bradley headstone
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Posted: April 15th 2008
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Our national obsession finds pubs and clubs throughout the land full of huddled figures contemplating the same questions, making the same statements and proffering the same old answers. All of which are generally discussed with a reverence usually saved for the great and the good, rather than the knackered and the grubby…as we tend to be.
I’d like to address three of those eternal, infernal suppositions…
‘…the English game is being ruined by foreign money’
‘If I had the money I’d…’
And
‘I’d rather my team played good football that be successful at any cost’
Now don’t go pretending that you’ve not used all the above at one time or another. If you really haven’t then I’m afraid I may be forced to suggest that you are not as committed as you thought.
I certainly subscribe to all three, like most of us I’m happy to blithely proffer opinion at the drop of a hat. Like most of us I tend to merrily change this opinion no matter how belligerent I was.
We the great unwashed can do this, we have no responsibility for seeing through our beery plans, so blue-sky, glass-bottom thinking is the order of the day. It’s amazing how often we end up with the same thoughts.
Until very recently I’d happily have joined in with the ‘English game being ruined by foreign money’ brigade. Its only when your team gets flooded by it that you find yourself re-appraising your position. I still shake my head at Arsenal fielding whole teams without a sniff of a British player (don’t give me the Walcott answer, he’s merely the fluffy rabbit tied to the front of their juggernaut) and I sincerely hope that wealth enables my team to build a future, not just buy Abramovich style success. Truth is in a choice between oblivion and overseas investment you’d sell your soul (It’s possible Manchester City actually have!)
It’s fairly hard to find anyone with any sense who would invest money in a football club. The days when your eight draws would come up and you’d invest your million in the local team have long gone. These days it would barely satisfy the administrators. Today’s investor has to be so rich that they have no real sense of reality, certainly no idea about how much they are worth.
Frankly, the last thing a football team needs is a fan in charge. For every Jack Walker there are dozens of once carefree souls, besieged behind fading hopes and their dreams in tatters. It doesn’t seem possible for a football club to survive on good intention and fingers crossed alone.
Part of the problem appears to be the increased expectation placed on the ‘fan’ in charge. They sweep in, full of bluster and energy. Three, four or five-year plans are sketchily outlined and there’s usually an ill-advised parade round the pitch. Next time you see it on the local news, try saying ‘Doooomed’ in a Fraser from Dads Army voice…works well.
I’ve witnessed it twice in the last few years, a fairly famous millionaire with a well known love of the club swept in promising to restore former glories. It went badly wrong, it cost him a lot of money and it’s took the club years to shake off much of what he presided over. He cannot not contemplate going near the team he supported in short pants ever again.
The second barrelled in during very different circumstances, local boy done good as they say. He was undone by the enormous financial difficulties the club was wallowing in at the time. Despite, (or possibly because of) proving himself a true fan by fighting in an away directors’ box, he too divides opinion. There are few who’ll thank him for his efforts.
So, no! I think when my lottery numbers come up I’ll try to ensure it ‘doesn’t change me’; I believe that’s the form on those occasions.
The most obvious current Owner/Fan is Mike Ashley, the former Sports Direct entrepreneur who now presides over the Barnum and Bailey of the Premier League, Newcastle United.
It’s probably ill-advised to base any argument on the goings on in that Geordie wonderland, I’m sure a court of law would rule any such evidence inadmissible because it’s no longer based in reality.
Ashley is obviously a very clever man, selling his business at the very height of its value. He must also have a very wicked sense of humour…everything going on at the ‘toon at the moment must be an elaborate Joke!
There’s no doubt he was sold a dud, Fab Freddy had exited stage left (in fits of laughter), Newcastle were months into a five-year plan under the auspices of Big Dour Sam. Ashley played the part of life-long fan in clover, white charger carrying him in to save the day, turn the lumbering ship around…bring back the good times.
All Black and White striped boxers and Broon Ale drinking thud and blunder, he stood shoulder to shoulder with his potato-headed compardres. The only surprise was he kept his newly purchased shirt on. His boys ground out results, settling on the shoulders of those who would contest the all-important UEFA places. Not a bad start you’d think.
Not if you bled Black and White though, a cardinal sin was being perpetrated. Allardyce’s Newcastle was not playing the carefree attacking football that Newcastle United fans expect and more intriguingly, deserve.
I can understand the fans harking back to those heady days of Keegan, Ginola and Darren Peacock. I can appreciate why Big Sam became the villain, even though Dalglish, Gullit, Robson, Souness and Roeder were equally as culpable. What I can’t fathom is why Newcastle United fans believe that they alone should receive any dispensation from all footballing logic. Why do they alone believe that time can be turned back. But in the face of all that logic, all that common sense and the laws of Physics, that’s what they tried to do.
Ashley buckled, Allardyce was out, speculation ran wild, Shearer, Mourinho, Indiana Jones, who would be next to take up the ultimate poisoned chalice.
Like a true man of the people, Ashley thought the unthinkable, he dared to dream, If he’d commissioned some kind of car crash telly Football Manager idol, he could not have produced a more dramatic winner…King Kev was back! Grown men cried, children saw their stoic fathers display long hidden emotion…the rest of the country held its breath…
…And then broke down in uncontrollable laughter. Like Staedler and Waldorf, we heaped scorn on their dreams, belittled their aspiration and marvelled as years of careful brow beating of the arts council for theatre funding for the North East was swept away by careless words, by the boy who never grew up from his bubble.
The effect was instantaneous, from being a team with limited attacking potential, occasionally prone to defensive lapses, Newcastle became a schoolyard eleven, frantically chasing the ball, defending occasionally and only in packs of one. From being a team that fought Arsenal to a draw at St James Park they became a team that collapsed at the sight of a neat one-two.
All involved at Newcastle were quick to lay blame, that b****** Allardyce, the toon PR machine kicked in. Despite being able to turn previously lazy idlers like Campo and Anelka into tireless runners for his previous team, whispers about the lack of fitness in the squad began to emanate. The size of the squad was questioned, yet a transfer window came and went with minus one being the new regime’s total. Most damning of all was the huge backroom team now in place. What need had Keegan for sports science, Opta index, performance analysis or psychologists. Indeed, this is King Kev so coaching, the reserve team and presumably oranges at half time were out too!
The A team were back, chief bet-placer and bloke who gets the chips, Terry Mac was back at his side and the results continued to slide.
As I write this Newcastle have climbed away from their precarious dangling over the relegation precipice, they’ll stay up, but it’s happened as a result of others’ ineptitude rather than their own efforts. There are at least three worse teams and anyone playing Tottenham since February must have fancied their chances.
It’s had an effect on me though, it made me reappraise my wish that my team go out and play football at any cost. I still draw the line at hoofing the ball forward harrying for a mistake but I’ve decided that I’d like my teams to set up flexibly, I want to appreciate a team that can pass the ball, defend well when needs must and make the most of the opportunities they create. I want a team that responds to circumstance, can change the pace of a game. More than anything I want intelligent football. I don’t think that’s what they want in Newcastle.
The game moved on and left Keegan behind, stood in the rain at Wembley in 2001, he recognised that, out of his league and beyond his ability he stepped down. Subsequently at Manchester City he merely confirmed his own limitations. He walked away from football because he knew and we knew he had nothing left to offer.
So why is he back? Obviously Ashley’s visits to the terraces didn’t help, but surely he can’t have amassed such a fortune by accident. Maybe he truly is a fan, blinded by the collective madness that has descended on Tyneside. Maybe he’s not interested at all!
Rumours continue to circulate, Ashley is looking to sell, an ex-Tottenham director makes the decisions, and Keegan is broke and only came back for the fat contract. Whatever the truth I wouldn’t be surprised if any of them were not in their roles next season.
Maybe the only solution for Newcastle is relegation, a Leeds-esque plummet down the leagues. It was at their previous lowest ebb that the right man came at the right time and led them forward. Their gates would fall to the real 15,000 or so hard core, the fantasists and dreamers would drift off to the pub (or the theatre) and the real Newcastle United could build again.
Or…
…Isn’t this a situation where you could make a real argument for faceless foreign investment, a DIC would be ideal. Pots of money, not tied up in the fading romance of the place, wanting nothing but success at any costs. There would be no standing in the home end, no pandering to fantasy football and no Byzantine (brackets) executive boardroom structure. Then you might find Newcastle really competing.
So when that horse comes in, the bingo goes well or the rich Auntie dies, buy yourself a decent season ticket, dig deep for raffle tickets for community development and spend freely in the club shop. Welcome the diversity of the beautiful game as the Armenian weapons dealer board member is shaking hands with your new Polynesian striker on the telly and nod appreciatively as your team celebrate the second goal by not letting the opposition have the ball for ten minutes.
Unless you are a Newcastle Fan! For you none of the above is relevant.