Newcastle dominate Sundays opinion pieces

[Robster]

All those points in your sig there NM, thats what I want the papers, the TV, the Radio and the fans of all the country's other clubs that write and phone in, to try and explain away.

 

I shall be waiting a long time I think

[NJS]

Its interesting that we're on average 5th in the PL but all those articles dismiss us as a mid table club who have no right to expect anything else

 

Are we allowed to aspire to be 5th?

 

 

On average 5th in the epl? how?

 

Its based on points I think - table in one of those articles above ^^^

 

Wedon't come on average 5th every season, though.

 

Our target should be solid top 6, then hopefully a push onwards from there.We ARE a mid table side, though, for now.

 

Going by the goldfish span of the sky football fan then we are mid-table - my point was that even over a recent in football terms period of the PL's existence we are the closest to the infamous big four.

 

I realise our next task is to get up to a level of 5th/6th/7th but that doesn't stop us from saying thats the least we should aspire to imo.

 

[Northern Monkey]

Its interesting that we're on average 5th in the PL but all those articles dismiss us as a mid table club who have no right to expect anything else

 

Are we allowed to aspire to be 5th?

 

 

On average 5th in the epl? how?

 

Its based on points I think - table in one of those articles above ^^^

 

Wedon't come on average 5th every season, though.

 

Our target should be solid top 6, then hopefully a push onwards from there.We ARE a mid table side, though, for now.

 

Going by the goldfish span of the sky football fan then we are mid-table - my point was that even over a recent in football terms period of the PL's existence we are the closest to the infamous big four.

 

I realise our next task is to get up to a level of 5th/6th/7th but that doesn't stop us from saying thats the least we should aspire to imo.

 

 

No, going on ecent seasons, the squad we havem past few managers, we ARE mid table,. We aren't a big club, but we could bem if we do what we both agree we should aim for.

[Northern Monkey]

All those points in your sig there NM, thats what I want the papers, the TV, the Radio and the fans of all the country's other clubs that write and phone in, to try and explain away.

 

I shall be waiting a long time I think

 

I'm afraid you will.

[Kitman]

Lovejoy's piece is particularly corrosive.  Show me a single toon fan who thinks we are on a par with Man Utd or Liverpool.  As for the stats on Man City/toon attendances, iirc those stats are complete rubbish.  I find it disappointing the way the press re-circulate opinion as fact until it becomes established in people's minds as received wisdom. 

 

The press really hate us and people like Lovejoy and Louise Taylor can print their outrageous garbage and get away with it, and even worse other clubs' fans believe it.  At the same time SSN's editorial policy humiliates us by only showing mongs' who you wouldn't ask for directions to the Haymarket, let alone their views on the next manager. 

 

We're paying the price for the PR disasters of the old regime imo.  There's a hell of a job on to repair the club's PR now.

[NJS]

 

No, going on ecent seasons, the squad we havem past few managers, we ARE mid table,. We aren't a big club, but we could bem if we do what we both agree we should aim for.

 

Bollocks its only 4 years since we finished s 4-3-5 sequence and have a 7th 2 years ago. Man City, Villa and Pompey are standard mid-table - we aren't.

 

Also saying "we aren't a big club" based on this year and the previous 2 or 3 is beyond stupid.

 

 

[Northern Monkey]

Lovejoy's piece is particularly corrosive.  Show me a single toon fan who thinks we are on a par with Man Utd or Liverpool.  As for the stats on Man City/toon attendances, iirc those stats are complete rubbish.  I find it disappointing the way the press re-circulate opinion as fact until it becomes established in people's minds as received wisdom. 

 

The press really hate us and people like Lovejoy and Louise Taylor can print their outrageous garbage and get away with it, and even worse other clubs' fans believe it.  At the same time SSN's editorial policy humiliates us by only showing mongs' who you wouldn't ask for directions to the Haymarket, let alone their views on the next manager. 

 

We're paying the price for the PR disasters of the old regime imo.  There's a hell of a job on to repair the club's PR now.

 

Agreed, but we do ourselves no favours. We had fans, THIS PRE SEASON, saying we'd a great chance of ebing above Arsenal.

 

And we have soem now claiming Viduka is top class, etc.

 

We make OURSELVES look stupid, and we make it easy for others to mock us too.

[Thespence]

From Mondays papers:

 

It was a throwaway remark but it carried within it a damning indictment. "We seem to be becoming like Newcastle," said Liverpool's veteran centre-half, Sami Hyypia. "Every time you pick up a paper, there seems to be something new."

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=A1YourView&xml=/sport/2008/01/14/sfnmid114.xml

 

 

 

[Guest Alan Shearer 9]

If I was Maradona I would like to repeatedly volley balls at high speed into Hyppia's face

[Northern Monkey]

If I was Maradona I would like to repeatedly volley balls at high speed into Hyppia's face

 

I think someone already has. Those heavy old balls with the laces in, that used to absorb all the water until they weighed more than Mick Quinn.

[magorific]

Not sure if already posted elsewhere. Decent read though.

 

 

 

Now it’s time for Ashley to deliver Jan 13 2008

 

 

 

 

By Neil Farrington, Sunday Sun

 

 

JOURNALISTS and pundits are often accused of sitting in ivory towers. Right now, many of them are on another planet.

 

It’s up to those of us at ground zero amid the fall-out of another fine mess at St James’s Park to tell it like it is regarding Newcastle United.

 

That would be the least the right-minded majority of the club’s fans deserve even if they were not being miscast as the villains in Tyneside’s now annual alternative panto.

 

Discerning myth from reality in football’s nudge and wink world these days can be so difficult that the dressing up of speculation as gospel truth has become accepted practice.

 

But dressing up ill-informed, lazily- delivered and downright offensive opinion as fact, when the facts are staring you in the face, is inexcusable.

 

 

 

 

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And the facts are not that Newcastle’s fans hounded Sam Allardyce out of a job; not that the terrace heroes of the Magpies’ lengthy tale of woe are the villains of this particular sorry chapter.

 

 

I believe the most basic facts are these: Mike Ashley sacked Sam Allardyce by proxy, stripping credibility from chairman Chris Mort in the process – and from Newcastle United in his timing.

 

 

And it is up to Mike Ashley to deliver now.

 

 

To deliver genuine support to his manager – financial and emotional.

 

 

To deliver him much more than lip service, a relative pittance in the transfer market and then the sack on the flimsy premise that the fans demanded it.

 

 

But first and very much foremost, to deliver a manager.

 

 

And what price that search, because of Ashley’s aforementioned ill-timing, becoming an ever more humbling wild goose chase?

 

 

Even before they were persuaded to pursue a spiv by another spiv (Paul Kemsley), Newcastle – in ‘Arry parlance – had done ‘emselves up like a kipper.

 

 

It seemed inconceivable that Ashley would sack Allardyce in mid-season without having a replacement not so much lined up as in the bag.

 

 

Inconceivable, because the timing of the axe was always likely to send the majority of leading managers in gainful employment running for the hills.

 

 

Yet lo and behold, Ashley did just that, and has thus plumbed new depths of embarrassment few thought possible for a club whose stock already appeared at rock bottom.

 

 

In any event, he should have given Allardyce a season or no time at all (dismissing him at the off – on the basis that he wasn’t his choice of manager – would have been marginally more credible than fudging things until January).

 

 

But in the event of not having Sam’s successor onside? What Ashley has done beggars belief.

 

 

Yes, if you are looking for a villain, look no further than, err, Hong Kong.

 

 

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll shed no tears for Allardyce. After promising beginnings, his tactics and his players proved as incompatible as our sympathy and his multi-million pound pay-off.

 

 

But the realities of his reign have been lost amid the blame game played in his wake.

 

 

And while it’s bad enough that outsiders are pinning Allardyce’s problems on supporters, it’s far worse if Ashley would have us believe the same.

 

 

Not that that is the only work of fiction being penned amid another tawdry chapter in Newcastle’s lurid recent history.

 

 

So let’s separate the lies from the truth.

 

 

FICTION: Ashley acted in response to a “baying mob” of fans who “must be proud of themselves” for creating “another fine mess” (© Brian Woolnough, Daily Star) and “are living a very old dream” (© Steven Howard, The Sun).

 

 

Ashley’s own mucker Kemsley (am I the only person uneasy that a spiv who guest stars on The Apprentice, not to mention gets embarrassingly rumbled tapping up a foreign manager, appears to have a big say in the future of Newcastle United?) also made out that his mate was merely giving the punters what they want.

 

 

FACT: Other than for 20 minutes of a performance against Liverpool which had to be seen to believed, there was no baying mob.

 

 

Not, that is, unless an away end singing “Big Sam’s black and white army” three days before his sacking fits the description.

 

 

Many fans thought Allardyce could get it right, and even most of those who didn’t recognised he had to be given a chance.

 

 

And why, if Ashley acted on behalf of the supporters, did he then pursue a manager few of them wanted?

 

 

I’d also like to ask the likes of Woolnough and Howard why they don’t look across London for supporters who do deserve a club in crisis.

 

 

But I guess to take Chelsea’s “faithful” to task for taunting Avram “two defeats in 26” Grant would be to s*** on one’s own doorstep.

 

 

Newcastle fans? They are at fault – but only in continuing to turn up.

 

 

Allardyce, as the contrary Kemsley also pointed out, was not Ashley’s appointment. As such he was always on borrowed time, with his meagre £9 million spending money last summer now seen to add up to nothing more than a sop from a billionaire going through the motions.

 

 

We just didn’t know how little borrowed time.

 

 

FICTION: The Magpie “mob” is baying for Alan Shearer to succeed Allardyce.

 

 

FACT: This fits perfectly with the daft, insular Geordie stereotype so beloved down south. It’s also nonsense.

 

 

A mere sprinkling of sane supporters apart, it’s the lowest common denominator of Geordie who is baying for Big Al – the doltish vocal minority sad enough to hang around St James’s Park on weekdays and do their performing seal act when the Sky cameras turn up.

 

 

As for Sky’s own Andy Gray writing “as for the Geordie fans, you will not please all of them unless the new man is Shearer”, who needs an ivory tower when a TV gantry is far enough from reality?

 

 

FICTION: Newcastle United are not a big club, despite their fanbase.

 

 

FACT: The journalists who make this claim have reported on nothing else but Newcastle United since Allardyce’s sacking. Enough said.

 

 

So what now?

 

 

Well, whichever manager can be persuaded by Ashley that he isn’t a trigger- happy tyrant stands to be left exposed if Ashley fails to back him with hard cash rather than what, to him, amounted to the loose change he gave Allardyce.

 

 

Indeed, the new manager will do well even to make good the refurb begun by Big Sam these last few months.

 

 

Ashley allowed Allardyce to build half a team, and may find that completing the job is not as simple as getting a different site foreman on board, not to mention discover that unwanted Premier League players don’t shift as easily as replica shirts.

 

 

And the billionaire’s obligations extend ever more obviously beyond his current cheerleading role when you appraise Mort’s current standing.

 

 

If, as seems the case, he had such little inkling of Ashley’s decision that he was negotiating deals for Big Sam’s transfer targets on the afternoon of his dismissal, Mort has never looked more like a puppet chairman.

 

 

No, in going from Fred the Fan to Grim Reaper this week, Tyneside’s favourite billionaire put his own neck squarely on the block.

 

 

The new manager is “his” man, so he is his responsibility.

 

 

Time for Mike Ashley to prove to fans for whom the club is a birthright whether Newcastle United is his hobby or a vocation.