Some more leisurely reading...

[AmericanMag 0]

Newcastle's tale of calamity doesn't deserve a happy endingThe madness at St James' has been self-inflicted and I won't be sad to see them relegated

Comments (187)

 

Buzz up!

Digg it

The best line in Mel Brooks' first and funniest film, The Producers (avoid remakes) comes after Zero Mostel's crooked producer and Gene Wilder's uptight accountant try to create a surefire flop by putting together the worst play, cast and director they can disinter. When they realise they have a runaway hit on their hands a horrified Mostel turns to Wilder and pleads: "Where did we go right?"

 

If Newcastle avoid relegation this weekend their supporters will be asking themselves the same question. Which is why, like many football folk, I will not be sorry if Newcastle are relegated on Sunday. After all, they have worked so single-mindedly and assiduously for this defining moment.

 

They have pieced together the wrong owners, the wrong executives, the wrong managers and the wrong players. When – by accident it seemed – they discovered that a brilliant goalkeeper was retrieving some of the many gaffes by their awful back four they flogged him to Manchester City.

 

The famously massed ranks of their supporters deserve more than this, even though they are flawed too, regarding United as a greater club than they truly are. Newcastle haven't won an important domestic trophy since 1955. This is a big-ish club, not one of the giants of the contemporary game.

 

The black and white replica shirts seem symbolically linked to another, black and white era, to Jackie Milburn and post-war rationing, that austere period in British life when, as our own Michael Billington observed in his terrific read, State of the Nation, it felt as though a great war had been lost instead of won.

 

But rations were never as tight as they now are in Toonland. For all that support just five games out of 19 have been won at home, 22 points taken out of a possible 57. They have conceded as many goals at home, 29, as they have away. And away from home they have won just twice.

 

If Newcastle fall this weekend don't praise their opponents, Aston Villa, or the desperate survival instincts of Middlesbrough, Sunderland or Hull. Newcastle should take all the credit for seeing their concentrated efforts achieve such an appropriate conclusion.

 

The shrewd guidance of Freddy Shepherd and now Mike Ashley (not forgetting the expert efforts of Dennis Wise, as executive director) have taken the club to this precipice.

 

Ashley may have led the club out of debt but he won't be remembered for that if he marches them into the Championship.

 

His biggest mistake, and there have been many, was the appointment of Wise, who chose not to live in the north-east and, ultimately, not even attend matches there. Wise, remember, bought Spanish flop Xisco for £5.8m and those summer purchases of Jonás Gutiérrez (£4.5m) and Fabricio Coloccini (£10m) are only remembered fondly by supporters of arch rivals Sunderland and Middlesbrough.

 

Now Alan Shearer, whose communication skills and tactical insight were closely guarded secrets during his sofa stint on Match of the Day, must rescue them. Shearer, remember, is their fourth manager this season.

 

When he arrived it was stated that he would be there for only eight games before returning to the warmth of the television studio, hardly a message to inspire an already demoralised club.

 

Just when Newcastle needed a football manager they turned instead to a personality, a former great player. Football management is littered with the failures of former great players, such as Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton, Bryan Robson and Milburn himself.

 

After Kevin Keegan, Joe Kinnear and Chris Hughton were unable to lift the club out of danger this season, Ashley turned, at the last minute, to a man who had never done the job before in his life and who had seemed singularly reluctant to take up the challenge.

 

Newcastle are a complete mess on and off the field, an object lesson in how a football club should not be run. Now they are looking to Michael Owen to save them, a striker so out of form that he has scored just once this year.

 

Which is why, if they do manage to get out of their desperate hole on Sunday – and they must get a better result than Hull – their supporters would be entitled to invoke the famous words of Mr Mostel.

 

Source

Edited May 22, 2009 by AmericanMag

[Asprilla 96]