The Road To God Knows Where

As a parent I’ve got a lot of failings, I accept that. However, what I have instilled in my son from an early age are the virtues of sarcasm, intolerance, ultra left wing politics and a tremendous taste in music. Never mind the concept of Rock Dad, my young’un (well he’s a 6ft2 prop forward and turns 16 in June) has been brought up by the Indie Parents. Consequently we had intergenerational moshing at the British Sea Power gig at the Tyne Theatre on February 14^th. It was a very successful Valentine’s Day, unlike last year when I booked a table for Laura and I. How was I to know she hated snooker?

Talking about falling out of love, the repeated tirades by St Niall Quinn towards his Mackem constituents get funnier by the second. Ever since the Drumaville Paveys parked their Hiaces on the SoS forecourt, all Newcastle fans have heard from all sections of the media both local and national, is how well the Unwashed are run compared to the goings-on at SJP. Despite Charlie Chawke’s Circus People rumbling off in to the distance, to be replaced by shadowy American billionaire Ellis Short, the unchallenged mantra among print and broadcast commentators is that the ruling elite on Wearside are doing things so much better than those on Tyneside. Frankly, to anyone who believes in proper fan ownership, being asked to make a choice between Short or Ashley is like asking whether you’d find Mubarak preferable to Gaddafi. These club-owning oligarchs are modern day despots; do not delude yourself otherwise. Quinn, who either pimped the club he purports to love or astutely secured investment funding from a surprising source, depending on your view, trousers the thick end of £1m per annum in basic salary payment, which isn’t bad considering he presided over a business that turned in a £26m annual loss for 2009/2010.

However, despite his unconvincingly dyed hair, smarmy grin and bland populism, it was undeniable that Quinn seemed less of a walking public relations disaster than the Ashley and Llambias operation has been. That is until Mr Charity started to veer wildly “off message” after the Darren Bent transfer. Whatever one’s response to that deal (hysterical amusement in my case), it is a cast iron fact that money talked. I could have accepted Bent’s logic if he’d been honest and said he was off to Villa Park simply because he wanted to double his already fantastic salary, but I saw no truth in his claims that he was going to further his England chances by moving to a bigger club. Much as it pains me to say it, the Mackems were one of only 8 Premier League teams who started this season with no fear of relegation, as were Villa, until O’Neill walked out on them. Houllier’s administration will probably keep Villa up, but they have now joined the doubting dozen and turned it in to the terrified thirteen, all of whom have the single stated aim of finishing at least 17th. Will the Mackems’ tribulations turn it in to a fearful fourteen, or are they ready to implode any day now?

On the face of it, the £24m that sunderland made from the Bent deal ought to have been enough to push them on to improve the squad (as with anything to do with the North East, naysayers will be jumping up and down to make comparisons with Ashley’s £35m for Carroll; it simply isn’t relevant here to compare the two teams, as everyone knows Ashley has no intention of spending any cash he receives), especially as a so-called “well run” club they would want to push on. Instead, they signed a bargain replacement in Sessegnon, presumably as replacement for Huns-bound David Healy, and took the terminally grumpy and unreliable Muntari on loan, but for what purpose remains as yet unclear, making a nice, fat £18m profit in the transfer window. Sadly, as this money was earmarked to pay off part of the debt accrued by signing Bent in the first place; it is fair to say Fernando Torres was not on Steve Bruce’s shopping list.

Consequently, it has become crystal clear that Short is not prepared to bankroll them any longer. Presumably, Quinn bullshitted Short saying that a half decent sunderland side would sell their ground out. Instead, they’re still bumping along with an average of less than 40k attending, which bearing in mind the club’s growing debt, is worrying. While calling them the north east’s crisis club may be a little premature, they have lost 3 off the bounce, with some seriously tough fixtures ahead and the inescapable fact that were Short to pull the plug now, any deduction for going in to administration would see them plunged in to the bottom 3.

Perhaps these contextualising features help to explain quite why Niall Quinn has decided to go public over the fact he despises the 10,000 stayaways who have stopped watching sunderland. His scattergun ravings about on-line streaming and pubs showing questionably legal broadcasts of games on foreign channels seem to have divided a notoriously fractious support that are regularly to be found coming to blows with each other. Some slavishly mouth Quinn’s party line that the supporters are letting down the owners (not the club, interestingly enough), in an embarrassing show of obsequiousness not seen since Sir Alastair Burnet stepped down as ITV’s Royal Correspondent, while the more realistic elements point to the grave economic plight affecting the mackems’ heartlands. Quinn, mere days are claiming he’ll have to sell off the high earners and scale back the club’s ambitions if the ground remains a quarter empty, has even promised to tour pubs in the Seaham area, where he claims 50 licensed premises show games on match day, trying to drum up support. Bearing in mind his self confessed problems with heavy drinking in the past; this may not be a good idea.

While some have pondered whether all this ranting and raving is symptomatic of Quinn having a mid life crisis or suffering from work-related stress, much as Bob Murray (now being rehabilitated as a “proper” fan by certain on line loonies) was supposed to have suffered a nervous breakdown during the 19 point season, it appears more likely that Mr Charity is just planting the seeds of his exit strategy. Despite now being blessed with much in the way of academic achievements, Quinn has the wit and cunning of a Fianna Fail TD; his gombeen tendencies are evident in his take home pay and his ability to be taken for a cute hoor who’d be very much at ease in Fagan’s in Drumcondra can not be ignored. Whatever happens to the Mackems, it’s a knocking bet Quinn, who presided over 5 successive defeats whilst, statistically, the worst ever manager of sunderland, will walk away from the wreckage with his reputation and bank balance in tact.