George Caulkin

[Si]

There being no Football Ramble in there is a bit ridiculous.

Genuinely baffled

[Jordan]

There being no Football Ramble in there is a bit ridiculous.

Genuinely baffled

I've really gone off it lately. Just seems rammed with adverts and Luke is incredibly annoying. Guardian and Totally Football are much better imo.

[Fugazi]

Not listened to it for years, but I was never keen on Luke.

[Guest firetotheworks]

I didn't really like him at first but I like him now. He does hog the mic a bit mind. The John Fantastic one recently was great.

[loki679]

You's might want to vote for him...

 

https://t.co/zyEOD3LHsX

Squires too ftw.

 

Shearer for pundit too.  Jordan Nobbs for womens player of the year just for the name.

[Wilson]

This worry anyone else from the TF podcast with Caulkin re Rafas contract?

 

It's difficult to know what the club is thinking, but I think they'll be saying 'If you don't sign, we're gona struggle to sign players this summer, it'll be more difficult to sign players' ... When I say 'I think they'll be saying that', they are saying that

[Eddy Chibas]

This worry anyone else from the TF podcast with Caulkin re Rafas contract?

 

It's difficult to know what the club is thinking, but I think they'll be saying 'If you don't sign, we're gona struggle to sign players this summer, it'll be more difficult to sign players' ... When I say 'I think they'll be saying that', they are saying that

 

Yup, his connections & coaching pedigree (and that of his offsiders) has to be a drawcard when dipping into the loan market too. Especially when it comes to borrowing & blooding promising youngsters from clubs (like Chelsea) who have stockpiled that talent (where first team opportunities are limited, for now).

[Unbelievable]

This worry anyone else from the TF podcast with Caulkin re Rafas contract?

 

It's difficult to know what the club is thinking, but I think they'll be saying 'If you don't sign, we're gona struggle to sign players this summer, it'll be more difficult to sign players' ... When I say 'I think they'll be saying that', they are saying that

 

Yup, his connections & coaching pedigree (and that of his offsiders) has to be a drawcard when dipping into the loan market too. Especially when it comes to borrowing & blooding promising youngsters from clubs (like Chelsea) who have stockpiled that talent (where first team opportunities are limited, for now).

 

I don't think that is what is being inferred. Sounds like they are trying to pressure Rafa into committing early by laying any blame for failing to get in his transfer targets at the uncertainty of his own contract situation. Doesn't surprise me in the slightest, but he should flip the table on them and seek black on white assurances before committing. In any case, the mind games will be unbearable this summer. Wish the fat cunt would just sell up and leave already.

[Wilson]

That's it, Caulkin is saying that the club have said, if he doesn't sign a new contract, it will be hard to sign players.  Mike being Mike.

 

 

[Greg]

It's a stupid tactic. Even harder to sign players if Rafa walks. Even if that payment clause exists he can afford it and would make it back with his next job signing on bonus.

[xLiaaamx]

Oh goodie, now podcasts spread doom and gloom with unnerving accuracy. Might as welll delete the whole internet.

[Eddy Chibas]

This worry anyone else from the TF podcast with Caulkin re Rafas contract?

 

It's difficult to know what the club is thinking, but I think they'll be saying 'If you don't sign, we're gona struggle to sign players this summer, it'll be more difficult to sign players' ... When I say 'I think they'll be saying that', they are saying that

 

Yup, his connections & coaching pedigree (and that of his offsiders) has to be a drawcard when dipping into the loan market too. Especially when it comes to borrowing & blooding promising youngsters from clubs (like Chelsea) who have stockpiled that talent (where first team opportunities are limited, for now).

 

I don't think that is what is being inferred. Sounds like they are trying to pressure Rafa into committing early by laying any blame for failing to get in his transfer targets at the uncertainty of his own contract situation. Doesn't surprise me in the slightest, but he should flip the table on them and seek black on white assurances before committing. In any case, the mind games will be unbearable this summer. Wish the fat cunt would just sell up and leave already.

 

If there's an air of uncertainty hanging over the management situation (and the first team coaching set-up), whereby it's easier on his bank balance for Rafa to quit during the final year of his contract, then we're not really that attractive a loan destination. I think Rafa would have dipped into the loan market again, utilized his Chelsea connections once more. The club might well remind him of that, as a strong-arm tactic (to get him to re-sign).

 

To clarify, it will much easier for the club to lay blame on Rafa's doorstep, if any potential loan moves (involving cracking youngsters) fall through due to the uncertainty hanging over the first team's coaching set-up. I believe any gun being held to hos head, mindgames to force him into committing, doesn't solely apply to closing permanent transfer deals.

[Darth Crooks]

I am shock

[Stottie]

Interesting to hear on the TF podcast that Rafa was more wound up by Penfold etc.'s inability to sign players rather than any lack of a transfer kitty. He made it sound like there was money there, but the club was too busy with petty haggling battles to get the business done.

[Tiresias]

I kinda think that's the ploy though, pretend there's money but fail to spend it and blame it on the plonker. If ashley wanted to spend money he would. He doesn't.

[DJ_NUFC]

Interesting to hear on the TF podcast that Rafa was more wound up by Penfold etc.'s inability to sign players rather than any lack of a transfer kitty. He made it sound like there was money there, but the club was too busy with petty haggling battles to get the business done.

 

No shock there either. One of the major attributes of the Ashley regime, alongside malice, is incompetence.

[Unbelievable]

I kinda think that's the ploy though, pretend there's money but fail to spend it and blame it on the plonker. If ashley wanted to spend money he would. He doesn't.

 

[afar]

Don't think it's anything new to worry about here. Of course the club will play that card, that a manager with just a year left on his contract is not going to be as appealing to prospective transfer targets than one with 3 or 4 years left. It's true and a logical step to take in negotiations.

 

Don't think there is much of a story here, we all know Ashley is a cunt and will drive a hard bargain. We also know Rafa is not a first timer here, he'll have seen all this before.

 

The proof of their intentions will come out soon, if Rafa signs then they've obviously given him enough assurances to satisfy him, if that the case then rejoice (until of course Ashley breaks his promise), if he doesn't get those assurances then he won't sign and it'll be a matter of when not if he leaves.

[Darth Crooks]

Expect the absolute worst and you can only be happy with any slight positive.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

Expect the absolute worst and you can only be happy with any slight positive.

 

Definitely the way I’ve been for quite a long time.

[HaydnNUFC]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/newcastle-are-again-on-the-precipice-mike-ashley-knows-rafa-benitez-is-vital-now-he-must-show-it-8jdql6vpq

 

Newcastle are again on the precipice – Mike Ashley knows Rafa Benítez is vital, now he must show it

 

Some issues are so complex and so subtle, their scope and meaning so vast, that solving one problem merely opens the door to another. We are talking about Brexit, the Middle East or Russia and we are talking about that other great imponderable of the modern age: Newcastle United, WTF? Potential is a constant at St James’ Park but so, too, is uncertainty, a place where glory lies just beyond the fingertips.

 

This should be a moment of luxury, a top-half place in the Premier League a fine reward for the mountainous efforts of Rafa Benítez and his players, capped off by their stirring 3-0 victory over Chelsea. Not bad for a club marking their return to the division, where the manager is revered and a team has coalesced around admirable qualities like effort, youth, resilience and a hunger to improve. But there is always a but on Tyneside.

 

Supporters want Benítez to stay, the club want Benítez to stay and Benítez wants Benítez to stay, yet somehow the unknown clings to Newcastle like a Monday morning hangover. Picking away at positivity is that weary concern about ambition, about Mike Ashley’s confounding ownership model and whether it allows Benítez to transform Newcastle into the pulsing, driven institution it could be. Beyond that, there are complications with contracts and a prospective takeover.

 

At the heart of the matter is trust. For three transfer windows in succession, Benítez believes months of work in identifying players and setting up deals was wasted. Last January, he wanted a couple of new additions to guarantee promotion and got nothing. Last summer, he wanted Newcastle to act quickly to bring in a goalkeeper and a striker. Four months ago, he wanted to clear up that mess and was restricted to loans.

 

The record books show that Newcastle went up as champions and have now finished tenth, yet Benítez would argue that both accomplishments were jeopardised by the club’s lack of action. Why take that risk? And why make life more difficult for yourself, when some prudent investment would remove that stress and give you something to build upon? The table says one thing, but this has been a season of toil and it has taken a toll.

 

In a PR statement released on Sunday night — the sportswear retailer is away on holiday — Ashley was quoted as saying, “I will continue to ensure that every penny generated by the club is available to [benítez].” Full disclosure was assailed by a drive-by shooting. Every penny is impossible to quantify if Benítez is not told what that budget is (reports he will be given £80 million are laughed off by his advisors), nor if he cannot control when it is spent.

 

To re-tell a story for the umpteenth time, when Benítez attempted to sign Willy Caballero on a free transfer from Manchester City last summer, the club demurred. Newcastle already had too many goalkeepers. Benítez pushed and eventually Lee Charnley, the managing director, took it up with Ashley. No dice. Yet when they brought in Martin Dubravka in January, the manager’s logic immediately became obvious. Dubravka has changed the team.

 

At the same kind of time as Dubravka’s arrival, Charnley (for which, read Ashley), became fixated with extending Benítez’s contract. The timing was perplexing; the window was still open and was clearly the priority, Newcastle had relegation to avoid and, in any case, there was still 18 months remaining on his deal, which contains a prohibitive £6 million release clause. Benítez rebuffed those talks; let’s wait and see, he said.

 

With safety secured, negotiations have begun in earnest, but what should be a straightforward situation has become the opposite. There are dual strands, Benítez’s long-term future and the question of Newcastle’s goals, their end-game. Benítez does not want a repeat of this season, but how can he be persuaded things will be different? It is impossible to put a guarantee of funds into a contract, let alone a guarantee that he will be listened to. How can he trust them again?

 

From the club’s perspective, Benítez is Newcastle’s superglue, a manager of substance who will make his players better and keep them in the Premier League. But he wants to kick on. “It’s not enough just to finish 10th with four or five teams around you,” he said. “What I would like is to be sure the team is able to compete to finish above tenth. That means having the right quality, the right mentally and the right level through the whole season.”

 

Ashley may have made Newcastle financially self-sufficient, but there has been no investment on infrastructure. “If we want to achieve something, we have to understand the way to do that,” Benítez said. “You will need some money and you will need a way to spend that money. That is the way to improve things. The transfer window is now very expensive and you also have to invest in the academy and the training facilities. All these things to enable you to attract players.”

 

Through his representatives, Benítez has told Newcastle to demonstrate their commitment by showing they mean business this summer; do that and he’ll sign. Newcastle tell Benítez that unless he extends his deal they will struggle to convince players to join them, a claim that is undermined by the fact they are still up for sale. In those circumstances, what would Benítez be agreeing to?

 

Ah, the takeover. So where does that stand? Since Amanda Staveley’s three bids for Newcastle last year, an Ashley-sanctioned denunciation of talks being “exhausting, frustrating and a complete waste of time,” and her response in The Times, things have gone quiet. Once any prospective buyer could not influence January, it made sense to wait until Newcastle’s league status was determined.

 

There are a couple of other interested parties, it has been reported, but for now they have melted away. It is understood that Ashley has been attempting to drum up interest in the United States, but nothing has materialised. Staveley has been getting on with her life and business while keeping an eye on Newcastle, speaking to investors, drawing up proposals and talking to people who would become involved if her purchase ever went ahead.

 

There is an acceptance that after the acrimony of the winter, any new bid must be the right bid. There has been contact between members of Ashley’s and Staveley’s inner circle, but the message is confused. Ashley is desperate to sell one minute and then putting the price up to £400 million the next, according to a “source” who (again) spoke to Sky Sports News. Even allowing for an improved television deal, that figure is prohibitive. More limbo.

 

Meanwhile, a number of clubs in the Premier League are in the process of jettisoning managers and Benítez will be in demand, even at a cost of £6 million. Napoli, his old club, are interested, but he prefers to stay in England, close to his family. Newcastle should be the ideal outpost, a beacon for the city, where football is sacred, a place of history and tradition and yearning for better and where there is mutual adoration, but they are mired in contradiction.

 

A logjam can always be broken and perhaps one phone call is all it will take; more talks are scheduled for this week. Creative tension has been a theme over the past two years and in the end, Benítez has always stayed. To repeat: he is still under contract. Yet they stand again on a precipice and, as usual, they have been pushed there by Ashley, who has the wit to recognise that Benítez is vital but cannot make the next big leap. If the manager is so important, then prove it.

[Unbelievable]

[Twinport53]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/newcastle-are-again-on-the-precipice-mike-ashley-knows-rafa-benitez-is-vital-now-he-must-show-it-8jdql6vpq

 

Supporters want Benítez to stay, the club want Benítez to stay and Benítez wants Benítez to stay

 

Loved that line

[jimmymag]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/newcastle-are-again-on-the-precipice-mike-ashley-knows-rafa-benitez-is-vital-now-he-must-show-it-8jdql6vpq

 

Supporters want Benítez to stay, the club want Benítez to stay and Benítez wants Benítez to stay

 

Loved that line

Preferred the final sentence.

 

A disgrace that Rafa's not already signed up, but not surprising.

[LoveItIfWeBeatU]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/revealed-secrets-of-newcastles-physio-friend-and-agony-aunt-derek-wright-6xgpzwj3s?shareToken=76d4a680c2f8a204fb49ee6ee229f833

 

DEREK WRIGHT INTERVIEW

Revealed: secrets of Newcastle’s physio, friend and ‘agony aunt’ Derek Wright

 

George Caulkin, Northern Sports Correspondent

September 3 2018, 12:01am,

The Times

 

Derek Wright is standing in Newcastle United’s confessional. The club’s treatment room is a converted squash court, a sparse, clean space — cream paint, three sinks, a clock, six massage tables, trolleys stacked with strapping and acupuncture needles — but for the past 34 years, it has also been a house of secrets, a place of laughter, agony and pink tutus. A sanctuary.

 

Wright joined Newcastle in October 1984, a qualified physiotherapist just as the era of bucket and magic sponge was ending, but it was still just him, Jack Charlton and his assistant, divvying up jobs. The room he inherited was “dirty”, the only rehab equipment an “old, rusty multi-gym”, and now there is an ensemble of doctors, sports scientists, soft-tissue specialists and performance coaches.

 

Yet amid all this progress, old truths linger. Wright glances down. “It’s the hands,” he says. “They’re the most important tool.” He is 60 this year and for more than half of his life he has manipulated limbs, rebuilding footballers when they are broken, in their lowest moments, full of fear. “I’ve seen and heard some unbelievable things,” he says. “Most of it I’ll take to the grave.”

 

Others are willing to talk about Wright. “A brilliant man,” Alan Shearer, Newcastle’s record goalscorer, says. “A man you can trust. Brilliant at his job and the most down-to-earth guy you’ll ever meet. He helped me enormously with my injuries. A rock.”

 

“He was a big help when I was in a bad place in 2005,” Steve Harper, the longest-serving player in the club’s history, says. Out of the team, Harper wrestled with depression. “Del Boy”, as he calls him, was there. “He’s a proper unsung hero,” Harper says. “I love the bloke.”

 

Steve Howey played for England, a cultured centre half with a fickle body. “Derek always went above and beyond,” he says. There was a trip to the Lake District once, when they climbed fells and talked, lancing poison. “He was the best physio I ever worked with,” Howey says. “He was also a great friend.”

 

“Derek became my agony aunt as well as my physio,” Paul Ferris, a gifted but frail footballer, who later worked alongside Wright, writes in The Boy on the Shed, his beautiful book. “He was a gentle and caring man.” Under Kevin Keegan, the treatment room was “the heartbeat of the training ground”, Ferris says, somewhere players felt “free”.

 

Wright wears all this lightly. In some ways, he has been Newcastle’s priest, although the description makes him laugh. “I’ve never thought of it like that,” he says, “but it’s important you don’t just treat the injury. With Harps, I knew there was something wrong, so you cut it back to the bare bones and just talk.”

 

If this implies sombreness, Howey and Harper correct the impression; ask him about the tutu, they say. Wright squirms. “It was the players’ Christmas party — fancy dress — and they’d invited some of the staff,” he says. “This was in Kevin’s first spell as manager and that same day he’d said something to me about not getting too close to the players, not being the butt of their jokes.

 

“ ‘Bloody hell’, I thought, ‘I’m about to walk out of the training ground in a Marie Antoinette wig, a pink fairy costume and Dr Martens’. I put my outfit on and walked out. Apparently Kevin was standing at his window, shaking his head . . . Have you ever tried waving a taxi down with a magic wand?”

 

Wright is not small and, over the years, there have been bets with players about diets. Shearer’s retirement fund was a beneficiary. “There was one last season,” Wright says. “If I didn’t get down to a certain weight, I had to get a tattoo of Matt Ritchie. As the season went on I was thinking, ‘Christ, I’m going to lose’. I managed to get there just before the last game, but nearly killed myself in the process.”

 

Like Tony Toward, the team administrator, and Ray Thompson, the kitman, Wright is part of Newcastle’s fabric, binding a restless club together. “I worked out recently that I’ve had 28 managers, including interims and caretakers,” he says. “They’ve all been different. Those first five years under Kevin were amazing. We were winning every game. It almost felt easy. He was such a good man-manager.

 

“Under Kevin, Sir Bobby [Robson], Rafa [benítez] now, when the fans have that connection, it feels so powerful. Everyone is swept along. I remember standing at Durham station with Bobby and a train flew through, bending around the corner. He’d say ‘Derek, how does that train stay on the track?’ He wasn’t taking the mickey. He had that inquisitive nature. Football-wise, he was a genius.

 

“We have a manager now whose eye for detail is incredible. The injury record since he’s been here has been phenomenal and that’s down to his meticulous planning, when to use or rest players. At the same time, he has a depth of feeling. It means a lot. Some people have worked here who wouldn’t have a clue about tradition, about Geordie people.”

 

Newcastle is Wright’s club. A Co Durham lad, he signed for Arsenal as an apprentice, a “tackling full back, no finesse”, as he puts it. “I played about 40 or 50 games for the reserves, but didn’t make the grade. It was upsetting, but my parents were very good at guiding me and I didn’t just want to wallow in self-pity.”

 

Wright trained in remedial gymnastics, working with soldiers returning from conflict, then as a physio. He worked for the NHS in a miners’ rehab centre before being enticed to Fulham by Malcolm Macdonald, who he had known at Highbury.

 

“I was physio for the whole club but I was only 23 and still had a thought of ‘Can I make it’, so Fulham registered me as a player,” Wright says. “It was strange. I was playing reserve games and, if someone got injured, I’d run off the pitch, get my bag and run back on to treat them. You could see players looking at each other going, ‘What the hell’s happening here?’ ”

 

When Newcastle approached him, the “pull of home” was strong, he says. “I was physio for the first team, reserves and youth team and on top of that did the organisation for away trips. I’d sort the rooms, the meals, fax the hotel.

 

“I’d be in charge of the float, the money we’d take away with us for incidentals, fish and chips for the players on the way home. I’d get the float off Tony. When Jim Smith was manager, he used to like his red wine and I’d come back to Tony with no receipts and little things written on scraps of paper and he’d go mad. ‘I know, Tony, but Jim is spending £300 on red wine. What am I supposed to do?’

 

“When we were playing in London, I’d give two players a fiver between them to get a Burger King at Kings Cross. That was their post-match meal . . . Even in those days the players were on decent money and I remember one coming to me the week after a trip and saying, ‘Derek, you owe me £2.50 for the Burger King’. I’d forgotten to give it to him. I’d better not say who that was.”

 

As you would expect at Newcastle, there have been some baffling episodes. The treatment room became an epicentre of Shearer’s rift with Ruud Gullit, when the striker felt that he was being pushed out of the club. Ferris, who was particularly close to Shearer, “was sure the room was bugged”, Wright says. “So we had a look. We took the false tiles off the ceiling and I was up in the roof.

 

“Even in that moment, Paul took the chair away — he couldn’t resist — so I was stuck up there with my legs dangling down. We didn’t find anything, but it wasn’t a nice period. I told Paul at one point, ‘They’re gunning for you here’. They were trying to push us apart, but I couldn’t let my friend down.”

 

And then there was the time that Cheick Tioté had to renew his British visa and Wright found himself minding Newcastle’s late midfield player in Ghana, the nearest issuing office to Ivory Coast, without any luggage, beset by delays, suffering from chronic food poisoning, setting up impromptu training sessions.

 

“George, our taxi driver, found us a bone-hard pitch at a military stadium,” Wright says. “Cheick needed to do shooting practice, so I asked George to go in goal. He was in a suit, shirt and tie, but he agreed. He was unbelievable, saving everything, diving in his suit in 40C heat, no nets. My bag still hadn’t arrived, so I was wearing all this multicoloured gear Cheick had bought me.

 

“I’d been spewing everywhere, couldn’t see straight and could barely stand up. I thought I had malaria. I just stopped for a moment and thought: ‘This is absolutely surreal.’ The whole thing went on for about 12 days and it gets to a point where you think the club have forgotten about you. When we came back, Cheick would look at me occasionally in the treatment room and burst into laughter.”

 

Wright is no longer the young man who would rush onto the pitch, full of adrenaline, taking the cheers of the crowd. “It was childish, but I used to hate getting beaten by the other physio,” he says. “I was always thinking, ‘Don’t race him’ if we had to come on together, but, if he tore off, that would be it, I was after him.”

 

Within the club and by those who have passed through it, Wright is perceived differently; steadfast, loyal, discreet. It says everything about his character that a day or two later he texts to reiterate the impact others have made on his life; Pat and Derek, the mam and dad who “always supported me”, John, his brother, Helen, his wife, “always there for me”, his three boys, Jonathan, Benjamin and James.

 

The telephone bleeps again. “I’ve read back through my message and it reads like my own obituary,” Wright says, but Newcastle’s confessor deserves this moment of reflection.

 

“The club celebrated its 125th-year anniversary recently and I’ve been here for more than a quarter of that,” he says. “You can’t just look back. You have to drive on, but it gets under your skin this place, into your blood. It’s always the thought of what it might be.”