Toon Report from Football 365 some good points I thought Newcastle. It's a place like no other in England. I lived in and around the city for many years and I went to college there. Some of the closest people to me are Geordies. I had my first blow job in Newcastle. Aye sheh wez a canny boiler an all liek. The first band I ever saw was at Newcastle City Hall - The Sensational Alex Harvey Band in 1975. Truely sensational. I have nothing but affection for the place. Sometimes it feels as though Newcastle is an island out on its own, disconnected from the rest of country. It's a town built on hard labour and hedonism. Like nowhere else I've lived there is an innate philosophy of living for the now, for today, because you never know what tomorrow might bring. In an area with a history of poverty, you take your pleasures where and when you can find them because it might the last bit of fun you have for a long while. If life is tough, you learn to mistrust the future. Even now, in better economic times and when we have higher employment in Britain than at any time in our history, the live for today culture of Newcastle is still buried deep in the collective psyche. I reckon that's why I liked the place. Everyone dies in the end, so let's have a good time right now. It's a hard philosophy to argue against. Newcastle United FC dominates the city. It literally towers above the town. The crowd noise echoes out across the town centre on a Saturday. It's impossible to ignore even if you don't like football. In a relatively small city it dominates utterly. It's visceral and like nowhere else, Newcastle FC feels powerful. It feels successful. It feels rich. But of course, football historians know that Newcastle's great days are 50 years ago now. A single Fairs Cup win in 1969 is the only major honour they've won since the 50s. This puts them way behind clubs like Blackburn, Middlesbrough, Derby, Notts Forest, West Ham, Southampton and many more who have won a major trophy in the last 30 years. And the truth is, when you look at it objectively, Newcastle United are pretty useless despite having more money than most clubs in the country or indeed the world. In the last ten years they've spent millions and achieved nothing at all apart from a couple of runners-up medals. Clubs with much less cash have achieved much more. But still Newcastle feels like a big and powerful force to me and to many others. It certainly regards itself as a major force in football. So perhaps it's no surprise that the players feel the same way. They think they're at a major club. They're being paid a fortune. They reckon they've done well. But their egos are out of all proportion to their talent and achievement. In a town where football culture wasn't so huge, they would need to do more to gain respect but in Newcastle, playing for the Toon is an honour and automatically gains you respect. But equally, in a town so fierce about its football, when you are thought to have dishonoured the club, like Dyer or like Bellamey are thought by some to have done, you can expect a lot of people to treat you like a man who they have caught anally violating the family puppy with a flaming torch. But it's not just the over-paid underperforming players that are the problem. Take a look at Mr Scrap Metal, Freddy Shepherd. If you can't tell what sort of bloke Metal Freddy is just by looking at him, then you haven't been getting out much recently. Most businesses, in the end, reflect the attitude and character of the people in charge. They set the tone and the standards. So Newcastle are as much a reflection of Shepherd as they players he and his managers has bought. Perhaps Newcastle will never achieve anything while Shepherd rules the roost. As well-travelled and old school as Souness is, I don't really think he could have had any appreciation of the forces he's up against in Newcastle when he arrived. It isn't just a few trouble makers. First the players are certain they're much better than they really are and won't respond to Souness's, to my mind, admirable combination of big stick and small carrot. Then there's the expectation in the city by the people that The Magpies must deliver the victory, glory and silverware some time soon to match their perception of the club. Being 12th as they are now is humiliating. Souness probably didn't realise just how the 'on the Toon wi' the laaads' Tyneside culture of booze 'n' bords permeates every red-blooded male in the city. It's not the same anywhere else. Not even in other northern towns. Southerners might think the north east is some kind of cultural and entertainment backwater but we in the north know that Newcastle on a weekend is like the last days of Rome. I have never seen more debauchery or more intoxication anywhere else in the world. If you can't get your rocks off in Newcastle, you just are not trying. When the culture of a club or institution is flawed or corrupt it's impossible to just juggle the staff around a bit and think it'll fix the problem. All that happens is new staff arrive and become absorbed into the existing culture. So nothing changes. It's like Royal Mail. Royal Mail have managed to 'lose' over £2500 of our t-shirts in the last two months alone. Are they sorry? Ha. No. Will they reimburse us fully, automatically and without fuss? Hell no. Will anyone take responsibility? Good God you must be crazy. Will they pay us for all the extra labour costs we incur in admin sorting out their inefficiencies? Well what do you think? That's all because the culture of Royal Mail is totally set in stone. It doesn't matter if a new manager comes in or a few new staff take over a sorting office, eventually they all get subsumed into the prevailing culture of obfuscation, unaccountability and inefficiency. And in the same way, Newcastle United, will continue to absorb good players, good managers and lots of good money and still not win anything until the culture of the club changes and for that to happen the culture of the town has to change and that can't or won't happen for a generation, if indeed at all. So divvant worry aboot it, stop bubblin' and gan gerra skinful of drink doon yer, it'll dee yee good maan. Ye knaa what ah mean leik...
The first few paragraphs were pointless, just to up the word count really. Decent though. Except, typing in Geordie - fuck off.
