RIP Joe Kinnear (1946–2024)

[Guest diddimz]

Looking for positives, at least its not an 8 year contract he was given.

[chicago_shearer]

Totally fucked.

[Paully]

Martin Samuel;

 

 

 

If Kinnear is having a final say on transfers and is the public face of Newcastle, there needs to be more to him than meets the eye. And it can’t be fiction.

 

By Martin Samuel

 

PUBLISHED: 22:45, 18 June 2013  | UPDATED: 00:40, 19 June 2013 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A very nice man, Bobby Gould. He sat in the studio at talkSPORT listening to Joe Kinnear take credit for some of the most value-for-money, insightful transfers in the history of the Premier League, and never said so much as excuse me, sunshine.

 

‘They say I haven’t had any experience in buying and selling players,’ jabbered Kinnear. ‘Sure I have — I bought Dean Holdsworth for  50 grand, sold him for £3million. I sold John Scales for £3m — he was a free transfer. I sold Robbie Earle for XYZ. I sold Marcus Gayle, Leonhardsen, Keith Curle, Micky Harford, John Hartson, Hans Segers. Most of them were free transfers.’

 

Do you know how many free transfers were actually in that list? None. Do you know who bought three of them? Bobby Gould. Among the best ones, too. John Scales for £70,000, plus Keith Curle and Hans Segers.

 

 

 

Notorious: Joe Kinnear is renowned for his expletive-laden rants at officials and journalists in the past 

Notorious: Joe Kinnear is renowned for his expletive-laden rants at officials and journalists in the past

 

 

 

 

 

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Kinnear wasn’t even at Wimbledon then. He was reserve manager when Ray Harford paid Port Vale £750,000 for Robbie Earle. And Earle wasn’t sold for X, Y or even Z, as Kinnear speculates. He wasn’t sold at all, in fact. Earle suffered a ruptured pancreas playing for Wimbledon reserves in 2000 and, later that year, retired.

 

The strange thing is that Kinnear does not need to aggrandise his achievements at Wimbledon.

Even without taking credit for Gould’s transfer acumen his time in south London remains the highlight on his c.v.

 

Kinnear was reserve-team manager from 1989 and took over the first team in January 1992. Under his stewardship, Wimbledon finished sixth in 1993-94 and achieved significant top-10 finishes in other seasons despite playing their home matches at Crystal Palace. He stood down for health  reasons in June 1999 and the next season Wimbledon were relegated from the Premier League, never to return.

 

That club, in its previous format, does not even exist any more. So  Kinnear has plenty to shout about without, basically, making stuff up.

 

Holdsworth cost £650,000, not £50,000, from Brentford and far from most of Kinnear’s list of signings being free transfers, all cost money. Kinnear signed John Hartson for £7.5m, a club record, from West Ham United and when he left following relegation it was to join Coventry City on a pay-as-you-play deal. Terry Burton was Wimbledon manager by then.

 

Kinnear made a decent return, £2.85m, on Holdsworth and Oyvind Leonhardsen, but both players cost £650,000. They were not plucked from obscurity. A lot of managers add a  little gravy to their achievements, but not like this. Kinnear turns three Manager of the Month awards into the same number of Manager of the Year prizes (for the record he was Manager of the Year once) and heaven knows how he adds up his total appearances for Tottenham Hotspur.

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Scales 

 

Hans Segers 

 

 

Really, Joe? Kinnear claimed to have signed both John Scales (left) and Hans Segers (right) while at Wimbledon

 

 

 

 

 

Inflated: Kinnear claimed to have signed a number of Wimbledon players that were brought in by Bobby Gould 

Inflated: Kinnear claimed to have signed a number of Wimbledon players that were brought in by Bobby Gould

 

 

Leading man: Kinnear claimed to have picked Dean Holdsworth from obscurity 

Leading man: Kinnear claimed to have picked Dean Holdsworth from obscurity

 

He said he played over 400 games for the club, but records show 196 league appearances over 10  seasons, meaning he would have had to play more than 20 cup games each year to pass the 400 mark. That’s a lot of replays. The real total is 258. That’s not to be sniffed at, either. So why exaggerate?

 

‘I have been to various countries watching games,’ Owen Coyle, the new Wigan Athletic manager, soothed this week. Has he?

 

 

 

Fiction: Robbie Earle retired while at Wimbledon and was never sold by Kinnear, as he claimed 

Fiction: Robbie Earle retired while at Wimbledon and was never sold by Kinnear, as he claimed

 

We take his word for it. The same generosity wouldn’t be extended to Kinnear now.

 

Coyle could be an aficionado of the European game immersed in the principles of the La Masia academy, or he may have stuck his head around the door once at Tenerife during a winter holiday. It is a matter of trust.

 

Every utterance from Kinnear as director of football at  Newcastle United, though, will be met with scepticism. Kinnear has been the victim of appalling  snobbery for dropping a few aitches and a few F-bombs in the past, but this runs deeper.

 

 

Favourite: Mike Ashley and Kinnear are good friends 

Favourite: Mike Ashley and Kinnear are good friends

 

Kinnear: Which one is Simon Bird (North East based football writer for the Daily Mirror)?

 

Bird: Me.

 

Kinnear: You’re a c***.

 

Bird: Thank you.

 

Now we’ve all had that from Joe on occasions. During his time at Wimbledon we had a row that began in the car park at Selhurst Park, continued up several flights of stairs and ended with us  bursting into the press room shouting at the top of our voices.

 

His last expletive-strewn  utterance was that he effing wouldn’t be effing answering any of my effing questions. I let a  couple go and asked the third. He replied as if nothing had  happened. He has never mentioned it since.

 

That’s Joe. What it isn’t, however, is the model of a very modern director of football. It is hard  to imagine the new raft of  executives at Manchester City, for instance, opening a public  discussion by calling a member of the press a c***, or being caught out over the pronunciation of names or matters of public record such as transfer fees and dates of arrival.

 

Kinnear was a fine player. He served 10 years at Tottenham, won four cups — not five as  he stated — and made 26  appearances for the Republic of Ireland. There is no reason he would not know a player. Indeed, Kinnear might be as well in with the greats of the game as he suggests.

 

The point is, with his coarse outbursts and insulting struggles with foreign names, he does not fit the profile of the continental sophisticate naturally palling around with Arsene Wenger.

 

The Premier League is a global competition. There is a difference between losing a sense of national identity with an influx of foreign staff, and employing a senior executive who risks diplomatic incident by calling players Kebab and Insomnia because he can’t be bothered to recall and pronounce Cabaye and N’Zogbia.

 

 

Really? Kinnear mispronounced star man Yohan Cabaye's (right) name in a radio interview 

Really? Kinnear mispronounced star man Yohan Cabaye's (right) name in a radio interview

 

 

 

Insomnia: Kinnear riled former Newcastle winger Charles N'Zogbia with a slip of his tongue 

Insomnia: Kinnear riled former Newcastle winger Charles N'Zogbia with a slip of his tongue

 

Mike Ashley, the Newcastle owner, is believed to like Kinnear best of all his managers, but that is not enough.

 

No doubt he enjoys the fact that he calls a spade a f****** shovel and journalists a bunch of, well, you know.

 

Yet football is more complex now. The old-school ally can be your valued friend in the boardroom telling it like it is — Bobby Campbell is close to Roman Abramovich, for instance — but if Kinnear is having a final say on transfers and is the public face of Newcastle, there needs to be more to him than meets the eye. Much more. And it can’t be fiction.

 

 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2344117/Joe-Kinnear-prove-takes-Newcastle--MARTIN-SAMUEL.html#ixzz2WdIiBGro

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[Mike]

Maybe Joe really knows what he's doing, and he'll add some structure to the organization. Being a go between for Pardew, Carr and Ashley.

 

[Shak]

Stu just officially had himself removed from Ashley arse on Facebook.

 

Please don't think less of me for being Stu's friend on Facebook...

[Kanj]

Sickening feeling that this is still all true. What a low man.

[Mike]

Sickening feeling that this is still all true. What a low man.

 

Kebabs.

[Mike]

He really said Kebabs, though.

 

:lol:

[loki679]

If you'd told me a week ago that I'd be backing Pardew today I'd have thought you were a mentalist.  He's looking pretty bloody good to my eyes now though.

 

This batshit club is contagious insanity.

[Mike]

I'm not sure if Ashley is a nutcase absentee Dad, or an evil genius. The notion of going into the season only worried about the quality of the manager seems so much more appealing than our DOF not knowing the names of the players.

[LRD]

I'm not sure if Ashley is a nutcase absentee Dad, or an evil genius. The notion of going into the season only worried about the quality of the manager seems so much more appealing than our DOF not knowing the names of the players.

 

Nah, he just knows he can get away with plenty at this club as long as we don't suffer a catastrophic relegation.

[Guest]

This has ruined it for me. Even certain things he's done in the past, there's still been a bit of scope for debate. There's just nothing here. There's nothing about the club that's enjoyable any more. Will watch the games on a match day but everything else I'm going to cut out of my life until something changes. There's no enjoyment at all coming on here just reading about the club going down the pan. Gutwrenching.

[nufc4eva]

This has ruined it for me. Even certain things he's done in the past, there's still been a bit of scope for debate. There's just nothing here. There's nothing about the club that's enjoyable any more. Will watch the games on a match day but everything else I'm going to cut out of my life until something changes. There's no enjoyment at all coming on here just reading about the club going down the pan. Gutwrenching.

 

It is just horrific, it's like self harming paying attention to our club throughout the year. Sick that my club is being dragged to the gutter by those cunts. Why can't we just be ran by a normal owner and have clear strategy that we can all buy into instead of this shit. We are such an unlucky bunch of fans and will never win a fucking thing

[Tiresias]

[Wilson]

had a blissful hour this morning until I remembered this shit on the way to work.

[LRD]

Just fking get a cardiac arrest, you senile old fool.

[Interpolic]

Harsh, it's still sinking in for all of us.

[Wilson]

I don't think it is harsh...in fact I wish it would happen to the 2 of them

 

[AlanSkÃrare]

It's the most pathetic situation we've been in during my lifetime. Absolute farce.

 

This will be a painful year or two.

[nufcjb]

in a summer of change, in a summer of clubs moving forward, in a summer of players and managers calling it quits and call time on their involvement in football, we are absolutely going backwards and have this dimwit in the club getting involved in thinking he can outdo some of the best managers in the world right now..

 

We have seen Man Utd appoint Moyes

Martinez at Everton

Mourinho at Chelsea and Abrahmovic actually making a huge u-turn to bring him back

 

we saw the greatest manager in English football retire

Jupp Hynckes win the Champions League and retire

We saw players hanging up their boots because they knew their time was up, Scholes, Beckham, Owen, Neville, Harper (left the club)

 

and what do we do? Stick with Pardew and then appoint this old, mentally ill guy as a director of football..Not sure if I can take anymore of this s***..

 

[Tsunami]

He's going to make a point of signing lower league players to prove his genius. Why get a good freebie when you can splash a million on some unproven bloke from Barnet? He'll at that price we can buy a team full of them and reduce the wage bill. We'd also be in a good position for the start of next season in the Championship.

[Skirge]

SSN just said we have pulled out of the Douglas deal due to the say so if this deluded cunt

[Wilson]

SSN just said we have pulled out of the Douglas deal due to the say so if this deluded c***

 

Aye its in the transfer thread. Absolute fucking disaster this.

[Interpolic]

I don't think it is harsh...in fact I wish it would happen to the 2 of them

 

 

I was defending you actually, doesn't matter.

[Tisd09]

I'm so apathetic about the fixture list today, the majority of fans around the country are looking forward to it I just can't bring myself to be happy with football given the situation we are in.

 

I can take Pardew staying, as much as I wanted him out, I gave him credit for the 5th placed finished, blamed him for the near miss last season there is an argument to stick with him. Kinnear however, just makes no sense at all.

 

What player would want to sign for us given this tool around? The only hope we have is that a player sees us as a big enough step up to endure this creep.