Being Boiled - True Faith's latest editorial

[binnsy]

Thought this is a brilliant article, wasn't sure to start new thread or put it in an existing one but couldn't think if  t would be better in theboycott one or the couple of  AShley ones started last week.  I do however think it hits the nail on the head and people need to get off their arses and do what they think is right not wait for someone from NUST, the Ultras, .com or whatever to tell them what to do.

 

 

You might not like this but here goes... What has taken you so long? So long to become angry, raging and wanting to do something about it? You weren’t that arsed when we got relegated, you weren’t that arsed when the KK verdict was made public and Ashley, Mort, Llambias and Wise were exposed as liars, soiling the name of the club, besmirching the reputation of one of its favourite sons and taking the piss out of all of us. Its all in a name so it seems.

 

And how long will this anger last? Will it be the usual 9-day wonder? Will you preen over a pint with your mates and show your disgust at how your club is being ran into the dust and then file obediently into SJP and sit on your hands for a couple of hours? Will you remain silent in your pew when the only people giving it the “Get Out Of Our Club are the admirable lads and lasses in the Curva Nord (Leazes End Level 7)? Who you shamefully ignore match after match.

 

Will you write to a fanzine and demand they fight the fight you don’t have the bottle for? Will you look to a few blokes who knock out gobshite fanzines to provide you with the leadership with the implication that it should be them that do everything with the imagined army of 9,000 Mag ninjas we have on Barrack Road ready to scale up the Milburn Stand and into the Director’s Box to smite the beast that is Mike Ashley?

 

Will you demand the NUST does all the work and if they are lucky you might poke your head round the corner to see what’s going on but never dirty your hands with actually getting involved and doing things yourself? Will you make all kinds of ridiculous demands of the NUST but conveniently forget that you haven’t arsed yourself to join yet? Will you demand the NUST swing into action but then remember you haven’t turned up for a single meeting and expressed any kind of view about the kind of supporters’ organisation you want? Do you want a militant, campaigning organisation that will take the protests to Ashley - the single biggest threat to the very existence of Newcastle United there has been in the club’s history - but then do you remember that you haven’t been to a single meeting of the organisation even though their road-shows have been taken all over the NE and you haven’t opened your trap at any of those meetings and told the people who are trying their best to establish a representative supporters organisation what you want from it?

 

Do you look down your nose at the young’uns who have got themselves outside of the Milburn Stand (Hull and Blackburn games last season) to protest at how the club is being systematically dismantled by Ashley? But then do you remember that apart from whingeing to your mates about what a cunt the FCB is you haven’t done a fucking thing yourself?

 

Do you tell yourself you are too busy? Do you reckon you haven’t got the time like those fanzine lads and Trust people who you think don’t have full time jobs, families and lives of their own? Who have some kind of imagined life of uncluttered devotion to Newcastle United? Or is the truth, the real hard-line truth you just don’t care enough? That for all the hot air and rhetoric that comes from you, in truth you are a bit of a phoney?

 

Are you bloke in the true faith “One Love” t-shirt queuing up at the food stall at the Gallowgate End during the Bristol City game which almost caused me to walk out of SJP and head home and hide under an army blanket with a bottle of Jack Daniels for the rest of the day? Are you the 20 something at Forest in the yellow away top singing “Get Out Of Our Club?” What goes on in your heads?

 

If you love Newcastle United as much as you say you do, as much as you tell yourself you do then I’m sorry but you just can’t put this on others to fight the good fight on your behalf. You’ll have to do it yourself. Christ, you might have to leave the house a bit earlier, you might have to miss that trip to the boozer and join in the protests at SJP? Its not exactly the fucking D-Day Landings is it?

 

Or is all that for someone else to do. Not you. You are above all of that. Or you just can’t be arsed.

 

For the people who put true faith together, I can honestly say the majority of us will be there to be part of the protests, we’ll be involved but we’ll be doing it for ourselves and we won’t be doing it on your behalf. You should do that yourself.

 

And how are you feeling now after reading this twaddle? Are you thinking cheeky bastard, who the fuck is that gob-shite to have a pop at me - I’ve supported this club for 30 years blah-blah-blah - I’m only going to the fucking match for fuck’s sake not an Orgreave Picket Line? Its just not me. What would wor lass say?

 

Or are you sighing and thinking the mad bastard might have a point, like but well, you know and I know these words will be a fading memory by the time the boss cops you reading this garbage and you think fuck it I’ll have to do some work.

 

Only you can do something about your club being taken apart by this spiv. Fight your own fight.

 

You can rely on us to be part of it, but can we rely on you?

 

 

Christ, I’m having some tantrums these days eh?

 

 

*

 

There are those who think the FCB doesn’t know what he’s doing. When it comes to a basic understanding of football that’s emphatically true. However, when it comes to how he’s running NUFC he most certainly does know what he’s doing.

 

Consider this. In 1980 yours truly was considerably thicker of hair and thinner of waist than I am now. I had a grey Lonsdale sweat shirt, long-sleeved, worn with a pair of LEVIS and a pair of moccasins (soft brown leather - Italian - got them from SMC in Eldon Square). In my head I thought I was a bit Paul Weller. In truth I was another wannabe Herbert. But the Lonsdale sweat-shirt was something to behold, envied by some but unquestionably spot on as a fashion item (well, even a monkey at a type-writer and all of that etc) with its hint of Sports-night and its place as the de-facto British Boxing label. For once, yours truly had got something right in fashion terms. Not many had them and I wore it when I went to see The Jam and got a few admiring glances from fellow-Jam heads in that hetereo-sexual manner blokes do when they see other gadgies wearing something they like. 1980 - Lonsdale = the dog’s bollocks. Now I don’t know what happened in the intervening years but I do know when I was in Sports Direct a few years ago (before it was verboten to all thinking Mags) looking for a pair of AS Roma shorts for the gym, I saw a load of the Lonsdale gear and had a look at it. It wasn’t right. Firstly there was too much of it. Secondly, it was too cheap and thirdly it was really fucking horrible - all bright colours, no subtlety, big clanking logos and letters and doing things they had no business doing - training shoes for fuck’s sake? I was right about Lonsdale - its now exclusively slum clothing. It looks shit. Its for slobs. Ashley probably wears it. The training gear is for people who have never been near a gym and the only sweat they’ll break into is when they get pinched for necking Lambrini at a Bus Stop. The ASBO label. Lonsdale is now worn with matching snide Burberry cap, red England top (with Lampard on the back) and basically in every way possible it is fucking galloping. The same is true with Everlast and Umbro. And guess who owns these labels? That’s right our very own lying cunt, Mr Sports Direct, the FCB himself. Fatty’s modus is to buy labels that have had better days, that might be in some kind of distress but which do retain some market recognition and fading status. Then he sweats them like fuck for every penny he can get out of them. He piles it high and then he sweats it like fuck, selling it cheap, running the label into the ground, clagging the label on all kinds of tat. People think they are getting a bargain, something of value, they think well, its Lonsdale … didn’t that used to be good but they are wrong - its shit. In my opinion.

 

And Newcastle United is the Lonsdale, Everlast and Umbro of football. Fuck the quality, fuck the class, fuck the status, fuck it all, get the money. And get the money quick. Get it in the shop quick and get it out again. Run the thing on a shoe-string, sweat it, sweat it, sweat it - for every fucking penny. Remember Lilywhites on Oxford Street? Classy shop in the 80s - I went in there before London aways and looked at the stuff they had - great stuff, the best stuff - now? FCB owns it and its all bargain basket Sports Soccer shite. Donnay sports socks and other shite for people who don’t like clothes. And Newcastle United is now the club owned by someone who doesn’t like football.

 

Don’t kid yourself - Mike Ashley knows exactly what he’s doing. This is the plan and this will be the plan at the Poundland Stadium in NE1 very soon.

 

Why do you think Ashley has never appointed a proper football man to run NUFC? Why has he fallen back on the corporate lawyer Chris Mort and the casino boss Derek Llambias? Could it be because they will not have to rely on the football industry for a living when Ashley has moved on from NUFC? When they have helped the FCB strip every possible piece of flesh from the body of NUFC and he leaves the club a rotting carcass Llambias will never look at football again. Where is Mort now? Well, fuck knows but it certainly isn’t anywhere near football or even sport. Were a real football administrator in charge at NUFC they would know that after NUFC their careers would be finished. Dennis Wise is an utter cunt of a man for which there is no ill-fortune in life I wouldn’t happily visit upon him had I had the powers of the super-natural but he must know that after his dalliance with Ashley at NUFC his career in football is virtually over. He is tainted, he is soiled, a self-confessed liar, a cheat and the kind of man who will send a chill through the bones of every supporter were he to join their club in any capacity whatsoever. Mort, Llambias had no ambitions for a career in football and their entire role is to support Ashley in pulling NUFC apart and making as much dough for their boss as possible. That has blown up in their faces because relegation has cost the FCB a fortune however. That is the flaw in the strategy. They did have to make the odd football decision and get them right occasionally. But couldn’t. They will do anything and everything to that end. They owe nothing to football, to the NE, to the city - they operate without any restraint to the standards of decency or respect. They are 100% Ashley’s men. That is why KK isn’t there any more. That is why Shearer will never be there as long as the FCB is there. Both men would work for Newcastle United. The FCB doesn’t want that does he? He wants weasels who will work for him. There is a world of difference.

 

Ashley knows what he’s doing. But so do people in football. That’s why, after KK, he can’t get any proper football people to work for him. That’s why he’s ended up with Joe Kinnear, even been snubbed by O’Leary and is now with nailed on flop, Chris Hughton, who is a man I really fear for. Hughton has been appointed on an 18-mth contract and on a third of the money Gordon Strachan is on at Boro. The statement in the week suggested Ashley is putting in £20m to the club. What for? Sorry, pal, no-one believes a fucking word.

 

Hughton should watch what he says in public because he should not allow himself to become one of Ashley’s liars. He is universally regarded as a decent bloke but up until now he has been put in a position where he has coped with the situation he is in. He is now severely at risk of becoming complicit with it. He should not become a mouthpiece for Llambias and Ashley - telling lies on their behalf. Hughton is living in a dream world if he thinks he’ll get money to spend in the January transfer window. He may be allowed to bring another on loan. But let’s be honest, any bid for any player will be accepted. Hughton is the latest of Ashley’s dupes, dazzled at the opportunity to have Manager of Newcastle United on his CV.

 

*

 

For all of that, I felt for Hughton in the week. The man has made some good noises about his feeling of honour at being appointed NUFC manager and the growing feeling he has for the club. All good stuff even if it is patronising drivel. However, to wrap the appointment up with the bombshell the cunts in charge intend to rename SJP did their new appointee no favours. If it was intended to bury this latest abomination it failed spectacularly. No-one was talking about Hughton as manager, everyone was talking about saving the name St. James’ Park from the clutches of this utter, utter bastard. Then again, perhaps they had so little enthusiasm for the Hughton appointment, they tried to bury that news with the SJP disgrace. We’re back into the realms of what they understand about PR - or organised lying as its known at NUFC.

 

*

 

Freddie Shepherd eh? Where the fuck does this clown get the brass neck from? There he was letting on to anyone who would listen that it is beyond the pale to rename SJP. Hmm. Would that be the same Freddie Shepherd who was part of the board that renamed the Leazes End the Sir John Hall Stand in one of the biggest displays of naked vanity it has been our misfortune to witness in many a year? Would this be the same Freddie Shepherd who renamed the Gallowgate End, the Exhibition Stand and plastered the fucking thing with adverts for that particular brand of shite beer? Shepherd’s time at SJP, all of the managerial mishaps, the shite players bought for and put on fortunes and being shite, taking the piss out of people who bought club shirts (he’s got a point like) whilst knocking the arse off whores in Spanish brothels with Sir John’s idiot offspring, was just one fuck up after another but from which he and Hall milked the club for the kind of eye-watering amounts of money which the FCB can only dream about. It really is time for Shepherd to shut the fuck up. It was he and his mate John Hall who sold the fucking club to Ashley after all.

 

*

 

So then, the FCB, as well as seeking to turn SJP into the Newcastle Burger King Arena is also looking for a new kit deal. Well, well, I wonder who that might be? Here’s a wild guess - it won’t be Nike and we won’t end up with one of their smart kits they have done for Inter etc. I’d guess it won’t be adidas but I would guess it will be one of the horrible brands he owns. NUFC in a Lonsdale-or-Everlast-or-Umbro kit with Bet Fred on the front and playing at the Aldi-dome and struggling to beat Stoke at home whilst Hughton cracks in the dug-out and Ashley is on the phone to Kinnear to make a come-back. Exciting isn’t it? He’s got to be joking. This will simply be one joke too far - NUFC will cease to have anything of recognisable value, no soul and no meaning. Ashley may find that he’s pushed too many too far. Ashley really couldn’t give a fuck about hearts and minds, its all about the wallet with him and I’d guess a lot will chuck it at the end of this season promotion or no promotion.

 

*

 

And finally, something has to be done. We’ll make a suggestion about a protest at the Peterborough game this week. It will hopefully be something you and others will support but we aren’t a supporters club, we aren’t a representative organisation with members who can drive decisions etc. We are just gobshites. You can support us if you fancy. Some might be organising protests outside the Milburn Stand main entrance before and after the game (get there early and stay there late), some have suggested picketing the Benton training ground where Ashley lands his helicopter occasionally or at the Heliport behind Scotswood Road. That’s up to you. We’re not organising any of that. It doesn’t need to be organised. You can just do it if you want. Keep logging on and we’ll give you the gen on what people have told us they are thinking about. After that, its up to you. If you can be arsed.

 

Keep On, Keepin’ On …

 

 

[mattynufc]

I wear Lonsdale trackies at the gym 

 

Decent article, basically just moaning and spouting out everything any Newcastle fan already knows about the current regime.

[NG32]

Read it earlier. We've said it for a while, he will run us like a bargain basement shop.

[Guest Brummiemag]

Excellent article, hard to disagree with any it - he will try and squeeze every last penny out of the club 

[Big Geordie]

Great piece.

[Guest sicko2ndbest]

Top article

 

Start the proceedings early at brammal lane

 

Anyone who dosnt stand by these boys at the game next home game is quite happy for fat boy treat them as fools for the duration of his term

 

One voice boys!

[Guest toonlass]

Superb editorial, and he is spot on in his first point. There are far too many at SJP who are happy to whinge and moan but will do bugger all to show their disapproval. Its about time they got off their arses, got their hands out of their pockets and told Ashley exactly what they think of him, but they won't. They will whinge that a banner was the cause of us being relegated and that they won't make any noise at a game because they are better than that.

[Doug]

The Freddie Shepherd bit reminds us just how completely shit the club has been run for so long.

So frustrating.