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It's A Sad Sad Sad Sad World
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 Tuesday
24 January 2006
By Archie
Brand
I was chatting at work today with my mate Brian - he's a Chelsea fan,
but I’m usually a fairly generous person, so I speak to him - and
I found myself using the word “sad” when talking about the Newcastle
game against Blackburn with him.
Like a good murder mystery I won’t tell you whodunnit straight away.
Let me give you a bit of background. The African Nations Cup has probably
been a bit of a saving grace for Graeme Souness.
The news is full of managers having a good whinge to anyone who’ll
listen because they’ve been deprived of two or three first team players,
who for some inexplicable reason would rather head off to the relative
heat of Egypt to represent their respective countries, than stay in
England and get battered black and blue around the park in 3 degrees
of pissing rain on a dismal Saturday afternoon.
Poor old Sam Allardyce – how can his team possibly be expected to
get results with 3 first team players missing, and another bloke gone
who most people think actually plays for Newcastle? He has a point,
does he not? How can any team expect to be competitive in this, possibly
the best league in the world, with so many stars missing from their
line-up?
Is Big Sam just a big cry baby? Don’t think so. Take Arsenal for example.
Take 8 of their top players out. What kind of force would they be
without Campbell, Ljundberg, Reyes, Pires, Henry et al? No. I'm not
comparing like for like here, but a team's best players are their
best players, no matter which team it is. You could rip the heart
out of any Premiership team and speculate on how long they would survive,
so why should we be surprised when it happens to Newcastle?
So maybe after all this there are a few thousand sensible souls out
there with a more sympathetic view of Souness’s situation. He would
give Dean Saunders' right arm at the moment to have just 4 players
out. Before you rise up and suggest tying me to a wooden stake I realise
that by definition it’s unfair to refer to Newcastle fans as “sensible
souls”.
I think its accepted that the words “sensible”, “Newcastle” and “fans”
are not normally found in the same statement of fact – that’s what
Toon fans are all about, a fanaticism that goes far beyond reason;
a dedication that defies logic. Souness is currently probably the
least popular manager of the Toon in living memory, but a turnout
in excess of 51,000 would suggest that most fans put loyalty to the
club above loyalty to the manager, and that’s exactly how it should
be.
Support for the club can win games. How many teams out there could
produce the goods with that kind of crisis? I used to work for a big
round Santa-esque individual who could probably mix cocktails on his
gut if you got him laughing. The problem was, though, that the only
thing you could depend on him for was his uncanny ability to surprise
you with his inconsistency.
If you performed well, you were part of a team. If you made a mistake
you were on your own. Not dissimilar to the board at St. James’s.
Has anyone else thought it a bit of an anomaly that Shepherd went
from Fat Fred to Saint Fred when he signed Owen, but Souness is getting
the stick because Luque is taking his time to settle in? Having said
that - in all fairness to Fred he hasn't said anything against Souness
in the press.
There I go again – off for a wander with the subject not even visible
on the horizon. I just watched the Blackburn game and have to say
that despite us having a hatful of players unavailable due to their
involvement in the Ambulance Stations Cup I thought that the team
actually played as well as I’ve seen them play for a while.
They were stringing passes together, making goalscoring opportunities
and actually looking like a team for a change. OK, so we could have
done with a finisher out there, but considering the injuries didn’t
they do well? How many games have you seen this season where Newcastle's
scoring chances could be counted on one thumb?
Bowyer could have had a hat-trick. How many times can you say that?
I have a dog who I’m convinced suffered some kind of brain damage
before we got him. Almost every day he lies down under the coffee
table for a nap. When he wakes up he invariably stands straight up
and cracks his skull on the underside of the table. Its quite scary
really that after 18 months of this he still hasn’t figured out that
you can’t stand up straight when the roof is 12 inches lower than
your own height. He sleeps under the bed too. The connection is spooky.
The key words here are “nap” and “learn”. While I’m trying to be generally
supportive of Souness here, I really do think that it’s about time
that he reconsidered what appears to be the usual practice of giving
Titus Bramble warm milk and cookies for lunch on a match day. I’m
pretty sure it’s having an adverse affect on his ability to focus
between 3 and 5pm.
On a more serious note do club physicals include vision and hearing
tests? I only ask because when he gets the ball he never seems to
know where the opposition front men are. It's like the old Christmas
panto - "He's behind you!"
On Saturday he somehow managed not to hear forty odd thousand screaming
Geordies yell “MAN ON!” Along with the decline of Law and Order in
the UK and the abuse of Social Services, Bramble has become a bit
of a favourite rant of mine. To my mind he has been responsible for
giving away too many goals over the last couple of seasons.
He should have a health warning tattooed across his forehead. “By
Order Of The Surgeon General – Geordies Beware – Observation Of This
Individual May Cause Heart Attacks”. And I still haven’t made the
point. What was it about this game that actually resulted in me using
the word “sad”?
Not the performance of the team. Well done lads. You wuz robbed! Not
the (apparent lack of) tactics of Manager Graeme Souness. It wasn’t
even the lack of urgency shown by the apparently narcoleptic Titus
Bramble. What forced me to explore the merits of this adjective was
the sight, on globally broadcast TV, of a group of presumably Geordie
teenagers verbally abusing Souness behind hid back following the final
whistle.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and even the right to express
it (though I personally reserve the right to withdraw that statement
at a later more convenient date when it serves to prove a point).
But while I admire your dedication to, and enthusiasm for, the cause,
when your entire lifespan probably equates to less than half of his
professional experience, then I think I’m fairly safe in making the
statement that, gentlemen, at this particular moment in time, regardless
of his performance so far, and in particular taking into consideration
the circumstances under which he is plying his trade, you haven’t
yet even earned the right to wipe Souness’s arse.
Nuff Sed!
Archie Brand, Bahrain.
P.S. – He’s asleep under the coffee table, but I’m sure Titus would
say “bye” if he were awake.
© Archie Brand
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