Thursday 28 December 2017

Listomania

OK pop pickers, here are my lists of the year's listening. Man of the Year is that workaholic Glaswegian Yorkshireman who wears even worse shirts than I do; Alex Neilson is our Rex -:



Albums of 2017:
1.      Alex Rex – Vermilion
2.      Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Luciferian Towers
3.      Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band – Adios Senor Pussycat
4.      British Sea Power – Let the Dancers Inherit the Party
5.      Band of Holy Joy – Funambulist We Love You
6.      Wire – Silver / Lead
7.      Euros Childs – House Arrest
8.      The Wedding Present – George Best 20
9.      The Manchester Mekon – No Forgetting

Other Albums Bought this Year:
1.      Aidan Moffat – Where You’re Meant to Be (2016)
2.      The Wedding Present – Hit Parade #1 (1992)
3.      Tackhead – Tackhead Tape Time (1991)
4.      Various – One More Chance (1972)
5.      Sheila Stewart – From The Tradition (1976)

Singles & EPs of 2017:
1.      Various – Avocet
2.      Penetration – Shake Some Action / I Don’t Mind
3.      Trembling Bells – The Old Triangle
4.      The Mekons – How Many Stars Are out Tonight?
5.      The Wedding Present – Home Internationals
6.      Quarterlight – Flat Broke
7.      Penetration – In The Future
8.      Teenage Fanclub – I’m In Love
9.      Vic Godard – Find Out Over Time
10.  Shirley Collins – Sings Irish

Gigs of 2017:
1.      Penetration – North Shields Exchange, August
2.      Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Boiler Shop, October
3.      British Sea Power – Riverside, April
4.      The Wedding Present – O2, June
5.      Penetration – Cluny, November
6.      Wire – Riverside, November
7.      Trembling Bells –Sage 2, August
8.      Band of Holy Joy – Tynemouth Surf Café, December
9.      Vic Godard – Cumberland, Decenber
10.  Euros Childs – Mining Institute, November
11.  Fairport Convention – Sage 2, February

12.  Shirley Collins – Sage 1, March

Friday 22 December 2017

Joyful & Triumphant

Next week, for my very final blog of 2017, I’ll be compiling my lists of gigs and albums of the year, but just to tidy things up before we get there, here’s a rundown of the cultural events I’ve enjoyed during the last couple of months.



November started with a frenetic weekend of live action that could have been from 40 years back; Wire on the Friday night at the terminally squalid Riverside and Penetration playing what could be best described as their homecoming tour ending show at The Cluny. I was particularly delighted that Ben came home from Leeds for this weekend, as it’s always great to have a bit of the old dad and lad gigging time, with added dosage of craft ales as he gets older. The two gigs were completely different, but both stunning in their own ways. Wire was disappointingly attended; a sparse crowd for such infrequent visitors worries me, as the likelihood of further visits diminishes with every half full house. There was no question of them going through the motions though; this was the usual, intense, forensically detached performance, switching effortlessly, seamlessly, from 1977’s Three Girl Rumba to this year’s Silver / Lead. No support, minimal comment on stage and a set just shy of 75 minutes duration; in less dextrous hands it could have been viewed as on the perfunctory side of functional, but not with Wire. This was their trademark style. Simply superb.



Penetration’s autumn 40th anniversary tour had kicked off in North Shields at the end of August, on what was one of the most triumphant, euphoric nights of live music I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying for many a long year. Of course, the thing with the chronological set is that, having seen it already, I knew how the evening was going to play out, with the only variant from August’s set being She is the Slave replacing I Don’t Mind in the encore. Consequently, I was able to enjoy the crowd reaction as much as the band, though it has to be said that they were on great form. What I love about the Penetration live experience is how their genuine affection, compassion and engagement with the audience just reflects exactly how Pauline and Rob are as people; they’re lovely and I don’t know anyone with a bad word for them. Same as Penetration; what a hell of a great musical CV they’ve compiled in their own, irascible and slightly insane way. They’ve never got rich, but they’ve never done a bad record either. The pair of Pledge Music funded 7” singles that eventually, courtesy of a few delays and mishaps, came out to celebrate the tour, are fantastic too. It’s so helpful to have a top-quality recording of those obscure early tracks: In the Future, Duty Free Technology and Race Against Time.  Meanwhile the pair of cover versions are simply exquisite; I Don’t Mind was jaw-droppingly brilliant when they debuted it in 2015, but Shake Some Action is simply stellar. One of the highlights of this musical year for me, though I’m in agreement with the band that North Shields shaded The Cluny in terms of being an event to remember.

Every Euros Childs gig is a night to remember, generally because of the weird array of venues he chooses to perform at. This time, for his first return to town in two years, he was back at the Mining Institute, but down in the lecture theatre rather than up in the library. Delightfully eccentric, slightly down at heel and not what you’d expect; just like Euros himself and just like support act, The Zahnpasta Brothers, who were as accurate a pastiche of 1978 era Human League and other proto synthpop tyros like Thomas Leer or Robert Rental as you could imagine. Squeaky, analogue bubble bath time; I liked them tremendously.

Euros Childs is an interesting case; on the whole, I love what he does, with Gorky’s, with Jonny and solo. Indeed, following his collaboration with Norman from The Fannies, I feel Euros hit the highest points in his solo career with the trio of albums: Ends, Seaside Special and Situation Comedy. The former was a sombre, deeply-affecting, introspective, piano-driven masterpiece and the latter pair showcasing his flair for rollocking goodtime mid 70s pop rock with the Roogie Boogie Band as back up. Since then, another 4 albums have followed; first of all, the slight and ephemeral Eilaaig, which mainly consisted of piano instrumentals, then the more than decent Sweetheart, which saw him reunited with Stuart Kidd and Marco Rea of the Roogie Boogie Band, before the one-trick postmodern joke that is Refresh, where 24 barely thought out experimental, electronic tracks make for an incoherent mess. However, the most recent House Arrest, the focus on the latest tour. It’s pretty good as well, with the usual daft vignettes like Charlie and Misty, total insanity My Colander and regularly affecting moments, such as Here We Are. The gig was hewn from the same fabric, with the backing band consisting only of Maria from Oh! Peas on keyboards. A very enjoyable night was made special by the sight of a young lad in the audience; aged about 9 he’d deputised for his poorly mam, so dad didn’t miss the gig. Nearly as good as my Ben’s first experience of live music being Vic Godard doing a free show on the Quayside back in 2005.



Vic was still pretty close to the Tyne when playing The Cumberland on Friday December 8th, which saw the final hectic music weekend of the year. Saturday would see The Band of Holy Joy roll back the clock 30 years from their triumphant Xmas Ball at the late lamented Surfer’s Bar, with an intimate show at the Surf Café on the fringe of a freezing Long Sands, with the North Sea breaking on the back wall, but that was still to come.

It was my ex-wife Sara’s 50th birthday do on Friday night, so Laura and I went there first of all, meaning we were unable to see Gary Chaplin’s expanded Quarterlight, who are now a full band, opening procedings. As a way of apology, I bought his new release; a 30-minute trio of Krautrock / electronica pieces called Flat Broke, including a very impressive take on Blackleg Miner. A brave, hypnotic venture that is hugely encouraging to see come to fruition. Buying it also stopped Gary shooting me hackies, so that was worth £5 in itself.



This gig ought to have been played last October (2016), but a personal tragedy for Vic meant it was delayed for 14 months. Consequently, not just Subway Sect, but the Band of Holy Joy (now without Bill on drums but back with Mark on bass) were long overdue on these shores. And what a show they put in; a few years ago, Johny Brown was a very angry man, declaiming The Fall / There Was a Fall about state sponsored murder, but now with the glorious, loving Funambulist We Love You, the angst of Easy Listening and pessimistic visions of Land of Holy Joy have given way to optimism and elegiac hymns to hope, such as the ironically entitled Song of Casual Indifference. The set still comes from the last 3 albums in the main, though the version of Rosemary Smith on Saturday night is one that will live forever in the minds of all who heard it, but the vision and the philosophy is all about an unshakeable belief in a brighter future.  When Johny sings I Have Travelled the Buses Late at Night it’s because he loves his fellow citizen, no longer does he fear them. The Band of Holy Joy have grown greater and more glorious, not older or more cynical; there’s a lesson for us all there. Their Cumberland gig was the best I’ve ever seen them and the Surf Café the most natural. I love them.

And I love Vic too; he had a hard job after BoHJ, because they’d have blown almost everyone else off stage. However, the newly retired postman and inveterate tea drinker knows how to work the room and yes, he won the day. From an opening Ambition, with the man himself now playing acoustic guitar, through to a triumphant closing Nobody’s Scared, Vic teased, wrestled, chatted, cajoled and charmed us all as ever. With Vic Godard, Johny Brown, Pauline Murray, Robert Blamire and Gary Chaplin in the room, we can safely say punk isn’t dead.

I wish I could say the same about my reading habits; Harry Pearson’s Connie: The Marvellous Life of Learie Constantine and Jane Lowes’s The Horsekeeper’s Daughter must wait until the new year for a review. However, I’m eternally grateful to Harry for passing on a copy of Where’s the Ground? An A-Z of Cricket Clubs in Durham, whose hand drawn maps will still serve me well in these smartphone times.


One lovely curio that Laura’s mam found for me in a charity shop was Kerry photographer Tony O’Shea’s monochrome portraits of Dublin in the late 80s and early 90s as the city changed as the Liffey became as much of an economic and social dividing point as it was a geographic one. The book, Dubliners, is complemented by a remarkably insightful and unpretentious essay by Colm Toibin. A true coffee table book, if you’re ever in Bewley’s.

Thursday 14 December 2017

Jobs for the Boys

Issue #24 of Stand is out now; please get a copy, not just because I've got this bit in there about the inherently conservative cartel of middle aged bosses floating around the lower sections of the Premier League -:

Until about 3 years ago I’d never heard of piñatas; now I’m sorry I did. The vision of semi-feral children armed with baseball bats, crazy for corn syrup, dextrose and gelatine, gorging on the innards of an obliterated, oversized, toy rabbit makes me feel queasy and faint. My other half Laura reckons it would be better if, instead of animal figures, piñatas were fashioned to look like Sam Allardyce’s head; certainly, there’d be space for more Haribos than the bairns currently shake their pointy sticks at.

As the father of a grown-up son without kids of his own, I am thankfully never invited to children’s parties these days, which is fine by me as I dislike both noise and infants. No amount of Allardycian piñatas could change that opinion. However, I do, of course, remember the kind of terrible party games we endured in the sepia tinged early 70s; Pass the Parcel, Simon Says, Blind Man’s Buff and Musical Chairs were the staple delaying tactics of the grown-ups, before they unleashed a buffet, consisting entirely of Shipham’s Meat Paste on Wonderloaf canapes followed by a collation of Mr Kipling’s finest, washed down with lashings of unhelpfully weak Quosh or flat Tizer.

Of all those disparate, gleeful elements, the one that I remembered most was the confusing use of Musical Chairs in a football context. Reading my old fella’s Daily Mirror, I’d feel a sense of alarm at Frank McGhee’s solemn pronouncement that “clubs seem intent on a cut-throat game of managerial musical chairs.” Of course, once I learned the semantic nuance inherent in metaphor, the penny dropped and I realised the game, such as it was, involved loads of grim-faced middle aged blokes with unconvincing combovers and nasty bri-nylon suits swapping jobs; Ron Saunders, John Bond, Billy McGarry, Gordon Jago, Tommy Docherty and subsequently Alan Mullery, Jim Smith, Ron Atkinson, Allan Clarke, Norman Hunter, Dave Bassett and Mel Machin regularly drove in and out of middle-ranking football club car parks, on bitter winter evenings, steering a series of Vauxhall Carltons and Rover 3000s with the wipers on double time.

Every so often after one of these alpha male dugout behemoths got their biannual p45 from some lower third division sleeping midget or other, they sensed their time was up, then packed their bags and headed off to earn a fortune from a sinecure in Kuwait or the Emirates that left plenty of time for the golf course. As nature abhors a vacuum, such departures created a vacancy for some ageing pro to step up to the mark as player manager until the end of the season, more often than not. The advent of this latest “tracksuit boss” would see breathless, fawning articles in the Sunday tabloids and stilted, office-based interviews, intercut with grainy footage from the training ground or a night match away to Gillingham or Doncaster on Football Focus, shown the day of a big local derby or fourth round FA Cup game, which the leisurewear clad neophyte’s new charges tended to lose badly, precipitating a post-match announcement that he’d be concentrating on managing full time from now on. Obviously, he’d get the bullet in May and would then blag a two-year pay as you play deal at Tranmere or Scunthorpe before drifting into obscurity.

Yes, it’s amazing; managers, as well as players, did willingly cut all ties with the game back then. These days, everyone from Thierry Henry to Clint Morrison gets the chance to slip into a Paul Smith tin of fruit and state the bleeding obvious on satellite TV three times a week. The 80s were a different world; Alan Durban, after getting the boot at Sunderland and Cardiff in successive seasons, ended up managing Telford Tennis Centre. Recently, Peter Jackson, ex of Bradford, Huddersfield and Chester, ran a Care Home business with his wife. My favourite was always John Barnwell though, and not just because he’s from the same part of Newcastle as me; once he’d finished his stints in the storied hot seats at Peterborough, Wolves, AEK Athens, Notts County, Walsall and Northampton, he got the gig as Chief Executive of the League Managers’ Association; even now, aged 79, he’s the LMA’s Life President. It may not be as high profile or as lucrative as Gordon Taylor’s stint as Eternal Leader, but it’s a nice earner nevertheless. In defence of the Lowry connoisseur, the PFA has a massive role to play in looking after players forced out the game early, for whatever reason, or those who have struggles with their own internal demons. Managers just need someone to shout the odds, so they get the compo they’re contractually entitled to, as by definition, they are mainly middle-aged, washed-up and fit for little else once their race is run.

Witness the case of Brian Little; a legend at his only club Villa, he stayed on as a coach when his playing days were cruelly cut short in 1980, aged only 26. He moved on to Wolves in a similar role 4 years later, even having a month as caretaker manager, before Bruce Rioch took him to Middlesbrough as assistant boss in 1986. Little got his first permanent gaffer gig at Darlo in early 89; he couldn’t stop them falling into the Conference at the end of that campaign, but two successive promotions brought hitherto unknown pleasures to Feethams. Leicester, having escaped a drop to D3 by the skin of their teeth, dispensed with the dream team of David Pleat and Gordon Lee in summer 1991, bringing in Little as a young, dynamic boss. He did well. Two gut-wrenching play-off final losses to Blackburn and then Swindon were overcome with a third-time lucky promotion, after seeing off Derby County.

At this point Brian’s reputation couldn’t have been higher in the East Midlands, but in November 1994, the Messiah became a very naughty boy when he left Filbert Street to replace Ron Atkinson at Aston Villa. Even worse, Leicester went down that year. Little won his first trophy in March 1996, leading the Villains to a 3-0 League Cup triumph over a frankly awful Leeds side, which basically ended Howard Wilkinson’s credibility at Elland Road. Strange how things pan out thought; two years later, in February 1998, Little left Villa Park with his team in the bottom half, citing burn-out, taking 6 months out of the game, much of which was spent touring Spain on a vintage Triumph Bonneville.

Supposedly reinvigorated, Little was a popular choice as Stoke City manager for the 98/99 season, with his sole aim being promotion back to the Championship. Everything looked great at Christmas, with Stoke top of the table, having won 14 of their first 20 games, but the New Year was a disaster, as form disintegrated. A shamefaced Little quit in May 1999, having seen The Potters stumble so badly that they missed out on a play-off place. Surprisingly, West Brom from the division above, hired Little almost immediately, but there was no fairy-tale return to form; instead of chasing promotion, the Baggies battled to avoid the drop and the greying and increasingly gaunt Geordie was shown the door in March 2000. He was never to manage above the bottom tier again, showing that the law of diminishing returns applies to football managers, same as everything else in the world of entertainment.

Within a week of leaving The Hawthorns, he was back in work at Hull City, where he lasted 2 years; the first one saving them from relegation and the second signified by stultifying lower mid-table mediocrity. After a short break, Tranmere was his next port of call, with predictable results; avoiding relegation, signing new players, totally underachieving and throwing in the towel come next spring. Same thing happened when he spent the 2007/2008 season in The Conference in charge of Wrexham and 2009/2010 in the Conference North with Gainsborough Trinity. If it’s March, it must be time for Brian to flee the nest. Where could he go after that? The scarcely credible answer was Jersey, where he did win the second trophy of his managerial career; the Murratti Bowl, an annual competition against Guernsey, before leaving immediately and never managing again, preferring to take a back-office role at Villa where he may well still be. Suffice to say, aged 64 and with a baffling array of redundancy payments and a CV as long as one of his press conferences, Brian Little won’t be looking for a job any time soon. After all, he’s already had 10.

Perhaps the most obvious incidence of musical chairs providing jobs for the boys was back in 2001 when Trevor Francis left his beloved Birmingham City; his replacement was the subsequently itinerant Steve Bruce, who was placed on gardening leave by his employers Crystal Palace for a month, before he took up the role at St. Andrews. His replacement at Selhurst Park? None other than Trevor Francis. Although, on the subject of convenient appointments, I was always amused by Sir Jack Hayward’s superbly frugal decision to replace Graham Turner with Graham Taylor, to avoid the need for a whole new set of monogrammed training kit.

With all the recent brouhaha about the Toby Carvery Dads’ Army of Allardyce, Hodgson, Moyes, Pardew, Pulis and no doubt Mark Hughes in the fullness of time, getting plum jobs their reputations scarcely merit, a year on since Marco Silva being offered the Hull job was seen as a slap in the face for all British bosses and a death knell for the domestic game, it is worth pausing to think. If we can dismiss the fact Roy Hodgson appears to bear more than a striking resemblance to Private Godfrey or that, as much as he’d love to be him, Pards is just too lower middle class to play the Sergeant Wilson role, there is a degree of truth in the popular criticism of these managers. None of them play expansive football. All of them are supremely convinced of their own abilities. They’ll all have Harry Redknapp’s number saved, in order to give him a quick bell for advice if the need arises. Though none of them (even Pards) makes me want to retch in the way John Gregory did. However, at the end of the day, you know these appointments are pragmatic decisions made on the balance of probability; almost certainly Everton and West Brom will stay up and, in the eyes of most fans, that is really all that matters. Welcome to the Rafa Benitez school of eye-bleedingly tedious football for the sole purpose of accumulating 40 points and an annual opportunity to be humiliated in front of your own fans by Chelsea and Man City. Two cheers for the meritocracy eh?

But surely there must be an alternative? Southampton and Watford swap their foreign coaches more often than Dave Mackay changed his socks, and they’re permanent top 10 residents. No longer do the Saints and Hornets entrust sweating, aged, Brexiteers in liniment and Famous Grouse stained bench anoraks with the medium-term future of their multi-million-pound businesses. They don’t want Les Reed, Chris Hutchings or Micky Adams talking about Alf Ramsey; instead, they look to the continent, for the guile, panache and brio a foreign appointment can bring.



And perhaps so should we. However, try not to mention: Remi Garde, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Frank de Boer, Felix Magath, Velimir Zajac, Alain Perrin, Rene Meulensteen, Bob Bradley, Francesco Guidolin, Christian Gross, Jacques Santini, Egil Olsen, Pepe Mel or the man who inspired this article; Andre Villas Boas, who has quit his job with Shanghai FC, in order to compete in the 2018 Dakar Rally.

Yes, we’ve certainly come a long way from Harry Redknapp at the entrance to an unspecified training ground in the south east, engaging reporters in witty repartee, with his head sticking out of his open Range Rover driver’s window…


Tuesday 5 December 2017

Crisis at Christmas

December is here and, as far as Newcastle United are concerned; it’s beginning to look a lot like a crisis. Not the kind of crisis that involves those poor, blameless victims dealing with the fallout from the imposition of Universal Credit, or queuing up at the Food Bank to feed their starving bairns, but a sporting crisis all the same. One solitary point has been harvested from the last six games, following a 2-2 draw at The Hawthorns that looked so unlikely after an hour. While recovering from 2-0 down seems an encouraging sign, and it was, it should be remembered that this was against a West Brom side that came into the game in even worse shape than Newcastle, with the pitiful busted flush Gary Megson in temporary charge, as the Baggies had binned Pulis for the soon-come renascent Pards. However, in contrast to the shot shy capitulations against Burnley, Bournemouth and Watford, the ball actually went into the opposition net, meaning the doubly deflected Evans/Rondon own goal was more than warmly welcomed. You take solace where you can, which is why the defeat to Chelsea probably wasn’t the worst result we’ve ever had. Like the defeat to Man United it saw a plucky opening superseded by depressing reality. Of course, Newcastle aren’t the only lower mid table side destined to concede 7 at Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford.



As I was actively engaged in preparations for my beloved Benfield’s glorious FA Vase victory against North Shields, I only got to see the first half from Stamford Bridge. We did okay I thought; neat finish by Gayle, Darlow unlucky for the equaliser but the result was seemingly settled almost on the whistle when Ritchie’s dreadful header undid all the hard work of the opening 45 and we went in a goal down. Every football fan in the country had read the script; plucky, limited underdogs try to box above their weight and are eventually found out. Games like that one won’t define the season, though the next couple of fixtures might; revitalised Leicester and Allardyce’s Everton, both at home, on the 9th and 13th. Even though the Leicester game is on telly, I’m struggling to see it; Benfield away to Seaham, followed by a book launch and then the Band of Holy joy at the Surf Café.  Priorities; you know what I’m saying? Sadly, it may be one well worth missing, as I’ve no confidence in the team to get anything from that one or the Everton game either, as it becomes more apparent by the game that the squad lacks heart in the same way it lacks any genuine quality.

It seems pointless to bang on about Benitez’s performance as boss, as it becomes ever more apparent that the squad he’s either assembled or been forced to work with, depending on your politics, are just not good enough to do the business in the top flight, despite the halcyon days of competence in September and October that seem an eternity ago as the lights come on at 4 at the end of another year. The saddest thing for me is the absence of spirit without Lascelles; since he’s been injured, the rest of them don’t seem to have the cojones for a relegation scrap, though the return of Merino should help in this context. The truly baffling thing is the Ritchie and Yedlin fiasco; it’s the most painful untangling of a couple I’ve seen since Den Watts presented Angie with her divorce papers on Christmas Day 1986.

However, despite the obvious risk of a car crash transfer window in January, followed by a queasy slalom on the relegation helter skelter and the departure of Benitez before another demotion to the Championship for 2018/2019, probably for the long haul, it isn’t the results and performances on the pitch that seem to be attracting collective furrowing of brows among the support. What’s really got everyone in high dudgeon is the clock ticking towards KrisKrissChrismas and the deadline set by Mike Ashley for any takeover of Newcastle United to be completed.

I don’t know huge amounts about Amanda Staveley, other than she’s a fabuloulys wealthy, unapologetic, far right Tory (is there any other kind?), who dropped out of her degree after ending up in a secure hospital with severe stress. Consequently, I don’t like her politics, but I do sympathise with her earlier mental health travails. I’m also very uncomfortable with any efforts on social media, however ham-fistedly humorous their intent, to objectify her as a kind of sex symbol, as that demeans her gender. The previous section of this paragraph can be taken as read, as it is has little or no relevance to her appearance in this article. Where Amanda Staveley becomes acutely relevant is in her role as the public face of an, as yet obscure, or even secretive, apparently middle eastern syndicate that seeks to buy Newcastle United from Mike Ashley. I may be naïve in this, but I would hope to know the finer points of every element of the collective cash rich oligarchs intending to purchase my club, before any deal is complete, so I can decide whether I am happy to give them my moral support and blessing.

Let’s be honest about this; the decade and a bit of Ashley’s ownership of NUFC, when taken as a whole, has been nothing short of a disaster. We are no nearer challenging for honours than we were the day Glenn Roeder offered his resignation in May 2007. While there have been momentary, almost illusory vignettes of joy along the way: the genuine collective effort of Chris Hughton’s bunch of lads, the unexpected swagger from Pards’ 4-3-3 set up in the season we finished 5th and the surreal joy found on those occasions when the team really clicks, and we remember it’s Rafa Benitez managing them. All too often it’s been embarrassment and incompetence on and off the pitch: Sports Direct Arena, the Keegan court case, Shefki Kuqi replacing Andy Carroll, Pards headbutting Mayler, Carver’s press conferences, drip fed bullshit via Sky Sports, Llambias streaking, Kinnear bladdered on Talk Sport, transfer inaction and the constant sense that the club is being run as a cash cow for Ashley, like a down at heel market stall knocking out snide gear for the gullible and brainless.

Bearing in mind everything I’ve just said, I can understand exactly why so many Newcastle supporters will accept any takeover, regardless of who is behind it, as preferable to Ashley’s continued presence on Tyneside. While pausing to sadly note that the concept of fan ownership is now about as relevant to the current agenda as discussions about proportional representation are to the Brexit Omnishambles, I accept it is not just the servile sheep in the Sports Direct anoraks or the social media superfans who incessantly shout down, deride and abuse anyone who dares voice anything other than unblinking, unthinking loyalty to Benitez first of all, and now Staveley, who feel like this, but enormous numbers of ordinary, normal, proper fans, grown sick to the back teeth of seeing their club made a laughing stock and used as a punchbag by shady, shiftless shithouses.



Yet I must urge caution. Do we know anything about these prospective investors? Will we discover anything before it is too late? I’m not so sure and it matters to me, as well as one-time True Faith assistant editor, the erudite and articulate Gareth Harrison, who is almost singlehandedly doggedly raising the issue on social media to seemingly blanket indifference and outright hostility. I am fully aware that in a capitalist world, dirty money is universal and clean is scarce, though I do not expect that a person as well-regarded as Staveley, would seek to surround herself with fellow travellers that are the likes of Somalian pirates, Russian Mafiosi, South American drug lords or construction company executives making literal and metaphorical killings on the back of the World Cup in Qatar. Obviously, the nature of international trade links means that if one were to unravel the minutiae of every major world business deal, there would be many unpleasant skeletons in the cupboard; realistically and pragmatically, that is the kind of ethical compromise one is forced to make. Is that essentially any different to calling out Ashley over his shameful employment practices at his Shirebrook warehouse?

I’m not so ideologically pure as to demand 100% ethical investments from those trying to buy the club, but there are certain standards of decency and probity that must be adhered to. Fans of Cardiff City were delighted to see the back of Sam Hamann and Peter Ridsdale, but less keen to see their team turning out in red shirts at the insistence of new Malaysian investors. The pornographers in charge of West Ham United may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s a moot point whether they are less morally, as opposed to financially, bankrupt than the Icelandic syndicate who held power before them. While followers of Portsmouth, Leicester City and Sheffield Wednesday will recoil in horror for generations yet to come at the name Milan Mandarić. Worst of all, there is the sprawling, seemingly endless 5 act tragicomedy starring Leeds United, whose name alone acts as a touchstone for the concept of rapacious, incompetent ownership.

If the single biggest problem in world football is FIFA and the biggest on the continent we seem hellbent on leaving is UEFA, then the bugbears of our domestic game are the FA, from grassroots to the storied heights of the Premier League. Not one person who affects an interest in football finance and governance can have any trust in the efficiency of the FA’s pitiful test of what constitutes a fit and proper club owner. If, and it is a big if, Staveley’s syndicate (I don’t see any credibility in suggestions of a stalking horse bidder in the long grass) come up with the necessary dosh to rid our club of this turbulent barrow boy, can you really see the powers that be in the Premier League giving any thought to who has taken the place over? Precisely.

The truly bizarre thing is this discussion may well be purely theoretical. So far, Staveley has tabled a bid of something less than Ashley’s £300m asking price, which has been knocked back. With the club in disarray on the pitch, there is nothing to report in the boardroom, resulting in two potentially nightmare scenarios. Firstly, Ashley refuses to play ball and the whole deal is off, leaving him with a club he has no interest in or inclination to invest in, resulting in another wasted transfer window, potential relegation and the departure of Benitez. Secondly, discussions go on until the eleventh hour and an agreement is made so late in the day that any transfer of funds before the transfer window is an unrealistic proposition, again shedding light on potential relegation, though there is the hope that Benitez may stay with new owners in charge, if they are prepared to let Newcastle United compete with Brighton and Hove Albion or Huddersfield Town that is…

Whatever happens, it seems destined to provide fans of NUFC with another unpleasant white-knuckle ride on the rollercoaster of emotional despair. Only in the summer will we truly know if the whole thing came off the rails or provided a scarcely credible sense of stability on Barrack Road.





Wednesday 29 November 2017

Bedbuggered

Issue #18 of The Football Pink is one of the best yet; you can get it from http://thefootballpink.bigcartel.com/ and I advise that you do. I'm delighted to have this piece in here, about the decline of the North East as the hotbed of soccer -:


Here’s a serious question for you; how many truly exceptional bands of the last 50 years or so have come from the north east? From my perspective I’d say only 3; firstly, The Animals, whose visceral R&B stomp, may have been inspired by the Louisiana swamp but it was a beast that grew legs and a tail in the shadow of the Wallsend and Walker shipyards, providing the authentic sounds of the Tyneside mid-60s. Go forward half a decade and Lindisfarne’s blissful Broon Ale and resin soaked late hippy, good time folk rock encapsulates the early 70s era of long hair, loon pants and signing on at the local Labour Exchange like no other. Finally, from the punk wars to the present day, that ex-pit village Lorelei Pauline Murray has soared and swooped like a stentorian Ferryhill siren behind the microphone with the truly brilliant Penetration for 40 plus years and counting.

After that, we’re struggling to make a convincing case for any other outfit being entitled to their own personal monument inlaid into the sidewalk outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Gateshead High Street branch, though Kitchenware Records did their best. Martin Stephenson is an eccentric jewel in the troubadour style, but his lack of quality control means there’s just too much froth in his back catalogue to afford him such uncritical praise. The exact opposite is true of Paddy McAloon, who drifted out of the game after two truly superb Prefab Sprout albums. The Kane Gang could have been contenders, but they supernovaed too soon.

Otherwise we’re looking at individual musicians rather than whole bands; Bryan Ferry (team mate of Howard Kendall in Pelton Fell Juniors football team, amazingly enough) and drummer Paul Thompson were the focal point and rhythmic heart of Roxy Music respectively. Bryan Johnson screeched and yowled his way from the Marden Estate to Miami Beach for 36 years with AC/DC until his hearing gave out. David Coverdale may sound like a minor member of the Royal Family these days, but he was brought up to preach the blues in Saltburn on Sea. Meanwhile, Chris Rea, Dave Stewart and Mark Knopfler did as much as anyone else to usher in a dreary era of CD-friendly complacent, driver-friendly AOR; whether you’re thankful to them for that is a matter of personal choice. Of course there’s also the singing milkman Gordon Sumner, but I’d rather listen to the Mackem punk tendency of The Toy Dolls, Leatherface or The Angelic Upstarts than that tantric arsehole.

What about the scene, such as it is, these days? Tough one. The contemporary does not lend itself readily to perspective, but perhaps Maximo Park may one day be remembered more for their music than their singer’s array of ridiculous hats. Field Music are the slow burning darlings of the Radio 6 intelligensia who seem set to endure. Krautrock-flavoured techno boffins Warm Digits are forever spoken of as being on the cusp of greatness or so it seems. After that, we’ve got has-beens, never-wases, great lost talents, obscure alternatives and ambitious youngsters, but what we don’t have is a defined regional legacy from a substantial canon of revered work that Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow and Edinburgh can all boast.

However one defines the north east as a region, which for the purpose of this piece I’m suggesting (with some caveats I shall return to) goes from the Tees to the Wansbeck, rather than as far as the Tweed (compulsory mention for Trevor Steven to assuage Evertonian interests at this point), it seems initially astonishing that there hasn’t been a homogenous sound born of a particular era, though that can be explained by the loose cultural and geographical ties that countermand any social cohesion between the centres of population seen as integral to any putative NE identity. I take as my text the 2004 rejection by voters of Labour’s flagship project for regional devolution, courtesy of a highly effective campaign funded by John Elliott, the man behind EBAC dehumidifiers and washing machines whose business sponsors the Northern League, which poured boundless scorn on the prospect of another tier of expensive and arguably unnecessary bureaucracy. To the great surprise of outsiders looking in, the avowedly negative attitudes of the no campaign were kicking at an already wide open door. Let’s be absolutely clear about this; there is no such thing as a shared north east regional cultural identity. Instead there are several distinct mutually hostile centres of population vehemently opposed to any moves towards homogenization. There’s no coincidence in the fact that Royston Vaysey was born on Teesside.

In Middlesbrough, their renascent sense of being of and from Teesside is a modern invention that only partly masks their innate historical Yorkshire allegiances. Sunderland sees itself as the dormant volcano of the Land of the Prince Bishops, whereby the County Palatinate in the lee of the Wear is an entity ready for reanimation; a process that may be helped by their 2021 City of Culture bid. Tyneside and South East Northumberland (the only bit of England’s Border County that anyone lives in, bar the lawless descendants of those Border Reivers still at large) remains the supposed heimat of John Hall’s mythical Geordie Nation.  Once one factors in the local allegiances and tensions, it becomes abundantly clear why over 2 million people from an arbitrary area spanning 70 miles from top to bottom and possibly 20 miles wide, have never coalesced at a particular time to produce a coherent set of similar sounds. If the famous north east can’t get half a dozen young shavers to write a few decent pop songs at any point in the last 3 decades, it’s no wonder politicians and the population in general can’t work towards a non-existent shared set of regional aspirations, beliefs and values.

Go back 200 years to the start of the 19th Century; as the Industrial Revolution gathered pace on Tyneside and Wearside, when Middlesbrough boasted a population of 25, other than coastal ports and fishing villages, the only major centres of population were scattered market towns like Hexham, Morpeth, Barnard Castle, Darlington, Bishop Auckland and Durham, with the latter pair bolstered by their theological and academic importance. Now, long after the era of coal, steel, shipbuilding, railways and heavy engineering has passed, other than the three urban conurbations athwart the Tees, Wear and Tyne, the region consists of myriad isolated communities, whether bourgeois dormitory settlements or blighted post-industrial sink towns; separated by geography and emasculated by cultural deracination. Go north of Newcastle, west of Sunderland or south of Middlesbrough and there’s nobody really living there. North Northumberland, the Tyne Valley, South and West Durham, as well as the Tees Valley and North Yorkshire are pretty much empty and isolated. Some of those mini areas of population are gorgeous little spots, like Stanhope, Fir Tree, Alnmouth or Blanchland, but there are also places like Chopwell, Pegswood, Horden and Wheatley Hill; abandoned, ignored and scarred by every indicator of chronic social, cultural and economic deprivation imaginable: bad housing, poor schools, inadequate healthcare, multi-generational unemployment, and a shrinking population, not to mention endemic drug and alcohol dependency. The real legacy of Thatcherism.

Meanwhile the IT revolution, a call centre economy, out of town shopping malls and 24 hour supermarkets mean our cities have lost their economic relevance, other than as glorified, booze-fuelled leisure theme parks. The economically vibrant sip £10 cocktails in swanky bars carved out of the basements of Grade 2 listed buildings that once hosted the mercantile camp followers of heavy industry that made the region so prosperous, for the few if not the many. Meanwhile the darkened alleys and shop doorways are awash with an ever expanding gallery of comatose Spice addicts, dying from austerity. The suburbs and exurbs stuffed with new build luxury homes; the city centres now partly vertical villages of high rise condominiums for debt-heavy, current and former student hedonists and partly teeming slums characterised by the squalid homes of multiple occupancy that provide minimal to inadequate succour for the marginalised and needy. Nowadays, the wider north east has no input into contemporary culture because The Haves haven’t the time or the wit, while The Have Nots are denied access.

It was all so much easier to explain the paucity of NE musical talent during the ascendancy of the Post War Social Democratic Consensus; perhaps Geordies, Mackems and Smogs might not have wanted to plug in a guitar or rattle a drum kit, preferring to listen and watch, pint in hand, rather than create their own vibe, but that’s because received wisdom still holds that, while the telly was in black and white and only showed two channels, every lad from South Bank to Shieldfield played football from morning to evening, six days a week with Saturday being the north east Sabbath; a Holy Day of Obligation when the whole region worshipped at the Cathedrals of St. James, Roker and Ayresome Parks.

And so, at last, we come to the topic I’m actually writing about; the regional myths referred to in Arthur Appleton’s epochal apocrypha The Hotbed of Soccer; The Story of Football in the North East. Published in 1960, it set the tone for coverage of the game in the region for decades thereafter, which mainly consisted of uncritical retellings of Appleton’s contentions with a contemporary flavour. When Appleton committed his thoughts to the public domain, the north east had accrued 10 league titles, though none since 1936, and 7 FA Cups; in the almost 60 years since then, Sunderland brought another FA Cup win to the table, while Newcastle have added 2 European trophies and Middlesbrough a League Cup. It is still a paltry harvest and a reason why Appleton’s view of football obsession and the idea that top quality centre forwards could be summoned by shouting down any pit shaft was challenged and examined by Harry Pearson’s brilliant, evocative encomium The Far Corner (1994), which is unquestionably my Desert Island book. Harry’s affectionate nostalgia is a beguiling love letter for a regional game that was about to change utterly and become unrecognisable to our grandfathers’ generation; new all-seater stadia, Sky money and local lads in the first team as rare as rocking horse shit. Has all of this change been for the better?  Try asking fans of Hartlepool, Darlington, Sunderland or Middlesbrough. Even those of Newcastle United aren’t having the best of times, despite the presence of Benitez in the home dugout at SJP.

Conditions do determine consciousness, meaning the current situation influences attitudes far more than fading memories of glorious failure and the excitement provoked by an unpredictable ride. The sense of bemused detachment and crippling alienation that both insidiously and exponentially grew to become general among north east football fans after the publication of The Far Corner is the overarching mood of Michael Walker’s 2014 book Up There; a sober and solemn assessment of football in the region he made his home after journeying from Belfast as an undergraduate in 1984. Walker, like Pearson and Appleton before him, tackles the crippling weight of excess emotional baggage that hampers any evaluation of the role of the game in the region’s psyche. He too is drawn in by the near mythic past of teams and players from the past: Victorian and Edwardian visionaries like James Allen and Colin Veitch, local legends, born and adopted, such as Raich Carter, Wilf Mannion, Hughie Gallagher and Jackie Milburn and those whose final curtain call was in days so recent the sound of terminal applause still hangs in the air; Juninho, Kevin Phillips, Alan Shearer. However, the difference between the boyish enthusiasm of Appleton and the charming, erudite romanticism of Pearson with the dour, pessimistic Schopenhauerian conclusions of the taciturn Ulsterman could not be more pronounced. For Walker, the era of prominence has passed and the final whistle is about to blow on any notion of the north east as the hotbed of soccer and it’s hard in many ways to disagree.

The autumn of 2017 sees few reasons for optimism regarding the future prospects of north east football. Newcastle may be seemingly settled mid-table in the Premier League, but the fractious non-relationship between Benitez and Ashley has the potential to disintegrate at any moment, at which point all bets on survival would be off. In the Championship, Middlesbrough have had a surprisingly slow start and lie outside the play-off spots, while Sunderland have endured a predictably tortuous run of form. Second Choice Simon was soon found out and Ellis Short seems determined to run the club into the ground, almost as a kind of punishment for being sold a dream that turned into a nightmare. Below that, we have to visit the Conference for other north east clubs, such has been the deterioration of fortunes of late; newly relegated Hartlepool are finding the going tough and poor, ignored Gateshead continue to bob along in their deserted and hated ground, to almost universal uninterest from the entire football fraternity in the region. Blyth, Darlington and Spennymoor are all doing alright, sitting top half of the Conference North, but the real success stories are South Shields FC; running away with the Evo Stik North and a game away from the FA Cup first round, in front of regular sell-out crowds of over 3,000.

Now, as someone who watches the grassroots game in preference to the sordid avarice of professionalism, I will admit that much of the information in the previous paragraph is second nature to me, because that’s the kind of football I enjoy. For your average fan of one of the north east Big Three, using that term advisedly, I accept that such knowledge may not be at their fingertips, which demonstrates my belief that while the non-league game is in rude health in this region (witness 8 FA Vase wins out of the last 9 for instance), the top level of the game is hitting its empty head against an unbreakable glass ceiling. Arguably Newcastle may have the potential to grow and actually win things (don’t laugh) if one of the shady, obscure potential takeover consortia succeed in ousting the loathed Ashley, but that day remains a long way off. At current levels of investment, they are probably slightly overachieving. Middlesbrough, partly because they’ve a sensible and sensitive owner who has ploughed his life savings into the club, offer the chance for stability in the region. Under Monk I see them as similar to West Brom; a club that may bounce between divisions for a few seasons, but will eventually learn a pragmatic approach, enabling them to remain in the top flight. It won’t be exciting, but the dogged functionalism of the club will suit the phlegmatic, cynical fan base on Teesside.

Sunderland are the ones who are in the gravest danger of succumbing to bleak oblivion. When Niall Quinn assembled the Drumaville Consortium to buy the club from Bob Murray, it wasn’t plain sailing immediately; indeed they lost 6 games in succession before Roy Keane was installed as manager and the Championship title was won at a canter. Back then, everything was set fair for Sunderland to move to another level; 48k crowds, including huge numbers flying over from Ireland for weekends on the batter and stellar signings like Darren Bent. Suddenly, the Irish economy went into meltdown and the Drumaville lads bailed, allowing the Capitalist Cavalry in the shape of Ellis Short to ride in and run the show. Unfortunately, other than a 10th place finish in 2010/2011 under Steve Bruce, the project never took flight. Successive managers in Martin O’Neill, Paolo Di Canio, Gus Poyet, Dick Advocaat, Sam Allardyce and finally David Moyes incompetently oversaw 9 relegation dogfights in 10 years, before last season’s dismal, deserved 20th place finish. With the club hundreds of millions in debt and Short unwilling to throw good money after bad, they are in grave danger of successive demotions and, perhaps of more pressing concern, of an imminent, potentially ruinous spell in administration. The worst part is that the club is a world away from attracting new buyers or investors. Unlike the toe-curling Benitez love in at SJP, Sunderland are seen as a toxic bad buy. With crowds almost halving (some to South Shields, some to Spennymoor but many to sofa or barstool) and those still attending adopting a dejected and confrontational mien from the first whistle, it is a poisonous combination not conducive to attractive football. Underachieving, unloved and on the verge of collapse; Sunderland FC act as a living metaphor for north east football over the last six decades since Arthur Appleton coined the phrase The Hotbed of Soccer. Chris Coleman looks to be a last, desperate, unconvincing throw of the dice; it worked in 1995 with Peter Reid, but Short may not have Bob Murray’s luck.

However, the north east’s relationship with football has not simply been about the clubs. Huge numbers of players have left their fireside to find fame far from their own native home: in the era when Appleton was writing, there were the Charltons, Geordie Armstrong, Howard Kendall and almost the entire Burnley first team, while Harry Pearson wrote his account, having seen David Armstrong, David Hodgson, David Mills and Mark Proctor depart his beloved Boro, not to mention a certain trio by the names of Beardsley, Gascoigne and Waddle sold by Newcastle United.  We’ve not even touched upon the roll call of Wallsend Boys’ Club alumni to have graced the highest echelons of the domestic and international game: Michael Bridges, Steve Bruce, Michael Carrick, Neil McDonald, Alan Shearer, Steven Taylor, Alan Thompson and Steve Watson for starters. Those lads who wore the famous yellow and green are graduates of the NE28 conveyer belt of talent; players who carried on the tradition of emerging from youth clubs. However, it’s a tradition limited to only the very best of the youngsters out there. Back in my day, I never knew anyone who played for anything other than the school team. I was aware of Redheugh Boys Club and another one at Wrekenton and there may have been Scouts, Boys’ Brigade or other paramilitary teams on the go, but they were never ideologically for me.

One of the most profound changes to the way the game is played over the past 50 years has been the evolution of how youngsters become involved, as the amount of organised junior league football has exploded in a manner unimaginable back in my youth. Then you waited until final year juniors and donned the mantle of representing the school; I still have photos of Falla Park’s 1974 team in our Birmingham City penguin kits. At high school, unless you were brilliant or incredibly hard, you didn’t get in the first team, but there were second and sometimes third XIs for the more Corinthian of us.

Growing up in Gateshead in the early 1970s we did actually play football all day, every day, whether that consisted of 15 or 20 a side games on various patches of grass with jumpers for goalposts, or individual games of gates or doors, depending whether we were in the front street or back lane, not to mention head tennis, kerbs, SPOT and a dozen other arcane pursuits designed to improve ball skills. After school each day, Saturday before we went to the match (if we were lucky or old enough), Sunday apart from when Shoot! was on, all through each and every holiday, all I remember doing with my free time before I went to secondary school was play football. Of course punk rock, underage drinking, heavy petting and mindless, destructive violence obviously came more to the fore as we subsequently matured.

Ignoring the risible folk devil canard of stranger danger, the single main reason kids don’t play football in the way we used to is the volume of traffic. There are so many cars on the road that many estates have had their green spaces tarmacked over and new builds don’t factor in the idea of communal play spaces. Instead, unless youngsters are lucky enough to have their own back garden, they’ll struggle to find local, safe spaces to kick a ball around. The longer this is the case, allied to the ever increasing array of technological toys available to bairns and kidults alike, the less likely we are to see the return of shirts versus skins pick-up games any time soon. Although as an aside, I must mention how my son and his mates, even when home from university, used to organise weekly kickabouts at Paddy Freeman’s Fields in High Heaton, whereby those in various kinds of Newcastle United shirts played against others attired in a dazzling array of La Liga tops. He was the agricultural stopper in the Athletic Club away strip incidentally.

The truly wonderful thing about north east youth football in 2017 is the enormous number of clubs, running a whole variety of male and female teams from under 6 to under 19, that are ensuring that if a kid really wants to play organised football then somewhere there is a team for them. Run entirely by volunteers, and massively improved in terms of spectator behaviour from the pushy parent millennium syndrome, teams train under floodlights on 4G in midweek and play Saturday mornings or Sunday early afternoon. Admittedly 99% of those playing do so for fun rather than out of ambition, but that’s what matters. If they can remain committed and focussed on the game then there will always be a level for them to play when they are older; just ask this recently retired 53 year old former Wallsend Boys’ Club Veterans keeper.

Where the north east remains a hotbed is, as ever, the grassroots game; the standard of the Northern League Division 1 has never been higher and the levels below this are benefitting from that fact. Sunday pub leagues continue to contract at an alarming rate, but once again social demographics influence this; young lads don’t drink in social clubs and they don’t have locals, so they’ve no loyalty when it comes to playing for them. Pubs and clubs are open all hours; the idea of kicking off at 10.30 on a Sunday morning is less than appealing to many. Also, the infrastructure and indeed the funding that the FA has put into charter standard leagues and clubs, seeking to support as many community outfits as possible, means there is administrative and technical support for anyone involved in local football, should they require it.

Alan Pardew is one of those figures who unites the whole region in abject contempt. Among his endless litany of publicity gaffes was the bizarre assertion that north east clubs couldn’t compete with the likes of Southampton, as they signed more middle class trainees than we did up here. Unless the Premier League is going to be decided in a manner reminiscent of University Challenge, then we may safely ignore his inane babbling. However, I would state that equality of opportunity is at the lowest level in this country than at any time post World War II. Consequently, a little economic positive discrimination for the blighted north east could well be in order. In my mind, the two things that would safeguard the future of north east football for future generations would be the installation of 2 floodlit, full size 4G pitches at every school in the country and a rolling programme of training current players to become accredited Level 1 and 2 coaches, as well as First Aiders, administrators and qualified officials. As a result, they’d have a stake and a reason to remain involved in the game as adults, regardless of their playing ability. Such initiatives would really give the region a sporting chance of being the hotbed of soccer for years to come.