April 2008 Archives

According to Kevin Keegan he already has a list of potential transfer targets for the summer. However, Director of something or other at St James’s Park Dennis Wise has another list of possible recruits.

As I’m feeling a little left out I thought it was only right that I also made a list and we’ll see how many of them are linked with a move to Newcastle in the next few weeks.

There are just some things in life which don’t go together. Oil and water, chocolate and fireguards, Kevin Keegan and pessimism, Brits and abroad, Amy Winehouse and rehab. For me, though, you can add something else to that list. Americans and English sports.

We have all watched in amused bewilderment as Liverpool’s proud traditions as a football club have been soured by the bickering and balderdash of their American owners. And we have scratched our heads as Manchester United become a global franchise for some ginger bearded bloke from Tampa who looks like he wears socks with his sandals. What’s his name again? Glazer, that’s it.

But, not content with getting their chubby, money-grabbing little hands on football - you might have got David Beckham to call it soccer but I will never submit - the yanks want to move into cricket as well.

A cup of tea may not be everyone's idea of the ideal way to celebrate keeping Sunderland in the Premier League but then again, Roy Keane isn't everyone is he?

You have to admire Keane sometimes. While others celebrated the fact the Black Cats would not be spinning straight back down to the Championship for a third successive time on Saturday night, the manager was more interested in what he was going to get from the board in terms of transfer fees.

Clearly, all those years of losing his temper on the football field masked an astute politician because Keane knows he is bargaining from a position of strength. Make his demands now, when recent success is still intoxicating for those controlling the purse strings and he is more likely to get everything he asked for. Clever.

Roy Keane hasn’t done much wrong since he became Sunderland’s manager, but he must take a large amount of the blame for their Tyne-Wear derby defeat.

Damningly, even the Newcastle fans I have spoken to could not believe how poor their local rivals were last Sunday. Okay, so they were generally more interested in laughing at the demise of the Black Cats than expressing any sort of sympathy, but they had a point.

For the nihilistic helicopter pilot in Apocalypse Now there is nothing quite like the smell of napalm in the morning, but for sports reporters there is nothing quite like the scent of a local derby to get the pulse racing.

Of course, if Sunderland win at St James’s Park for the first time in eight years on Sunday the Bigg Market may come to resemble something akin to Saigon during the Vietnam War but it would be wrong of me to suggest anyone should respond to the crushing blow of a derby defeat by smashing up their own city. No seriously, don’t, it’s not big and it’s not clever!

I know some fans from both Newcastle and Sunderland who struggle to enjoy Derby day because there is too much at stake. Others, of course, love every minute of it for precisely the same reason.

We know it’s been a favourite hobby of the bitter ex-pros, the self-publicising pundits, the dubious experts and the obvious charlatans this season to have a swipe at Newcastle United.

Oh yes, we know the club has been an easy target at times, parting company with managers almost as quickly as Paris Hilton goes through boyfriends, sliding towards relegation, new owners blah de blah de blah.

Yep, Newcastle United are like an old and over-used national joke where everybody knows the punch line - they haven’t won diddly squat since 1969 - but they still laugh anyway.

It was my 30th birthday on Saturday so my experience of the weekend’s football action amounts to a few hazy memories of Jeff Stelling on Sky Sports News banging on in the background.

Now I enjoy Jeff’s rants and encyclopedic knowledge of football as much as the next man, but for once I had better things to do than listen to how Grimsby were getting on at home to Rotherham so I didn’t really take any notice what was going on as embarked on the sort of binge drinking session which would give medical experts palpitations!

I’d just like to apologise - well sort of - to Roy Keane. You see, the Irishman went off on one after the 2-1 defeat to Manchester City on Saturday because he’d read people in the newspapers saying Sunderland would be safe this season, even though they were still not mathematically so.

Well I was one of them, but I stand by my comments. There are too many team below them and they have too many points in the bag to go down, despite last Saturday’s setback. However, if I’m wrong I’ll personally smash an egg off my forehead and then wipe it off.

If there has been one downside to everything Newcastle have achieved over the last few weeks it is that their great rivals Sunderland appear to be intent on ensuring they match them every step of the way.

As Newcastle rattled in three against Reading at the weekend, Sunderland were doing exactly the same thing at Fulham to banish their own relegation worries. As United racked up a third successive win, Sunderland matched them blow for blow.

For someone like me who does not share the same regional rivalries and tribalism, seeing both clubs do well is something akin to an ideal situation. Although I appreciate that, for those who were born and bred on Tyneside, Wearside, Northumberland and Durham, such matters are far more significant.

It was interesting to read Niall Quinn’s comments at the weekend when he admitted Sunderland will have to fend off interest from rival clubs in manager Roy Keane in the summer.

Interesting because, until a fortnight ago, Sunderland were still one of the favourites to go down and nobody would have been interested in a manager who had just got his side relegated, and interesting because the next few months will tell us much about Keane’s attitude towards the Black Cats and the club’s attitude towards him.