Looking at some of the garbage that gets published on the internet I took a step back these last couple of weeks to consider if my ramblings raise or lower the quality of what’s out there. I don’t actually speak Latvian, but I quickly came to the conclusion that with no prior knowledge on the subject at all I could probably attempt to compose my articles in that language, and it would still raise the level of what’s out there.

I’ll take this opportunity to remind you that I have a dog that is, well, I suppose the best way to describe him is “defective”. He spends a lot of his time sitting, staring at a blank wall. When he tries to scratch himself he generally falls over. When he was younger he used to run full tilt, head first into the furniture. When we first got him we thought that he had exceptional hearing. He would jump up and go running to the door when our other dog wouldn’t react at all.

Now we realise that he’s just not right. We love him to bits and wouldn’t get rid of him for anything. His name is Titus. I suppose that if he made a habit of crapping in visitors handbags, or eating the neighbour’s children we might have to consider offloading him, but for the moment we’re keeping him. This will become relevant later on.

Last week’s game against Wigan was a bit of a non-event really. OK 3 points are 3 points, but were we impressed? I was so impressed that I couldn’t bring myself to write about it. There’s a bit of a trend on websites at the moment to write just for the sake of it. You know the type of thing. A series of 52 articles - each one giving an in-depth description of an individual seat on the coach going down to away games. The highlight being the article describing the middle seat in the back, what with the legroom being so much better than the other 51 seats.

Last week I was determined that my article was not going to be a review of the upholstery on a Rochester And Marshall motor coach, so I didn’t write one. On to Aston Villa. First of all they had a huge advantage. Doug Ellis has effectively stepped aside. Think of the morale boost at the Toon if Fat Fred had stepped down.

Given - 5 - Average game, nothing spectacular. Last season we would have expected him to stop the first one.

Carr - 6 - Carr continues to perform as well as anyone else. Surely he’s winning over the skeptics by now.

Moore - 6 - Demonstrated yet again his vast experience. The only moment in the game that suggested any Toon player on the park actually knew what they were doing was when Moore, knowing he was about to be turned just walked straight through his namesake.

Bramble - 4 - Titus, if you were my dog, you’d be gone. You’ve crapped in your last handbag.

Babayarro - 5 - Tends to commit just a bit too early and as a result loses his mark.

Solano - 5 - Didn’t see a lot of him at all. Where is the Nobby we signed last season? He should be out there Peruvian what a good player he really is. (I know, I know) Nobby played so bad at times that the commentator on my channel actually called him Ameobi.

Emre - 5 - Emre has turned into that kid in the playground that thought he was so good he would never pass the ball to anyone. He would always try to beat everyone. Emre, along with Parker, was probably my player of the season last time round. Not much competition for Scotty this time. He just gave the ball away too often and “too cheaply”. I hate that phrase.

Parker - 6 - Fairly solid, kept popping up and getting the tackles in but somewhat subdued. Its sad that the rest of the team were no better and as a result Scotty gets my man of the match.

Duff - 4 - Not sure what was happening here. He couldn’t find any space, and didn’t run at anyone. Could it be possible that after only one league game we trained the talent out him, like we did with so many before. Surely not. I used to play golf with someone who was describing a golf playing friend of his to me. The friend was supposed to be extremely good at the game, and Martin (my friend) described him as “A black Tiger Woods”. Maybe Duff is Newcastle’s version of Craig Bellamy.

Milner - 5 - James Milner is an amazing talent but he needs to get the ball to his feet, and those around him have to either find space of get into the box. His team mates did neither. As a result he gets a 5. Hope he reads this and gives them a good bollocking for it.

Martins - 3 - Appalling debut by the Nigerian. It probably didn’t help that he was still carrying his duty free when he came on the pitch. He should have been given a couple of more days to settle in. I also heard that he had to borrow Shola’s boots. That would do it. He didn’t know where he was and from what I saw neither did the rest of them. I hope the injury is minimal and we get him back soon. Continuing my theory that we only purchase players whose names can be formed into coherent sentences I would suspect that Robert Huth is waiting in the wings. I’m sure I could find a way to get the Huth-Martins combination into a paragraph.

Butt - 5 - Came on for Emre and that was about it really. Didn’t hear his name after that.

Luque - 4 - Good old Albert “I Dont Do Tackles” Luque was his usual ineffective self. I continue to support Luque - hoping that he’s going to get the hang of the Premiere League some day, but there again I supported Souness to the end, so what the hell do I know.

N’Zogbia - 5 - Came on for Babayarro in a desperate attempt to inject some kind of life into the team. It appeared that everyone on the team with a bit of pace seemed to be suffering from that nightmare where you try to run but you look down and see you’re in a treacle. Plus you’re naked. Or is it just me that has that one?

Unfortunately - as a team performance this was another attack of Deja Vu - all over again. I’ll restrict my references to the UEFA Cup games to the shirts. I realise we paid a lot of money for Martins, and we’re going to fork out more for others. But surely the club could run to having the players names printed on the shirts in a second colour. White letters on black and white stripes doesn’t make for good reading.

I can only assume that the players knew that they were going to be embarrassed by their performance so asked for their names to be obscured. By the time you read this the transfer window will be closed and we will have brought in Woodgate, Huth, Bridge, Gallas and Cole, plus Graveson, and then Klose, Wright Phillips, Phillips and Bent. OK we’ll still be looking for a replacement for Shearer , but you can’t have everything.

Archie Brand
Struggling to summon up the enthusiasm
Bahrain