Ashley: The Wally with the lolly

[Jimbo 133]

What a magnificent week for the Premier League. Even Lewis Carroll would have found his ability to comprehend the surreal stretched beyond breaking point. A neverending version of Alice in Wonderland featuring 25 Mad Hatters and no Alice; nobody to say: “But you’re all just a pack of cards.”

 

Such was the pitch of daily entertainment that Jamie Carragher's contributional most went unnoticed. He, like so many of his equally articulate colleagues, has delivered to the world a book, an autobiography. In it, the scouse monkey admitted to not caring very much when he played for England and would console himself upon defeat by saying: “At least it wasn’t Liverpool.” I think that's what he said. I saw only the English translation of his book, so maybe I’m misrepresenting him. If you want a clue as to why the national team is so useless, there it is. England has become an irrelevance to Premier League players, almost an encumbrance.

 

It was elsewhere the real fun was to be had, from the old academy of football, Upton Park, via a bewildered Eastlands to that unconfined ship of fools that is St James’ Park. West Ham, enjoying their best start to a top division campaign in nearly a decade, somehow engineered the resignation of their manager, Alan Curbishley, by the expedient of selling his players having apparently told him they wouldn’t. Let’s be clear, Curbishley had his faults – a tendency to buy players who would easily qualify for the Paralympic Games being the first and most signal of them. The board might have had a glimmering of this when, for reasons which quite elude me, they sacked Alan Pardew.

 

It seems the manager had a strip torn off him by one of his players in the dressing room following West Ham’s fortuitous victory over Blackburn last week. Curbishley had ventured to suggest that his team had seemed intent, for the second time in three games, on chucking away a two-goal lead. What nerve, what cheek, of a manager to say such a thing! One player shouted at him that the team had “kept you in a job” by their magnanimity in occasionally contriving to win matches. This was the club captain, Lucas Neill, who was well renowned for his consuming arrogance even when he played for Millwall. The same Lucas Neill awarded an outrageous wage packet by Curbishley when he arrived from Blackburn and which he earned by sitting on his arse for three months with a knee injury.

 

That’s how top players are these days; they cannot be gainsaid, even by their bosses. And a good performance is an act of generosity, a benediction for which lowlife managers and fans alike should be extremely grateful. I’d be wary, if I were Slaven Bilic, of coming to Upton Park, caught between moderate players who think they are supermen and a board which, when you’re not looking, will flog your entire defence to your future relegation rivals. Stay in the sun, Slaven, forget the money.

 

West Ham seems an oasis of sanity and rational behaviour compared to that hilarious narrenschiff chugging ever onward toward oblivion that is Newcastle United. The speed with which the city's favourite son, Alan Shearer, ruled himself out of the manager’s job gives some indication of the depths to which the club has sunk. Would you agree to become the manager knowing that all the while you would have perched on your shoulders like a malevolent little goblin, a certain Dennis Wise? A man who would seem to take great pleasure in doing precisely the opposite of what you wanted whenever the opportunity arose.

And all the while, swilling his “alcohol-free” lager from the stands, a Buckinghamshire pile-em-high-sell-em-cheap wideboy masquerading as a real, proper Geordie, Mike Ashley - whay ay hinny, thou shall have a fishy on a little dishy, y’knaa. Mr Ashley wears a Newcastle shirt with 17 on the back out of respect for someone he considers to be a colossus of modern footballing excellence - er, Alan Smith. That sort of says it all. Again, Kevin Keegan has his faults - there's no messiah in here, just a mess, etc - but at least he has a soupcon of principle in a game that seems increasingly devoid of just that. What did Ashley think would happen when, two weeks after appointing Keegan to much popular local acclaim, he imposed the machinations of Wise upon him? Did he think Keegan would say, “Well, hell, Mike, that's a terrific idea, I wish I’d thought of that”?

 

As Shearer pointed out, managers should be principally responsible for identifying the players to be bought and sold and communicating that advice to the chief executive who would, budget permitting, expedite such matters. Wise and Keegan were always likely to pull in different directions; few football experts will ever agree with one another on the competing qualities of players, the patent uselessness of Alan Smith excepted.

 

In between the sniggering, you feel for Newcastle; a fine city perpetually let down by its football club. Earlier in the week a national newspaper asked the question: “Is Newcastle Britain’s worst-run club?” To general astonishment, only 83% said yes. You wonder what club those other 17% had in mind, unless it was Ashley multiple voting. Now, apparently, he’s had enough and is looking to sell up, leaving Newcastle managerless, with a bizarre and untenable executive structure and the lovely Joey Barton waiting in the wings for his two-footed comeback tackle against some hapless Mack-em player in the middle of October. All going swimmingly, then.

 

Somewhere in this madness, spare a thought for the confused supporters of Manchester City, about to be swallowed up by a loaded desert territory. Most of the phone-in shows I heard revealed a certain ambivalence among the Kippax faithful; they like the tantalising idea of out-muscling their Manchester rivals (and the scousers), but are not too sure about playing their home games in Abu Dhabi. That was one of the suggestions mooted by the Arabs, and which I hope they will run by the FA at some point in time, but I suppose the FA would give them the all clear; after all, if they’d swallow the claims of Thaksin Shinawatra to be a decent businessman with the interests of Manchester City at heart, there is pretty much nothing they will not swallow. Half-time stoning to death of adulterers? I suppose that would lift the spirits as Ronaldo arrives for the cost of an African country’s GDP.

 

All this stuff, in a week. Shows the health and vibrancy of the Premier League, I suppose the administrators would argue. Its unpredictability, its attraction to foreign investors. Yeah, right. Well, I’m off down The Den.

[Fop 1]

you would have perched on your shoulders like a malevolent little goblin, a certain Dennis Wise? A man who would seem to take great pleasure in doing precisely the opposite of what you wanted whenever the opportunity arose.

 

[Tom 13918]

A very good article but unfair in places.

 

I very much doubt Britain's worst run club could sustain 16 years in the top flight...

[Guest alex]

A very good article but unfair in places.

 

I very much doubt Britain's worst run club could sustain 16 years in the top flight...

I think he touches on a few things but I don't think it's anything special. Mind, I can't stand Rod Liddle, whether he's writing about Football or Politics or whatever else (much to my annoyance he seems to taking over the Sunday Times) all he really does is take the piss without providing much insight. This is one of his better efforts tbf.

[Ayatollah Hermione 12941]

Must have had a fair few lollies, the fat twat.

[Asprilla 96]

He's a smug cockend. Well done Rodney.

[ewerk 27118]

Liddle having a go at Newcastle? Never!

 

The only reason that he's actually hit a few truths here is because he trawls through every single negative and given the current state of things a few of them are facts. Otherwise he's an odious little cunt who often gives us undeserved shit.