Food For Thought

 Steve Algarve-Bruce has found a new job and sunderland have appointed their 11th boss since he left there in 2011....

Every year, as far as I’m concerned, Saint Valentine’s Day proves conclusively that home is where the heart is, as the comforting delights of simple, nourishing food reinforce George Meredith assertion that “kissing don't last; cooking do!” So much for romance eh? Nowhere was this more evident this year than on a damp and dreary night in the Midlands, where Steve Algarve-Bruce made his home debut, wedged into the dug out at The Hawthorns, in his latest role, as West Bromwich Albion manager. While the Baggies struggled to a dire 0-0 with Blackburn Rovers, their second goalless game under the leadershipCorbridge Epicure, the real shock is that WBA are the eleventh club he has managed. Quite staggeringly, almost a dozen chairmen have fallen for the baloney and bluster of Gorman’s most loyal customer.

No doubt, when discussing his latest sinecure, Algarve-Bruce would choose to focus on its proximity to Birmingham Airport with its direct flights to Faro, where piles of Baracaldo and chicken piri piri await, but also recognise the more prosaic culinary opportunities afforded to him in the Black Country, rather than the fact his patter is as stale as yesterday’s pitta bread and his football as rank as a week old large doner with putrefied garlic sauce. Having endlessly gorged on ham and pease pudding stotties during his recent gig at SJP, not to mention stuffing his squashy face with the various kinds of meat pie on offer when in Wigan, swallowing huge portions of lard-basted fish fresh from the trawlers of Humberside and wastebins full of cheesy chips during his Wearside sojourn, Algarve-Bruce will undoubtedly deliver endless platitudes about bad luck, unrealistic supporter expectations and the shortcomings of the previous boss for about 18 months until he gets the bullet, when not engaged in transcendental Prader-Willi meditation,  face down in a trough of the local signature dish of faggots, usually made from pig offal and other juicy cuts of the animal such as the heart and liver, served with grey peas. Sounds delightful doesn’t it? Well, it is Shakespeare Country, so here’s a recipe for grey peas, from Medieval times. Bon appetit, mes amis -:

Fyrst stepe thy pese over the nyet,

And trendel hom clene, and fayre hom dyet.

Sethe hom in water; and brothe thou take

Of bacun, and fresshe bre thou nowt forsake;

Summe men hom lofe alyed wyle

With floure and summe with never a dele;

these pese with bacun eten may be

As tho whyet pese were, so mot I the.

But tho white with powder of peper tho

Moun be forsyd with ale there to.

 

I’ve no idea what that means, nor do I have a clue what newly installed Sunderland boss Alex Neil’s dietary preferences are, though I’ll be a little more informed about the kind of fare that was on offer to him during his formative years, after I finally get to see his hometown club Airdrie in action on March 26^th when they play host to Cove Rangers. What I do know is that if Neil’s experiences at the SoS are similar to the 11 incumbents who have, however briefly, held aloft the Pallion and Pennywell Poison Chalice, since Algarve-Bruce was prised from the manager’s chair just over a decade ago, then large slices of humble pie will be the signature dish served up by my old Basque pal Patrick Lesca, the Head Chef at the Donald Stewart Bistro of Broken Hearts.

Yes, that’s right; almost a dozen permanent managers in 10 years, not including a bunch of caretakers you’d not recognise if they were lined up in an ID parade directly in front of your eyes. Here’s the exhaustive list of busted flushes, if you don’t believe me: Martin O’Neill, Paolo Di Canio, Gus Poyet, Dick Advocaat, Sam Allardyce, David Moyes, Simon Grayson, Chris Coleman, Jack Ross, Phil Parkinson and Gary Johnson. At the time they were appointed, many of them seemed a good fit and the best appointment possible. Alright, so Di Canio was always going to be a Fascist lunatic and Grayson, Parkinson and Johnson were the kind of expendable lower league, landfill gaffers who wash up at a dozen different L1 & L2 locations over the years with gradually declining effects, but the others did have some merit at the time of their appointment, or so it seemed.

O’Neill the lifelong Mackem arrived promising a “party with Marty,” but crashed and burned in a gluepot of stodgeball. Poyet seemed a genuinely innovative choice, but the Gus bus ended up careering off the road. I’m not sure I know why Advocaat left, though the adventures of avaricious Allardyce saw him come a cropper with a pint of Pinot Grigio in his paw. Moyes is now doing better than at any time since he left Goodison, even if he appeared doomed from his first week on Wearside, when he made his haunted and gloomy prediction of relegation after a home loss to Boro.  Coleman looked rested and primed for a return to club management, but it just didn’t happen for him. Jack Ross, who in this humble Hibby’s opinion should still be in charge at Easter Road, was treated appallingly, sacked at a stupid time and on the flimsiest of pretexts. The same could be said of Lee Johnson; yes 6-0 is a shocking loss at Bolton but giving him his cards on the back of that one result was surely a ridiculously overreaction. Mind, I did feel for Sunderland fans at the time of his arrival, when he was peddled as an upgrade on Phil Parkinson, rather than an almost exact copy.

What Johnson’s dismissal subsequently showed was that, in complete contrast to the clarity of ownership of Newcastle United, there was absolutely no indication who owns Sunderland and who made the decision to fire Johnson. Indeed, for nigh on 18 months the self-proclaimed People’s Club has refused to reveal who actually owned them, spitting out endless, provocative No Comment replies, like a Town End Farm housebreaker under caution, after being nabbed going equipped up Hylton Road. Belatedly, The Athletic announced on 15 February 2022, that chairman and Leeds Poly dropout Kyril Louis-Dreyfus was not the majority shareholder, unlike previously hinted,  as his stake in the club is only 41%, with the remaining 59% of shares in the grip of former owner Donald Stewart (34%), and directors Juan Sartori (25%) and Charlie “Crystal” Methven (5%), operating under the cover of the Mandrax Group. Or something.  One wonders just how that egotistical bore Jonathan Wilson will square this circle, after banging on about the admittedly appalling show of human rights abusers that own Newcastle. Perhaps he could begin by appraising himself of Amnesty International’s latest report on Uruguay, where Sartori wields significant influential, if not instrumental power, as a fabulously wealthy political influencer. To save Dr Jonathan, a man believing himself to be the new Brian Glanville, but is actually more akin to Jonathan Miller with a dollop of the detestable David Conn about him and who we’ll return to at a later date, the bother of doing his own research, here’s the headline comment on Uruguay -:

The crisis caused by COVID-19 deepened structural inequalities in Uruguay during 2020 and 2021, especially impacting the rights of those historically marginalized. The Urgent Consideration Act (LUC) threatened the rights to peaceful protest and freedom of expression. Inadequate prison conditions continued to worsen. Violence against women increased. Impunity remained a concern and evidence emerged indicating key information about past human rights violations had been withheld.

Allegedly, it was the Oxford supporting second largest shareholder and his Mandrax pals who were pushing for Roy Keane to get the manager’s job. Now, as someone who adores Keano, I knew this would be a disaster in everything apart from future memes. Bearing in mind Roy’s track record for provoking conflict at Sunderland last time, then  events at Ipswich and during his assistant roles to O’Neill with Ireland and at Forest, as well as a spell at Villa under Paul Lambert, a certain pattern of behaviour can be discerned. Things never end well. Keane has shown little in the way of empathy towards players less gifted, less motivated than he, preferring the stick to the carrot in every instance. Can you imagine how things would have played out at Sunderland this time around? He’ll have put half the squad on life support machines.  Thankfully, for the sake of the players’ wellness, Mandrax couldn’t raise the coin to pay Keano’s salary, so he can continue berating every player under the sun from the safety and comfort of a Sky Sports sofa.

The other leading candidate for the job was supposed to be Grant McCann, recently jettisoned by Hull City’s new owners. Now he really is a coaching carthorse; arguably, he’s worse than Phil Parkinson and, without question, Sunderland would have been no further forward than when they appointed Johnson if they’d given it to the unshaven, beery Ulsterman. I remember thinking at the time that giving Johnson the job was a gross insult to all Sunderland fans who’d suffered over the decades. Nothing during his tenure made me think different. So, when the music finally stopped, after the Bolton battering was augmented by a home loss to Doncaster and an away one to Cheltenham, Alex Neil was left holding the parcel. To general guffaws, the third-choice candidate arrived with a track record of getting the bullet firstly from Norwich and then Preston.

And yet, I think Sunderland have, perhaps by unintentional means, made the best appointment they could in the current circumstances. Neil won’t get them automatic promotion; we can safely assume. Indeed, his best result could be a narrow loss in a play-off semi-final, as that’ll avoid the chance of another humiliating, boozed up session, fuelled by Universal Credit emergency advances, around Trafalgar Square, before being picked apart by a side with footballing ability and a touch of class about their support. Ironically, I could be talking about their next opponents; 1988 FA Cup winners MK Dons. Going up this year will make next season almost an impossibility for Sunderland, as they’d probably replicate Barnsley’s performance this time around. Sure, it would make for a rip-roaring Netflix documentary series, but it would possibly destroy the confidence, if not the careers, of a young team, most of whom I’d never heard of.