Brucellosis

Congratulations to Mr Fishcake & Chips for an amazing start at a packed SJP today. You've ruined my birthday you do realise? Anyway here's an article about Brooooth I've penned for the new issue of STAND, which is out soon -:

At the start of a season where Wigan Athletic have revealed a new pie-themed mascot, it seems somehow fitting that a former manager of theirs, who appears to be the walking embodiment of a diet based on Greggs’ steak bakes topped up with 3 fishcake suppers a day, has found himself in the news in an area where yesterday’s papers aren’t merely chip wrappers, but historical artefacts to be pored over in search of meaning in an anarchic world. Steve Bruce, a man whose managerial efforts have united supporter opinion in the cities of Birmingham and Sheffield, is now in the SJP hotseat, doing his best to reap waves of contempt from fans athwart both the Tyne and the Wear. The real story, of course, is just how do Newcastle United manage to unfailingly make themselves the laughing stock of the football world each summer?

Last season ended on something of a high; an absolute thrashing of already relegated Fulham on the final day, with 4,000 away fans arriving on the Middlesex station in a mass flotilla of booze cruise party boats. All of them plastered; all of them singing the name of Rafa Benitez. The Magpies’ second season back in the Premier League had followed the pattern of the first; relative inaction and radio silence for the majority of the summer, panic buys of a series of relatively unknown C list players with the deadline looming, dismal early season form, Benitez absolving himself of all blame for the hideous anti-football on display and suggesting it would take a miracle to survive, humiliating losses in the Cups, then a post-Christmas purple patch that sees previously unheralded signings, presumably now sufficiently moulded into the Benitez method, play like Champions League candidates, resulting in mid table security that is gratefully gobbled up by unquestioning replica-clad adherents. Rinse and repeat on a slo-mo rollercoaster of mediocrity, with the ground almost always selling out, as there are 40,000 happy clappers, prepared to watch whatever is placed in front of them and 5,000 malcontents squaring the circle, without a hint of irony, by abusing Mike Ashley and simultaneously lining his pockets. That said, the smaller than usual away following to a friendly at Hibs disgraced themselves with pro Yaxley-Lennon songs, showing that if you scrape away all the decent sorts among the support, only the dross remains.

This summer, something changed at NUFC. Everyone knew Benitez’s contract was up on June 30^th, so the logical assumption, bearing in mind the labyrinthine renewal discussions had been on-going for almost a year, was that Rafa would get his way and win this battle of wills by signing an improved deal. Of course, most fans believed this improved deal would be focussed on more cash for players, not a reputed 25% hike for El Jefe, who was already trousering £6m per annum. There had been whispers and rumours, growing louder and more pervasive by the day, that an impasse had been reached and Benitez had cleared his desk at the training ground, so the announcement on June 24^th that he wouldn’t be the manager next season, wasn’t entirely unexpected. Cue a period of intense and undignified public mourning on social media; the premature adulation afforded to Benitez for failing to prevent relegation and sleepwalking to the Championship title playing turgid, safety-first football regardless of opponent, then 2 seasons of treading mud in the top flight meant all logical criticism went out the window, to the extent that anyone questioning any aspect of Rafa’s rule was immediately branded an Ashley apologist.

It is an oft repeated accusation in the bargain bucket sections of the media that Newcastle United fans are delusional in wanting top 6 football whatever the cost. Of course, that is aberrant claptrap; where Newcastle fans are actually delusional is in terms of accepting a 10 game streak without winning a game from the start of last season, including 5 successive home defeats, was nothing to do with the manager who picks, trains and coaches the team, but everything to do with the owner. Benitez, in the main, sleepwalked his way through the Newcastle job and it shouldn’t go unnoticed that his salary-doubling £12m a year job in China was announced within a week following his departure from Newcastle, where he’d not been able to put pen to paper on a new deal after 8 months of interminable wrangling over the small print.

If Twitter were the real world, we’d have been involved in a bloody Civil War since the day of the Brexit referendum. However, it isn’t reality, which is why the grammatically offensive venting of a few thousand NUFC supporting hotheads around the #BoycottArsenal hashtag will never amount to anything more than a hill of beans. Let’s be clear about this; Mike Ashley is a toxic and pernicious influence on Newcastle United and it is my fondest wish that the club were rid of him and 100% supporter owned. I have no intention of defending him, mainly because I have long since given up on even trying to understand the motives for anything he does. Remember, the whole club were outed as liars when Keegan took them to court; I’ve not seen anything in Ashley’s conduct over the past decade to suggest he’s made a 180 degree auto da fe.  With Benitez I presume it was Alpha Male versus Alpha Male Plus in a stare-out contest that the owner simply wasn’t prepared to lose, whatever the consequences. Indeed, with Benitez out the way, it was far easier to sign the likes of Joelinton, who is the club’s most expensive signing ever, Allan Saint-Maximin, also on a 6 year deal, and Jetro Willems on loan, not because Steve Bruce is a fan of these players, but because he’s the lowest-paid boss in the top flight and has, same as Steve MacClaren, accepted the emasculating title of Head Coach.

It is impossible not to view this mini spending spree as anything other than a two-fingered salute to Benitez and the supposed Emirates-based consortium that have joined another in the tiresome list of chancers who’ve utterly failed to put together a credible bid to buy the club over the past decade and more. Therefore, instead of exchanging Rafa for Jose Mourinho, in comes exactly the sort of fella you’d want in your corner, armed with his own big plate, at an all you can eat buffet; Steve Bruce.

Looking at it dispassionately; one can understand the fury of Sheffield Wednesday. The Owls bent over backwards to accommodate Bruce when he was appointed, giving him time off to grieve for his parents. It seems worse than shoddy to walk out on them 4 months later, just because a top flight job becomes available, whatever guff and spin you want to apply to Bruce’s roots in the east end of the Toon. Compare this with how Benitez stood up for his principles; £8m a year or I’m off and he was. Now we have a bloke who, like a fat Alan Pardew or Tony Pulis with Kevin Whately’s voice, has taken mediocrity to a whole new level during 11 jobs at 10 clubs over 20 years. He’ll win nowt, fail to rock the boat and get the boot (rightly so) if he takes Newcastle down. I doubt any of this will bother him or, sadly, most of the bored-to-tears diehards in the stands either.