Post by QPR Report on Feb 1, 2009 8:49:24 GMT
Paul Hayward/The Guardian
Loudmouth Kinnear is two decades out of touch to be a messiah or a managerWith training-ground fights, sideline scuffles and repeated verbal rants, Joe Kinnear has put on an entertaining show at Newcastle – but all the fans really want to see is their club avoid relegation
Any minute now Newcastle United could erupt into a scene from Gangs of New York and settle all their differences in one bloody go in a running battle through Tyneside.
Sporadic discord is maturing into daily strife. Joe Kinnear's one-man cabaret, loosely known as "Oi – Bring Back the Eighties!", is the voiceover to players fighting on the training ground, a goalkeeper of 12 years' distinguished service fleeing to Manchester City and Charles N'Zogbia threatening to go on strike in protest at the manager referring to him as "Charles Insomnia".
Kinnear's vocabulary is borrowed from an age when Vinnie Jones was actually allowed to write "professional footballer" on a mortgage application, rather than "mockney thespian", which he was all along. According to Newcastle's current boss, Martin Atkinson is a "Mickey Mouse referee" and other candidates for his radioactive hot-seat "didn't have the arsehole" to say yes to the job.
One wonders whether, just once, for posterity, Arsène Wenger could be persuaded in a press conference to say someone "didn't have the arsehole" for something. It would sound so good in a French accent.
Old Joe's now infamous press conference tirade, meanwhile, could have been an out-take from Mike Bassett. Then there is all that ritualised defiance. "I have a serious amount of courage," Kinnear said as Shay Given went to speak to City and Kevin Nolan arrived for £4m from Bolton. "People say I'm mad, but I have the bottle to do this job." Fans of The Mighty Boosh will recall The Hitcher intoning with a dollop of menace: "I'm a thingyney nut-job."
All very amusing for middle‑class southerners, but Newcastle's supporters are entitled to cry: that joke isn't funny any more. People are always looking to stick a pin on the chart of Newcastle's agonies to mark the real nadir and they may yet find the right moment with the club's relegation.
To coincide with Sunderland's visit today, Michael Owen has damaged ankle ligaments and will be out for at least six weeks, Joey Barton has sustained what might be thought of as a karma injury to his foot, N'Zogbia is in a mammoth sulk and Given, the club's spiritual leader, has given up on the idea that these indignities might ever cease.
With 23 points from as many games and discord rampant, Newcastle are deeply imperilled. Nolan and Nicky Butt have the look of a decent central midfield partnership and Obafemi Martins and Mark Viduka are on the way back from injury to help fill the void left by Owen's latest accident. But the maelstrom has acquired its own vicious momentum, turning player against player, and ex-players against the team.
When Mick Quinn, the amply proportioned ex-Newcastle striker, told the local Chronicle that N'Zogbia has a "heart the size of a peanut", he expressed the disgust sweeping though one of football's most ardent congregations.
It would be absurd to nail years of mismanagement to Kinnear's totem pole, but there are plenty of steps he can take now to concentrate attention on the only real show in town: the scramble to avoid relegation.
The first is to stop talking: to stop saying, "Mike [Ashley, the club's owner] has lost £2bn in his own business because of the credit crunch. It's not easy for him. He's paying the wages, just about. But it's in the records, you just have to look."
"Paying the wages, just about." No phrase could have a sharper prune‑juice effect in a dressing room. In that moment, dozens of fingers probably punched numbers into mobiles. Agents grabbed at their iPhones. Even those sure that the money would keep rolling into their accounts would have extrapolated from Kinnear's personal Mansion House speech a collapse in the transfer budget, and therefore desperately hard times ahead.
It is impossible to see what Kinnear hoped to gain by such an alarmist statement, which contained figures plucked from the air. Another sphere in which economy of language will assist the fight is in his dealings with match officials. Three improper conduct charges is going some even for a former patriarch of the Crazy Gang.
When he took the job Kinnear appeared to accept that he was a mere caretaker, hired to help Ashley out of a hole. Then ambition kicked in and he became the stubborn messiah in his own private movie. He convinced himself that getting sent to the stands was some kind of declaration of intent.
He became the story. And it's not well thought-out or constructed. The only tale worth telling is how Newcastle will survive in the Premier League....
Five reasons why the January transfer window should be shut
1 Sure, January is a rainstorm month, you have to lower your head and slog through, but there must be better ways to relieve tedium than watching Blackburn Rovers and Manchester City joust over the precise monetary value of Roque Santa Cruz.
2 As for Andrei Arshavin and the contractual minutiae of his touted move to Arsenal, don't even go there.
3 A one-month supermarket dash, the winter window was intended to halt destabilisation but has had the opposite effect by encouraging frenzied activity and tapping-up from Bonfire Night onwards.
4 Transfer-market lunges are a poor substitute for coaching. Managers are encouraged to buy their way out of mistakes made in June and July. Emile Heskey to Aston Villa was brilliant alchemy. More often, desperation writes the cheques. Imagine clubs having to stand or fall by their actions in the summer for a whole 10-month campaign.
5 Darren Bent knocks on Harry Redknapp's door to ask whether Sunderland have made a bid for him. Redknapp pleads ignorance. Bent says his agent has told him Sunderland want him. "So someone is talking to someone," deduces Redknapp. Personally, I prefer Tom and Jerry, which is the same thing, but without the agents.
Sports personality of the week
Gianfranco Zola has formulated a new style at West Ham of crisp, short passing and meaty tackling. Financial thunderclaps off the pitch have not disrupted his reforms, and losing Craig Bellamy to Manchester City seemed to energise the Irons against Hull.
Carlton Cole's play outside the penalty area has been transformed, though his thoughts still scramble too often when a chance presents itself; Valon Behrami is a model of commitment; and a new £9m striker has arrived in the sprightly Savio. West Ham, the team, are going places. Zola's decency and intelligence light the way.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/jan/31/paul-hayward-on-joe-kinnear-at-newcastle-united
Loudmouth Kinnear is two decades out of touch to be a messiah or a managerWith training-ground fights, sideline scuffles and repeated verbal rants, Joe Kinnear has put on an entertaining show at Newcastle – but all the fans really want to see is their club avoid relegation
Any minute now Newcastle United could erupt into a scene from Gangs of New York and settle all their differences in one bloody go in a running battle through Tyneside.
Sporadic discord is maturing into daily strife. Joe Kinnear's one-man cabaret, loosely known as "Oi – Bring Back the Eighties!", is the voiceover to players fighting on the training ground, a goalkeeper of 12 years' distinguished service fleeing to Manchester City and Charles N'Zogbia threatening to go on strike in protest at the manager referring to him as "Charles Insomnia".
Kinnear's vocabulary is borrowed from an age when Vinnie Jones was actually allowed to write "professional footballer" on a mortgage application, rather than "mockney thespian", which he was all along. According to Newcastle's current boss, Martin Atkinson is a "Mickey Mouse referee" and other candidates for his radioactive hot-seat "didn't have the arsehole" to say yes to the job.
One wonders whether, just once, for posterity, Arsène Wenger could be persuaded in a press conference to say someone "didn't have the arsehole" for something. It would sound so good in a French accent.
Old Joe's now infamous press conference tirade, meanwhile, could have been an out-take from Mike Bassett. Then there is all that ritualised defiance. "I have a serious amount of courage," Kinnear said as Shay Given went to speak to City and Kevin Nolan arrived for £4m from Bolton. "People say I'm mad, but I have the bottle to do this job." Fans of The Mighty Boosh will recall The Hitcher intoning with a dollop of menace: "I'm a thingyney nut-job."
All very amusing for middle‑class southerners, but Newcastle's supporters are entitled to cry: that joke isn't funny any more. People are always looking to stick a pin on the chart of Newcastle's agonies to mark the real nadir and they may yet find the right moment with the club's relegation.
To coincide with Sunderland's visit today, Michael Owen has damaged ankle ligaments and will be out for at least six weeks, Joey Barton has sustained what might be thought of as a karma injury to his foot, N'Zogbia is in a mammoth sulk and Given, the club's spiritual leader, has given up on the idea that these indignities might ever cease.
With 23 points from as many games and discord rampant, Newcastle are deeply imperilled. Nolan and Nicky Butt have the look of a decent central midfield partnership and Obafemi Martins and Mark Viduka are on the way back from injury to help fill the void left by Owen's latest accident. But the maelstrom has acquired its own vicious momentum, turning player against player, and ex-players against the team.
When Mick Quinn, the amply proportioned ex-Newcastle striker, told the local Chronicle that N'Zogbia has a "heart the size of a peanut", he expressed the disgust sweeping though one of football's most ardent congregations.
It would be absurd to nail years of mismanagement to Kinnear's totem pole, but there are plenty of steps he can take now to concentrate attention on the only real show in town: the scramble to avoid relegation.
The first is to stop talking: to stop saying, "Mike [Ashley, the club's owner] has lost £2bn in his own business because of the credit crunch. It's not easy for him. He's paying the wages, just about. But it's in the records, you just have to look."
"Paying the wages, just about." No phrase could have a sharper prune‑juice effect in a dressing room. In that moment, dozens of fingers probably punched numbers into mobiles. Agents grabbed at their iPhones. Even those sure that the money would keep rolling into their accounts would have extrapolated from Kinnear's personal Mansion House speech a collapse in the transfer budget, and therefore desperately hard times ahead.
It is impossible to see what Kinnear hoped to gain by such an alarmist statement, which contained figures plucked from the air. Another sphere in which economy of language will assist the fight is in his dealings with match officials. Three improper conduct charges is going some even for a former patriarch of the Crazy Gang.
When he took the job Kinnear appeared to accept that he was a mere caretaker, hired to help Ashley out of a hole. Then ambition kicked in and he became the stubborn messiah in his own private movie. He convinced himself that getting sent to the stands was some kind of declaration of intent.
He became the story. And it's not well thought-out or constructed. The only tale worth telling is how Newcastle will survive in the Premier League....
Five reasons why the January transfer window should be shut
1 Sure, January is a rainstorm month, you have to lower your head and slog through, but there must be better ways to relieve tedium than watching Blackburn Rovers and Manchester City joust over the precise monetary value of Roque Santa Cruz.
2 As for Andrei Arshavin and the contractual minutiae of his touted move to Arsenal, don't even go there.
3 A one-month supermarket dash, the winter window was intended to halt destabilisation but has had the opposite effect by encouraging frenzied activity and tapping-up from Bonfire Night onwards.
4 Transfer-market lunges are a poor substitute for coaching. Managers are encouraged to buy their way out of mistakes made in June and July. Emile Heskey to Aston Villa was brilliant alchemy. More often, desperation writes the cheques. Imagine clubs having to stand or fall by their actions in the summer for a whole 10-month campaign.
5 Darren Bent knocks on Harry Redknapp's door to ask whether Sunderland have made a bid for him. Redknapp pleads ignorance. Bent says his agent has told him Sunderland want him. "So someone is talking to someone," deduces Redknapp. Personally, I prefer Tom and Jerry, which is the same thing, but without the agents.
Sports personality of the week
Gianfranco Zola has formulated a new style at West Ham of crisp, short passing and meaty tackling. Financial thunderclaps off the pitch have not disrupted his reforms, and losing Craig Bellamy to Manchester City seemed to energise the Irons against Hull.
Carlton Cole's play outside the penalty area has been transformed, though his thoughts still scramble too often when a chance presents itself; Valon Behrami is a model of commitment; and a new £9m striker has arrived in the sprightly Savio. West Ham, the team, are going places. Zola's decency and intelligence light the way.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/jan/31/paul-hayward-on-joe-kinnear-at-newcastle-united