Indifference

That poor dog is safe for another few weeks, then.

Roy Keane is back in football at another club with lots of money to waste on crap players until something, somewhere, sticks: Tobias Hysen, Roy O'Donovan, Rade Prica, Michael Chopra (who Keane bought from Cardiff for ten times his previous transfer fee) and God knows how many more that I can't remember. Alex Ferguson might call Rafa Benitez a chequebook manager (I'll come back to the hypocrisy of this statement by King Bluster) but his former captain is the new breed of money and how it talks in football. A pity, then, that all Keane can talk is absolute shit. He bottled it at the first sign of someone (the majority shareholder at S*nderland) questioning his bizarro-zarro transfer policy and the players in the mackem wastelands seem far happier without him, so why, oh why are Ipswich Town fooled by this guy? It'll all end in tears, albeit in the Premier League. Maybe.

So, the great sideshow of who will finish top of the Premier League is (more or less) over and we can talk about who is and isn't a cock-end (more entertaining when Mourinho was kicking about, this). Alex Ferguson wins! His sustained attacks on Rafa Benitez, no matter how easy it is to dislike the spaniard, are tiresome and ill-informed. Ferguson crows on that Liverpool produce no young players. Excuse me if I am smelling the wrong pot of pease pudding for a minute but, well, did Manchester United produce Federico Macheda, Anderson, Nani or Cristiano so bronze I am a statue now Ronaldo? No. One generation of (yes, exceptional, we know) British players doesn't redeem you for the lack of any since. Myopia is a wonderful thing but it is quite alarming how many managers seem to suffer from the condition these days. What would Brian Clough have made of it all?

With the mention of Brian Clough, my copy of The Damned United arrived on monday, so I think I will alternate it with reading Phil Scraton's Hillsborough: The Truth, which I mentioned last week. Yet to finish the first chapter and its already evident (as if people didn't know this already) that the events of April 15 1989 should never have happened; it makes it all the more galling that noone has been made accountable. I hope that anyone who looked at this blog last week took some time to at least peruse some of the stuff I hyperlinked and see what a massive injustice it is (if you didn't know, I know some readers are more than aware). At least a step in the right direction was taken last week. Then again, Jacqui Smith has little or no choice if she wants to stay in the job...

Newcastle United newsflash: Obafemi Martins is not the messiah, he's just very fast and a crap finisher. If Alan Shearer saves the day now, he is a genius. Let's explain, he needs to win the last three home games of the season and even then we might not survive. We've won four home matches out of sixteen this season. Easy, then.

Come back today or tomorrow and I'll look at something a little less asinine than the pricks and pantomime villains that inhabit football: ATP stage times!

The Memory Remains

Twenty years ago today, ninety-six Liverpool fans died at Hillsborough; I was two years old. I have read many articles covering the anniversary and the outpouring of emotions in the media for the last few weeks shows the fury, indignation and bitterness that people feel; it is always simmering. Reading about the event and the aftermath makes me furious and upset. These feelings come around for the majority of football fans at this time every year, but it is just inconcievable to try and imagine the feelings of those who survived the crush and those who saw it at the ground, like Alan Green, or on television, let alone the feelings of the families of the victims. This is with them every day and justice has still not been done for the ninety-six.

Someone must be held to account. Hillsborough was an accident waiting to happen, the South Yorkshire Police covered up their incompetence by altering the witness reports of junior officers and the men in command on the day have been close to exonerated thanks to malicious and unsubstantiated coverage at the time of the incident in addition to the enquiries in 1989 and 1998, which condemned police action but only two officers have been tried and no one has ever apologised. The families need closure and Gordon Brown and Jack Straw have denied it to them not once but twice.

David Conn's piece in this monday's Guardian shows just how much went wrong and how much is still to do.

For more on Hillsborough, Dr Phil Scraton's Hillsborough: The Truth is seen as the definitive account and is available here.

Words alone are not enough but awareness and remembrance will see justice done. Days like today make football itself insignificant, it has changed forever, for good and ill. There's nothing else to say.

Lets Not Shit Ourselves (To Love And To Be Loved)

Andy Carroll in the cornrow days of January




Thank you, Andy Carroll. The sinews in the lad's neck may go a long way to keeping Newcastle United in the Premier League after his headed equaliser in yesterday's 1-1 draw with Stoke at that fortress of Total Football, the Britannia Stadium. His headers may be as important to us as Carlos Tevez's were for Man United last season. The paucity of the Premier League is exposed by the malaise of the majority of clubs in the bottom half of the table and ought to be further exemplified by Aston Villa and Everton's showdown at 1330 today (which I am going to the pub to watch, hence the short-term nature of today's blog).

As ever, the clue is in the title. There are some long strides to be taken to keep this club in the league and it all starts again next sunday at White Hart Lane. We've done well against Spurs for a long time now (barring the aberration in this season's League Cup, though when you look at the team we put out...) and that run can continue next week if the players add a bit of skill to the graft that has begun to creep in. Nothing is achieved yet, but all is not lost.

Flood/Ramble On

I've been contemplating starting/finishing off some mixtapes (read: cds with playlists on) for various friends for weeks, months and years now. Now, though, I have encountered an enemy who I had always believed to be an ally; the internet. Oh yeah, I love last.fm like the little brother I never had but combine it with the spectacular service provided by Spotify and, to a less stellar extent, myspace and you might find yourself in a bit of a pickle next time you're compiling a fresh mix. Its a deflating feeling to give someone a cd and their inital reaction being 'I've heard this one... and this one...', all of a sudden you feel your music research gene being deprived of oxygen. You have FAILED. Noone wants a mix with The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song on it anymore.

Album tracks would seem to be the order of the day but if you're trying to show someone something they might not have heard before then you want the immediacy of a single, right? Maybe. Perhaps a remix will give you a fresh new take on something but with Hype Machine being in there with all the hot tips you could ever want and last.fm's similar artists you might find your options narrowed. Where do you go from there? DiS founder Sean Adams has hit the nail on the head, where can we go in our own leisure pursuit, let alone in proffering a new direction to anyone else's? Who knew that listening to music had to be so effing organised? Must we all show off each week with our last.fm charts? Can't we all just get along?

If everyone can get access to, and is being recommended, everything then what's the point in recommending anything ourselves? Where will it end? There's an endless stream (!) to consume (nasty but appropriate) and the majority of people I know seem to have their pcs, macs or whatever bloated with more music than they can, or want to, even, ever listen to. So where will my little gift fit in there? Will they languish on a shelf with all the other CDs and vinyl noone cares for anymore, gathering dust as the art within withers and disintegrates?

Knowing How The World Works

Last week I was treated to a free cinema pass. That this was used on Knowing is something that is still affecting me four days later. If something seems too good to be true, that is because it is. Surprise at the film's high IMDb rating is matched by the shock that Nicolas Cage is still seen as employable. He looks like he has become the plaything of one of the creepy plastic surgeons from Louis Theroux. The mind boggles. Add the worst child actor ever and a final 'twist' that seems to be in every fucking film in the last year and it makes you want to jizz your overdraft on a plane ticket to LA just so that you can make someone accountable for this absolute cobblers.

Is it a sci-fi? Is it a horror? WHAT IS KNOWING? It is people looking at some scribbles and going, 'oh, look, someone predicted 9/11, if we had known we could have stopped it'. I'm not American and found that to be a bit crass. The whole point of natural disasters is that they are natural, you can't predict them, even if you have got a bunch of albino aliens (was Paul Bettany unavailable? Or is it that the script is so strained that shit actors are all they could get?) telling you every bad thing ever ever ever. The score was ok but it just ended up heaping confusion on every thing as the 'action' was straddled by terror and noise.

The disaster scenes were more or less pornographic; I don't go to the cinema to watch commuters get squished one by one under a renegade subway carriage. As one friend pointed out, one of the flaming men from the aeroplane sequence was right next to some water... Why didn't you help him, Nic?! Why didn't you push him in?! He was too subdued by the disaster porn all around him, that's why. If the authors had ignored the laws of engineering and physics, like in the first episode of Lost, he could have gone through the stray turbine leaving just his mangled hair folicles behind. That would have been worth paying for.

No matter how bored you are, you're not bored enough to see Knowing. Complete and utter gubbins.

Doesn't Matter Much

To be considered for the position of manager, should Alan Shearer make good on his promise to leave after eight games...

A Hand to Take Hold of the Scene

Now that we're all aware it wasn't an April Fool and that Alan Shearer is the new Newcastle United manager, let's get down to it.

This is the last roll of the dice for Mike Ashley and the jokers in charge of the club; Alan Shearer has nothing to lose. By stating that he is in charge for the last eight games and the last eight games only he risks no long-term damage to his place in the hearts of supporters and protects himself from any criticism if he decides to walk away rather than continue next season, regardless of which division Newcastle United find themselves in. The promise of no emotion stretched as far as my personal feelings when the news broke as it isn't, for me, in the same league as Kevin Keegan's mental return last season. Shearer means as much to me as anyone associated with the club but the board's incompetence regarding this season meant any initial wave of optimism has taken more than a day to register. The departure of Dennis Wise from his position of Executive Director/Meddler (Football) late last night helped and left me feeling something like this.

The usual crows of 'no experience' are resonating but if Alan Shearer has half the success of Jurgen Klinsmann or Trevor Brooking then I think every Newcastle fan will be happy come May 24th. Villa and Tottenham fans are having a whinge via email and all the other tat that modern football has encouraged but this is the draw this club and this man has. People always want to have an opinion on Newcastle United be it good or ill but it has never mattered and it won't matter now. Eight games equals twenty-four points and Newcastle United need another fourteen to be sure of survival. If anyone can inspire this group of journeymen, has-beens and never-will-bes then it is Alan Shearer and it will be up there with Keegan's great escape from the jaws of the third tier if he pulls it off. The ability is there, desire and focus are needed.

Will Joe Kinnear be back? Ever the diplomat, Shearer is saying yes. The club has issued a statement stating that Wise will not be replaced. This, plus a successful stewardship for Shearer, ought to see the departure of JFK. Cheers Joe but goodbye. Onwards and upwards. In some respects.

"I envisage sitting in the stand next season watching Newcastle as a Premier League football club" - Alan Shearer, 2/4/09