The latest spirit-crushing snippet of gossip about Newcastle
United that dribbled in to the public domain on Tuesday 23rd April
was the news that Papiss Cisse had suffered a cracked rib in the Europa League
quarter final defeat to Benfica almost a fortnight previously. Predictably the
story was prefaced by doom-laden, hysterical headlines, screaming how
“relegation-haunted” United faced a “striker crisis,” as Cisse could be out for
the rest of the season, despite the fact he has played the entire 90 minutes of
both league games since suffering the injury and will almost certainly be
available for the run-in, no doubt swaddled in some kind of protective Kevlar
undershirt. Sadly, as far as Newcastle United, the “worst side in the country”
for “attacking set-pieces,” having failed to “notch” from a “staggering” 282
corners this “campaign,” are concerned all “news” is bad news at the minute,
whether it is factual, probable or even mendacious fantasy on the part of
journalists too chicken-shit scared to continue asking why Sunderland have a
self-proclaimed fascist at their helm.
Even more depressing, a growing number of our supporters are
seemingly keen on embracing the nightmare scenario of relegation as final,
incontrovertible proof that Pardew was a fraud from day one. Perhaps tellingly,
almost without exception, those who took to Twitter following the
West Brom game to demand his removal changed the subject of their tweets to a
discussion of the relative merits of contestants in Britain’s Got Talent an
hour or so later. Now I realise I may be overstating things here, but any male
who voluntarily watches such a programme, whether under a veneer of irony or
not, has surely forfeited the right to discuss our club’s fortunes and may soon
face the reality of their front door going off its hinges at dawn as part of
the on-going Operation Yewtree
investigation.
While Portsmouth fans can still rejoice at the fact that,
despite their demotion to League 2 as a final, damning legacy of the Redknapp
Years, less than 5 years after winning the FA Cup, just as his latest “project”
QPR slip out of the top flight, the Pompey Supporters’ Trust has taken
ownership of the Fratton Park club (and the £9m Premier League featherbed
landing the club is still entitled to), as far as Newcastle United are
concerned, it is impossible to polish a turd. Being frank, this season has been
fucking terrible, with the occasional positive blip (Bordeaux, Wigan, Chelsea
and Southampton at home, as examples) shining out like diamonds in the mouth or
a corpse, or the reflective chitinous, carapaces of a plague of dung beetles,
basking and feasting on the enormous lake of skittery shite that has been
Newcastle United in 2012/2013.
Admittedly, there are mitigating factors (a scandalous, though
predictable lack of investment last summer and an injury list that stretches
the bounds of credibility for starters), though I somewhat doubt the end of
season DVD will be in great demand among the faithful. Much as it pains me to
say it, there is a growing realisation and grim acceptance on my part that
Pardew’s level of culpability for the fact we lie 16th and are a
potential 3 points above the drop zone with 4 games to go, is perhaps higher (and
indeed exponentially increasing) than I had previously thought. Undoubtedly, we
have some very good players; contrary to the worthless barking of idiots on
line: Anita, Ben Arfa, Cabaye, Cisse, Debuchy, Gouffran (the latest target of
sustained volleys of immoderate, contradictory and determinedly populist abuse
from the yellow polo shirted cyber boo boys), Santon, Sissoko, Tiote and
Yanga-Mbiwa are not “shit,” though nor is Marveaux a second Lionel Messi.
However, injuries, lack of form and, it must be concluded, muddleheaded tactics
and sub-standard coaching, have left us in the parlous position in which we now
find ourselves. There are some bloody good footballers playing bloody awful
football because they’re being asked to fulfil roles that are either utterly
unrelated to their natural game or for which they have no redeeming talent. Yet
this is not the Newcastle United of last season, in terms of spirit, product or
personnel.
I am not in the business of deviously rewriting history for
the sole purpose of being a wise-ass after the event; it is my contention that last
season Newcastle United played really well and deserved to finish in fifth
place. Yes we rode our luck. Yes Pardew made gambles that by and large came
off. Yes we had two strikers who each hit an impressive hot streak of form.
However, our manager successfully responded to events on and off the pitch,
produced the goods by and large, and was rewarded with the Manager of the Year
award. I may not have agreed with that accolade at the time, but neither do I
feel his talent, such as it is, has completely deserted him this season to the
extent that he should be replaced; I do have residual faith in his ability to
turn things round, as it should be remembered that when we kicked off against
Arsenal in 2012/2013, huge sections of our support were both seething with
anger at the perceived lack of a replacement for Carroll (this was before Ba
had played a game) and tipping us for relegation, which should put a fifth
place finish in some kind of context. Ironic isn’t it? The first two seasons after
promotion, we worried about going down, especially after Hughton was replaced,
eventually finishing 13th and then 5th, at which point we
all expected the side to be effectively strengthened and to kick on, but we
have found ourselves bouncing between 11th and 16th in
the table from November onwards. It
simply isn’t good enough. The football, which has been deplorable at times, and
this is the crux of the matter, does not effectively utilise the talents of the
players we have.
It has taken me more than 10 days before I could begin to
express a cogent opinion on the events at St. James’ Park on Thursday 11th
and Sunday 14th April; two crucial fixtures that had the whiff of a
season-defining experience about them and in both, we came up short, one
bravely and once repulsively. I didn’t make either of them; Whitley Bay v
Spennymoor United had me in its thrall on the night of the Benfica second leg.
Great game it was too; Spenny came back from 2-0 down to win 3-2 with 3 goals
in 7 minutes. While the talk on the terraces at Hillheads was either of events
at SJP or the death of Thatcher, I thought of former Northern League secretary
and Evenwood FC devotee, Gordon Nicholson, a man who had been driven,
broken-hearted, to his grave in 2005 when the rump of the recently defunct
Spennymoor had played fast and loose with club ownership rules by resigning
from the Unibond, merging with Evenwood in the way the Sudetenland merged with
Germany in 1938, then expunging all traces of a club that had been formed back
in 1890. Followers of the Scottish game will recognise parallels with Airdrie
United’s parasitical annexation of Clydebank.
The Europa League quarter final was a big, big game; that
much was clear by the absence of Tomi Ameobi from the Whitley Bay squad.
Arriving home from Hillheads, aware we were leading, I saw the last 30 minutes;
gasped at Ben Arfa’s late effort whistling over the bar and groaned as they
broke and equalised. Suitably chastened, I watched the whole game from start to
finish and, being dispassionate, I would struggle to say we deserved to go
through, but our second half showing was enterprising and spirited enough to
say we ought to have won the game; the lateness of the equaliser rendered it
almost irrelevant. We were out anyway. I was so disappointed by this as,
Taylor’s idiocy and Santon’s aberration in Lisbon apart, I thought we’d been
both professional and efficient in the knockout stages and could possibly, dare
I say it, have won it. This game, rather than the Mackem fiasco, knocked the
bollocks out of me and I’m still gloomy about it now. The Benfica game was the
first NUFC European home game I’d missed since Roma in 1999, when I was working
in Slovakia; glumly, I wonder when we will qualify for Europe again, if ever.
As regards the Mackem game; without putting too fine a point
on it, I’m always pessimistic about this fixture. The signs were all there; I’d
seen a negative progression from beating Fulham to drawing with Benfica prior
to this one. I’d been aware we’d won 4 and lost 3 of our post European games,
so expected the score to be evened up. Worst of all, there was the incessant,
swaggering overconfidence of so many of our fans, which reminded me of nothing
so much as the Mackems prior to the 5-1 in October 2010. In the days leading up
to the game, I’d received official NUFC emails about such subjects as Newcastle
United onesies, garden gnomes and 1995/1996 style replica away shirts; a
preening, lackadaisical attitude permeated club, team and fans. Pride did indeed come before a predictable
fall and I hated being right in this instance. Obviously the club have taken
the defeat to heart; I received an email the day after the game offering 30%
discount on “official NUFC suitcases.”
While morons like John Madjeski and Dave Whelan fawned over
the twitching corpse of Thatcher, urging football authorities to hold a
minute’s silence before games for someone who was eloquently described by a
Wigan fan en route to Wembley as a disgusting
woman who was solely to blame for the destruction of the north of England,
Newcastle United (and don’t delude yourself that if Wynyard Hall had still been
in charge he wouldn’t have insisted on compulsory wailing and breast beating as
the minimum acceptable levels of mourning required before fans would have been
allowed in to SJP) kept Thatcher’s memory alive via the legalised ticket
touting operation Viagogo that enabled “fans” to “work with” the club’s “official
ticketing partner” by flogging seats for the Mackem game to other supporters of
NUFC for north of £150. This is the Free Market and it is truly sickening.
While both Craig White and Charles Green have been drummed
out of Ibrox and are facing stern questioning by the Procurator Fiscal for the
creative accountancy on show at the Huns, no such interrogative phrasings will
be deemed necessary for anyone concerned with the leisure society equivalent of
the South Sea Bubble that is making a mint from NUFC’s legal Ebay
scam. Sadly, other than some superb investigative work by the eloquent and
indefatigable tt9m on Twitter, the Viagogo scandal passed the vast
majority of Newcastle fans by, as they began premature crowing over the assumed
massacre that lay in store on the Sunday. Literally dozens of profiteering
deals were concluded for tickets at five or six times their face value in the
days leading up to the Mackem game; it made me angry, though perhaps not
furious enough to punch a horse. I’m more annoyed with the mountebanks than the
mounted police.
During the game itself, I busied myself by alphabetising
about 400 assorted, non-league programmes we’d been given at Percy Main FC,
while listening to proceedings on the wireless. Come full time, desolate and
depressed, I hit the roads for a restorative cycle around the coast. While
North Shields seemed full of plastered middle aged women in replica shirts
shouting at each other outside the Alnwick Castle, that didn’t make it any
different from a normal Sunday, Tynemouth was depressing. Around 5pm, Front
Street consisted of bad tempered, well-built men with shaved heads and slightly
too tight, expensive grey, short sleeved shirts shouting profanities into
mobiles outside The Salutation, while simultaneously chain smoking and
eyeballing anyone who crossed their path; it was a horrible atmosphere, but at
least it wasn’t a full scale tear-up.
In the aftermath of the game, all I’ve had the courage to
watch are the goals and while no blame can be apportioned to Rob Elliott as he
was forced to pick out 2 stunners from the net, Tim Krul should be ashamed of
himself for letting Sessegnon’s tame bobbler trundle past him. As regards, the
radgies who somehow seemed to think that setting fire to rubbish bins on Pink
Lane would make up for losing 3-0 to one’s bitter local rivals, the only point
I’d make is that if you can’t handle defeat, don’t follow football; simple as
that. Obviously only a tiny number of them had been at the game, so the idea of
issuing banning order to them seems completely pointless; instead we ought to
take season tickets away from anyone caught mentioning Britain’s Got Talent on Twitter.
I’m not trying to excuse the pissed-up idiots who pelted bottles up and down
Westgate Road, but I do wonder whether anyone has entertained the thought that
the Coppers were so ready to give it out that day because they were on a high
testosterone footing, as Thatcher’s funeral was just around the corner and they
were tooled up and ready for action.
As regards the £10m disgrace of a publicly funded ceremony
for the most evil public figure this country has ever seen, I was fully behind
William Blake, who despised St. Paul’s and felt Westminster Abbey was the
better building. Sir Christopher Wren insisted his tomb in St. Paul’s bore the
motto SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS CIRCUMSPICE; perhaps the Viagogo
derby tickets had the same message stamped across them. In the end, the vile
dictator’s funeral passed off without incident, which surprised me; it was
quiet, even in Easington, where the 20th anniversary of the closure
of the last deep mine in the County Durham coalfield was marked by a
celebration. There’s nowhere better equipped to dance on the evil witch’s grave
than the home of Billy Elliott I suppose. If only we could say the same about Newcastle.
Speaking personally, I know that if we’d lost 1-0, I would
still be incandescent with rage at Cisse’s perfectly onside goal being chalked
off, but when it gets to 3-0, a kind of gallows humour kicks in; as I said at
the start of this article, you can’t polish a turd. At this point in time, I
have far more regrets about the Benfica tie than the Mackem game. We gave it
out to the Unwashed after their 19 and 15 point seasons, crowing over the 4-1,
in response to the consecutive 2-1 defeats at SJP. Then, they had their day
after our relegation in 2009, but the pendulum swung back with the 5-1 and Ryan
Taylor over the wall; now it’s their turn to milk it. Fair play to them; they
deserved it and we need to take it on the chin.
Perhaps the only laugh I got from the day was the horsepuncher; at what
cognitive level was he operating? Did he really think he could slug 1,000lb of
equine flesh into submission? If so, would it have made up for the result?
Friedrich Nietzsche’s final mental collapse is usually dated
from January 8, 1888, when, it is oft told, on a street in Turin, Italy; he
threw his arms round the neck of a horse being whipped by its master and
showered the beast in kisses. The collective insanity of Newcastle United fans
can perhaps be noted as stemming from the moment a 45 year old fool from
Morpeth attempted to punch one on the corner of Strawberry Place and Barrack
Road. How else are we to explain the endless demands for Pardew’s sacking in
the wake not just of the derby, when such immoderate anguish could be excused,
but after the draw at West Brom?
While a point at The Hawthorns was disappointing,
considering how we dominated the opening period, it was not a disaster. One
wonders just how the Independent Voices felt on seeing Gouffran score at a
ground where their famed Grand Prix skills saw them return from Hughton’s last
Sunday afternoon game to get to Gateshead by 8pm; impressive driving, if not
analysis. It is an undeniable fact that teams at the bottom lose most of their
games; with QPR and Reading gone, there is only 1 space left to fill. Wigan and
Aston Villa may both overtake us, but only if they average at least a point
more per game each in their final fixtures than we do. This is unlikely, though
not impossible. It is also unlikely, though not impossible that we will either
win all or lose all of our remaining games. Remember also, Stoke, the Mackems,
Norwich and Southampton are closer to us than the final relegation spot. It is
unlikely, though not impossible, one of those 4 teams, or even Fulham, could
end up in the bottom 3. The message is we need to hold our nerve and hope that
Pardew and the players keep their side of the bargain. From the equivalent
games last season, if you substitute West Ham for Wolves, we took 8 points; even
if we’re half as good this year, this means 4 points…
It will be tight and I don’t expect us to take more than 5
points from our remaining games, but I do think we will stay up. Just. At that
point, it is time for Pardew to take stock of his personal and tactical errors,
as well as personal and personnel deficiencies. We don’t just need a striker,
we need to get rid of Carver and Stone and replace them with proper coaches as
tactically, they are no better than Alan Murray and Dean Saunders. If Pardew is
able to ensure he has properly equipped assistants and can show his depressing
reliance on aimless long ball tactics and infuriatingly timid approach to the
second half of games we’ve been winning, has been an aberration, I am sure
things will improve next season; they simply have to. Results are all that
matters; look at how a self-confessed fascist has been embraced on Wearside for
beating the scum 3-0.
However, I have to say that if this season ends in the
unspeakable doomsday scenario, bearing in mind the players he has had at his
disposal (even if they’ve been injured, playing for other teams or completely
out of form half the time), then all bets are off…
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