to Whitburn on the last day of the NEPL season, where we won by 6 wickets, though media silence proved impossible on account of the pervasive, invasive nature of the smartphone culture. It’s almost impossible to avoid endless action replays whenever you pick up your phone, so I was able to see an infinite loop of Fernandes scoring every time I answered a message. Frankly, it wasn’t worth trying to talk sense to anyone that day, as the Twitter Wolf Pack, having already ripped the throats out of Rich Oliver, Steve Hastie and Graeme Bell over the previous fortnight, decided to turn on me. I can handle it though, as there’s always real life to distract you.

The next Friday saw the Leeds game. I wasn’t there because I was at the funeral of my childhood friend Paul “Little Wilka” Wilkinson. He’d passed away from throat cancer, aged 56 and, in all the time I knew him, I never heard him express a single opinion about any kind of sport, let alone football and Newcastle United. This was unlike his elder brother Steve, domiciled in Stockport these last 35 years, who retains an obsessive interest in his football team; sunderland…

Wilka had a good send off in The Cluny and, having arrived home somewhat refreshed, I didn’t stir from sofa slumberings until 77 minutes had elapsed. From then to the end of the game, not a great stretch I must admit, NUFC looked the better side. It was only after the game I learned that the first half had been as bad an opening period as Algarve-Bruce has ever mismanaged. The only bright spots being ASM’s equaliser and the complete failure of the ludicrous paper aeroplane protest. And people question NUST’s methods? Although it must be said, they did bottle having a pop at the PL top brass live on telly. Not that any of that matters now…

It appeared during NUFC Civil War that any disinclination by a fan grouping to storm the Barrack Road Winter Palace led to on-line brawling and cyber fisticuffs. The appalling attacks by the Wolf Pack on Steve Wraith, as ever, and poor Holly Blades are both sickening and frankly deserving of a good hiding. However, violence only exists in the real world where, with the weight of his mysterious 3-year contract extension behind him, Dwight Gayle belaboured Graeme Jones in a training ground spat, while Steve Harper’s issue and his flashy gang of public school pugilist pals engaged in a bar room brawl with NUFC’s Under 23 squad. No doubt a dozen of the latter will be out injured until their contracts end next summer. It also shows exactly why the fans are so tetchy when the staff go on like this.

While the January transfer window is viewed with the kind of hysteria Tories have for the start of the hunting season, there is the pertinent matter of our current dire circumstances. Watford, like Southampton in the first tranche of games, should have been the moment our season sputtered into life. I was at Motherwell v Ross County, but read a BBC match report telling of repeated chances squandered in ever more unbelievable circumstances. According to the MotD footage, we truly were Algarve-Bruce’s front foot Mags. This surprised me as I sensed we’d lose 4-0; even more of a bonus, we moved out of the bottom 3 when Leeds lost at home.

 

And so to the tumultuous last 10 days, when a predictable and pedestrian 2-1 loss away to Wolves was the least important part of a story that has mainly been fought out in the law courts and on line. Suffice to say, Newcastle United, despite suddenly acquiring a level of wealth that would make Croesus jealous, are in a sorry state of affairs, with the legacy of Ashley’s ownership and Algarve-Bruce’s management running the club into the ground. I make no apology for saying that, in my opinion, it’s all about to get a whole lot worse, morally, with the Saudi sportswashing, blood money takeover being waved through, simply because the Saudi authorities (the use of such terms as government, royal family and billionaire businessmen are interchangeable and largely irrelevant in that totalitarian state) have agreed to stop broadcasting Premier League games without a licence. Incredibly, after all months wasted in internecine tit for tat sniping by football oligarchs and in panelled courtrooms, as well as on headed vellum by our learned friends, this is now enough to rip up 130 years of club history and turn Newcastle United into a meaningless plaything of petrodollar billionaires.

Last week, the so-called CAT case was followed over the internet by more than 30,000 Newcastle fans. For the vast majority of on-line observers, their only previous dealings with the legal profession have involved shamefacedly allowing a brief to speak in mitigation over some late night pagger in a taxi queue, or stonewalling Babylon, a duty mouth in shabby pinstripe at their side, with endless utterances of no reply after being nabbed for going equipped. On the day that Wayne Couzens, the vile epitome of state-endorsed toxic masculinity, was sentenced to die in jail for his abhorrent crimes, Newcastle United supporters uncomprehendingly cheered on the cause of a country whose misogynistic ethos isn’t far short of the Metropolitan Police’s. Many of these cretins then incorporated the blood spattered rag that is known as Saudi Arabia’s flag into their Twitter avatar.  The irony of these Tyneside Talibanophiles creating the hashtag #cans to celebrate the marriage of soccer with Sharia Law appears lost on them. When women are banned from the ground, unless attired in a niqab, most of the Fat Kissing Couzens won’t care, because they’re too thick to process just what the hell we’ve let ourselves in for. I’d advise them to learn the meaning of haram in pretty short order.

 

Make no mistake, and I’ll reaffirm this point until I the day I die, I am vehemently opposed to any Saudi takeover of Newcastle United, because of the human rights abuses associated with that rogue dictatorship. Newcastle United have been bought by a sordid consortium that tracks back to the tyrant Mohamed bin Salman, who approved journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. We are now a club with owners far worse than Mike Ashley and not just because Amanda Staveley looks common when smoking cigarettes in the street. It amazes me that so few fans are bothered about a new set of owners who think it is fine to chop up opposition journalists in foreign embassies with a bone saw.  Then again, this only replicates the attitudes of the Premier League who concern was ultimately about broadcasting and not human rights.

Newcastle United. The club of Colin Veitch and Jackie Milburn. Of Tony Green and Shay Given. Of Fumaca and Pat Heard. This is what we’ve become. This is where our moral compass points. This is an anti-humanitarian emergency. I want my club back.