Wiggy's World

Read this on the BBC website LINK and agree with most of it in principle.  Maybe he’s gone a bit over the top with the whole “Shearer” thing   Why would he settle for Ant n Dec! ha ha.  As I have said before… I would love it if Newcastle won every game 4-3, but i’d also settle for the times when we scrape out a 1-0 win, and play similar to the way they did last night! Hustling opposition players into making mistakes.  The toon legend Peter Beardsley said last night that opinion seemed to be divided almost 50/50 as to what the fans would like to see.  Open games where we lose 4-3, but play the sort of cavalier football that we became most famous for under King Kev, or grind out results the same way that Big Sam became famous for with his Bolton team.  A physical team, that are comfortable on the ball, and willing to bleed for the team.  I’ll just settle for a Newcastle United that play nice attacking football, but are solid at the back.  Lets call it a combination of the two styles of play   Like I said in an earlier post, lets hope over these next 4 games, we can get behind Big Sam and the team, and turn St James’s Park back into the fortress it once was, where the fans will not only be a 12th man, but a 13th too

The managerial merry-go-round seems worse than ever.

Geordie friends have been joking darkly about the ‘last roll of the Allardyce’ and calling a Sambulance to take him away.

The only medical attention the big man will need is the surgical removal of a job lot of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum. What a masticator he is. They say he’s not a good manager but then how does he manage to chew all that, eh?

Me and Big Sam have a lot in common. We’re big and ugly and we like our players to keep it simple.

Many’s the time the Blue Bell first XI have begged me to let them play football on the grass. The fact is our playing surface makes Wembley look like Centre Court. It’s got more bobbles on it than one of me Nan’s cardies.

I tell ‘em: “Just get it forward and we’ll start playing up their end.”

The Toon Army are not happy with this rustic approach, asking for something a bit more sophisticated, like.

Of course Tynesiders are very sophisticated fellas. Your average fans at St James’s spend the half-time interval discussing Wittgenstein over a bottle of Merlot and some artisan foccacia.

Joey Barton has called the Magpie crowd ‘vicious’, which is laughable. I’d like to know what Joey’s definition of vicious is. Perhaps Ousmane Dabo has a definition too.

If the team churns out abject performances like the ones chucked up against Liverpool and Pompey, you’d have to be an imbecile not to expect some angry supporters.

Mr Ashley aside, the Toon Army go and watch people on vastly superior wages to themselves and for too long too many of them have not been earning it.
It all starts with results of course – and 1-1 against the Arse is not a bad start. It was great that the Evening Chronicle encouraged the fans to get behind the team on Wednesday night. They were rewarded with a bit of oomph for a change.

But when Barton or some other overpaid dimwit starts slagging the fans for getting hacked off then you have to wonder what these players are on. It’s not up to the Gallowgate to make the players do better.

To his credit, Allardyce has not tried spreading the blame around the terraces. The team have been crap against Pompey and Liverpool especially. But the man’s been there for how long? Four months? It’s not like they’re rock-bottom.

There are a few football clubs whose fans seem to exist in a bubble of total self-delusion: Newcastle, Spurs, Villa – your supporters still dwell in some romantic never-never-land where Jackie Milburn, Danny Blanchflower and Dennis Mortimer never got any older and are still just waiting for a first-team call-up even today.

Then there’s the clubs whose fans are realists/miserabilists: Man City, Everton, Boro. We’re just happy to be competing.

Newcastle aren’t very good. Allardyce has as good a chance as any – and certainly a better chance than the scowling Sourness or the droning Roeder – of getting the team winning summat.

If not him, then who? Shearer continues to be an obvious candidate but how can they afford him? Not the wages so much as the celebration.

They’ll fly him in dangling from a black and white helicopter, pump dry ice into the Gallowgate end and every step on the terrace will light up beneath his feet as he puts his foot down, like Michael Jackson doing Billie Jean.

Small children with gather in heavenly choruses on the pitch and coo “There’s no one quite like Shearer!” with Ant ‘n’ Dec and Bryan Ferry accompanying.

Tony Blair’ll embrace him like a brother. And finally a giant hand will pass through the grey murk of the Tyneside sky and gently place his index finger on Sir Alan’s forehead, officially anointing him “The Geordie Saviour, like”.

My advice would be to stick with Sam. There are too many glowering chairmen sitting on managers’ chests like some monstrous millionaire demons. They need to get out of the bleeding way for a while and let the managers manage.