Newcastle United 1 Sunderland 1

Sunderland fans travelled to this game with carrier bags from a sports shop to wave over their heads before kick-off. For them, and you will have to take my word on this one, this was Quite Amusing. Practical too: anybody who ever went on a big school trip will remember that, when not being wafted in the face of your rival in a slightly apologetic and embarrassed manner, the carrier bag doubled up as a superb lunch box- one that can be immediately discarded upon completion of meal, unlike a standard lunch box which you would be stuck traipsing around with all day. The reports of home fans in the Leazes end being hit with objects, though, perhaps indicates that they should be a bit more careful with their crumbs in future.

Everything was horrible in the first half. We are a better team than Sunderland, we have better players everywhere on the pitch, but they were winning every battle and it was sickening to watch. Cattermole should have been red carded in the first minute, but wasn’t, and so O’Neil’s gamble on the early fouls was a good one. McClean should have went for a two footed lunge on Simpson, but it was evident we were rattled by our reaction: had Krul stayed where he was and Simpson stayed down, the (inept) referee would have had to work hard to justify not showing red. But when we needed nous we showed nerves, and the diversion saved McClean.
For all this, Sunderland are an awful football team, and needed a penalty to get the goal that we, in turn, needed to wake us up. The whistle was in Dean’s mouth and everybody in the ground had worked out that he had given the penalty before the away fans did. They followed a horribly delayed cheer- Niall Quinn’s concerns about their fans watching games on the internet and in bars was obviously valid; they’re so used to watching feeds delayed by two or three minutes that they’re doing them at the match now. Krul was unlucky to not save the penalty.

Right, bollocks to this, let’s have them, we all thought, but for five to ten more torturous minutes they remained on top. Corners and free kicks flashed across our goal, their fans sang their silly O’Neil songs. At some point we take a foothold, put some passes together, then an entire move. Collocini draws a save from a corner, and Ba’s header comes crashing back off the bar.

The second half continues where we left off, and it’s only football that has the queer effect of making something seem all the less likely by virtue of its sheer inevitability. We simply had to score and because of that you just knew that we weren’t going to. Ben Arfa was ripping their ten men to pieces (they had had a player sent off for a crass elbow, which Martin O’Neil was good enough to confirm afterwards are not actually allowed) and the only time the ball was away from their box was so everybody in the crowd could have a breather. Even Tim Krul’s double save, priceless in retrospect, at the time felt like we were wasting time fannying about with it on our goal-line when it needed to be in their half.

Then we got a penalty and I knew we would miss that too.

In November 2000, Alan Shearer stepped up at the Gallowgate End to take a penalty against Tommy Sorenson. What happened next is the only time football has gone in genuine slow motion (I still remember watching the ball travel and saying to myself ‘It’s in’), and it has scarred me ever since. I have since that day been of the opinion that any player celebrating the awarding of a penalty should be fined two week’s wages, and any fan doing it should have their season ticket confiscated until they have demonstrated the correct way to acclaim a spot kick: a hunched posture and a declaration to your companion that ‘He’s going to miss this.’ Pardew’s response on the touchline when the whistle went doomed us, even if Demba hadn’t foolishly changed his mind as he ran to hit it.

Our team at this point were as desperate as we were to score. There was a fantastic spell, which for obvious reasons I only appreciated the next day, after the save when we won every ball and kept steadily going. We did not do this in 2000, despite the penalty minutes coming in the exact same minute.

Last minute now, somehow, and the ball is floated over where Williamson flicks on. Before anybody notices that something quite beautiful is about to take place Shola has smacked the ball of their keeper and, though sheer force of will, it has found itself nestling in to the Gallowgate net as our players run off and we go collectively demented.

It’s easy to say Sunderland would have taken draw beforehand, and it’s true that we should not be dropping cheap points against opposition as poor as this, but this was just delicious in its cruelty. We keep finding new ways to fuck with them.

Premiership Review (26th-27th Nov)

Alan Parry thinks Stoke City are unfairly maligned. He said as much on Saturday morning during their match with Blackburn (who played in an away kit designed to resemble a yellow five-a-side bib, as teams of workmates and drinking friends across the nation noted the comparison, wounded). I suspect that a lot of Stoke City fans would have sympathy with that view. After all, what further evidence do they need of the nation’s disdain for them beside the fact that Alan Parry, very much Sky’s ‘bits and pieces’ man, is a regular at their televised fixtures? Not just Parry, either, they always seem to get one of the lesser spotted summarisers, the ones they seem to turn to only after several others have discovered, with dubious haste, arrangements they simply can’t break.

Don Goodman was the pundit. His crimes ranged from the minor if irritating old favourites- who, by now, doesn’t know that the ball touching an opposition player on its way through the striker is not enough to play the striker onside?- to the slightly more unusual: imploring Scott Dann to get forward near the end of the first forty five minutes rather seemed to suggest that he had forgotten altogether about the second half. I don’t think anybody who still considers the second half something of a staple will be accused of being a stick in the mud, even by Sky Sports. Yet, perhaps hopefully, Goodman seemed to believe that he could be outside with the heating warming the car up as soon as he’d said his goodbyes and remembered where he’d put his coat. And, yes, if somebody were to tell you they forgot entirely the second half from the Stoke/Blackburn game, you would hardly be surprised. But that’s five minutes to twenty four hours after it ended, not before it even starts. It’s no wonder Stoke fans think nobody likes them.

One of the reasons nobody likes them could be deduced from Parry’s reference to what is tactfully being known as “some towel business.” Stoke are fated to be being regarded as the type of club liable to get involved in some towel business. A few weeks ago Newcastle United, calling their bluff, had insisted on equal access to the towels, and this had led to Pulis scraping the service all together for both home and away players. As such, Rory Delap was forced to use his shirt to wipe the ball down before throwing it back in to touch. Parry noted that this was a practice unlikely to please the “laundry lady.” Back in the day, of course, the single laundry lady would most likely have been charged with seeing to both the towels and the shirts, and, as such, largely unmoved about which was being used to get rid of the dew and the errant grass on a Nike Total 90. Stoke, though, are learning that with European qualification, and with it the increased wash load, a rotatable and flexible squad of laundry ladies is a necessity.

There was controversy at Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge. Alex Ferguson’s infantile bleating over a poor penalty call was thrown in to sharp perspective by Sunday’s awful news (*), and, at Stamford Bridge, John Terry was accused of inviting a booking, his fifth of the season, to ‘waste’ his suspension during Tuesday’s Carling Cup tie. Booked for dawdling with the ball at a throw in for what seemed like over a minute, several Chelsea fans have since defended their captain on account of that’s genuinely how slow and ponderous he is these days.

(* Nobody who watched Gary Speed stride through Newcastle United’s 2002-2003 Champions’ League campaign needs to be told what a good player he was. What shines through the tributes is how popular and liked he was off the pitch by pretty much everybody. I never met him, but a friend did in a service station only a month or so ago. Mr. Speed chatted amiably about football with him for about ten minutes- roughly ten minutes longer than I have ever managed to chat amiably about football with that particular friend. A small act of decency, warmth and politeness that Speed most likely never thought anything else about ever again, but a small testament, among much larger ones, to the type of human being he was. RIP.)

I 8 You 2

Defending the performance of his team during their defeat at Manchester United on Sunday, Arsene Wenger stated his case thus: “That was not an 8-2 game.”

The implication was obvious: the game’s annals are littered with games of that very score-line and whatever we deduce ordinarily from it was, on this one, not the way to go.

Was he right? Here, we study the circumstances of some of the more famous 8-2 games and see what patterns emerge.

Real Madrid 2-Brazil 8

A little like the game on Sunday, Real Madrid could argue that a missed penalty in this one changed their fortunes. They perhaps had more reason to feel aggrieved about its non-conversion given that it was taken by their mate Gary as they were out the front paying the pizza bloke.

Returning to the Xbox, and resolutely un-amused by the developments, they were further incensed by Brazil’s offer to ‘let them score’, which they deemed a huge insult. This was possibly on their mind when they spurned a glorious opening to level things, presented after uncharacteristic dalliance in the Brazilian backline, which the away team swore was down to temporarily switching their slice of pizza from left to right hand and nothing untoward.

Ill discipline crept in during a second half dominated by threats to abandon the game and a warning that they wouldn’t be pausing if Brazil needed to use the toilet, as they should have thought of that. A shameful evening in the club’s otherwise grand history was capped by a post match interview which centred solely on when they could expect to collect the money from everybody else for the pizza, not to mention the crate of larger they had all been happy to pilfer from.

Overly Keen Dad 8- His Bored Son 2

Making impressive use of the landing’s cramped surface, the home team raced in to an early lead against opponents who only began to settle in to game after a swapping of sides allowed them a better view in to the living room where the television had been left on as a condition of the game going ahead in the first place.

At times a cagey affair, the game sprung in to life during the thrilling period when six of the victor’s eight goals were scored, though some
were left wondering why the rule that dictated shots off the door handle counting double was only introduced after the feat was managed three times in five frantic second half minutes.

Marseille 8- Manchester United 2 (Monaco, 2011)

Despite being on the right end of it on Sunday, even Manchester United have fallen victim to this most famous of score-lines. You will remember the fall out and recriminations. Indeed, Fabien Barthez has not been spotted near a Manchester United shirt since appearing in
goal during this defeat. Admittedly, he hadn’t been spotted near one for the eight years previous to this defeat either. But the continued selection of David De Gea since the season started still feels like a very public snubbing for the Frenchman.

Frankie’s Brother’s and his Mates 2-8 Frankie and his Mates

As Frankie pointed out in his post match remarks, five-a-side only meant the amount of players on each side, not the amount of goals they
shared. And, as his brother countered, it didn’t mean that either, given the two players who had turned up ten minutes in and joined Frankie’s team on the basis that they didn’t know his brother that well.

Accrington F.C 8- 2 Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C

This is the earliest recorded 8-2 in English professional football, and, until Sunday, was also the most recent. The following day’s Times were surprisingly limited in their coverage of the game- contrast with the media’s reaction to the weekend’s events at Old Trafford- though that may have been due to the outbreak of hostilities. As the teams left the pitch at the end of the game, the word was already coming through of the fighting taking place in Cape Colony which was to spark the beginning of The Boer War.

Scunthorpe 1 2 Newcastle United

Watching Newcastle United being described as ‘giants’ during a cup game against lower league opposition on Sky Sports is, I suspect, the closest most of us will ever get to being wolf whistled. Which is to say that any sleazy urges to be flattered are overwhelmed by the awareness of the proponents’ deeper-lying impure motives. As Alan Pardew pointed out during his pre match interview, the broadcasters wouldn’t have been there in the first place if they hadn’t sensed blood.

Our season in The Championship threw this tie in to further confusion, casting dubious light on Sky’s David & Goliath angle. We were actually beat at this ground in 2009, on a night when certain fans took exception to Kevin Nolan’s overegged celebration of an equalising goal. Funny old thing, football. If you had told some complaining that night that Nolan’s over zealousness would be replaced in two year’s time by a French Championship winning international they would most likely not have opined that we would miss desperately Nolan’s leadership and grit. Because that night we were opposed to that type of thing, we considered it ostentatious and put on and plain tacky. Fans often look at a result first and branch out their complaints from there and we’re a remarkably resourceful bunch when it comes to things about which to be unhappy. And none of the complaints or sources of unhappiness truly make sense until you conclude how little they actually matter.

I was broadly in favour of the Nolan sale, and opposed to the Barton one (insomuch as you could always justify his presence in the team- I found his supposedly anguished tweets on it during the last days hugely boring, and there’s a certain relief he’s taking his drama queen act elsewhere), but what arguing about both does is serve to ignore the wider issue, and I’m concerned pointless veneration of either will help assist the club in their campaign of lies and misinformation, when in reality any dispute between the parties is self serving and childish on all their parts and of no material benefit to us and what we need. Because the thing is, the club can claim, with some justice, to be in the right on the Barton issue. And as long as they have a moral high ground they will abuse it and use it to distract from something they can actually do something about while we all squabble with each other to no meaningful conclusion.

So Barton’s gone. Thanks for playing well from the middle of August until the middle of February last season. Whatever. We need a striker. Failing that, we need Nicklas Bendtner. We created lots during this game; ignoring Gosling and taking it from Vuckic’s introduction, we have a midfield which is mobile and adroit and shrewd. But Best, hardworking and likeable but grossly limited, and Lovenkrands- lamentable- wasted each and every chance given them through timidly, bad decision making and that awful bit at the end of ninety minutes where Lovenkrands stood and watched a stinging low cross pass between him and the goalkeeper, presumably temporarily confused with a game
of heads and volleys where any goals hit from crosses played along the ground mean the goal scorer has to take over in goal.

The highlight was the kids. Vuckic simply oozes class, granite jawed and broad he looks straight out of one of our 1950s cup winning teams, and Sammi Ameobi is direct and purposeful and, weirdly, looks a bit brilliant. As much as everybody is L-O-Ling at the prospect of the surname Ameobi for another ten years, I can’t help but fear that’s wildly optimistic. In fact, that’s the nagging thought about the whippersnappers: for years Newcastle have produced pretty much nothing in terms of home grown, or at least home nurtured, stars. Now, when you can pretty much guarantee they’ll be gone to the highest bidder at the earliest possible junction, we apparently have an unending stream of the bastards.

On that note, with Manchester United surely considering their goalkeeping options, it can’t only be me hoping that Tim Krul managers to throw one in on Sunday against Fulham? Not to the detriment of the final result, obviously, but I have a feeling that the final nasty surprise of the transfer window is still to be unleashed upon us.

Theo's Restaurant Corner

“At dinner the other night I was the oldest one”- Theo Walcott

I was joined at dinner by two colleagues. As much as the ambiance, the drink, and of course the food, I have long been of the belief that a good meal is defined by your company. Many times has a mediocre desert tray been rescued by lively discourse. This is not to say that a restaurant should be given an easy reviewing ride simply because of rewarding companionship. Instead their task has become a more nuanced one: they are now charged with ensuring that not only your own spirits, but also the spirits of your fellow diners, are kept in thorough and fine fettle. Put simply: we didn’t want any more tantrums from Emmanuel because they had ran out of Last Airbender toys in the Happy Meals.

When we arrived the staff were attentive and brisk; we hadn’t been sat down five minutes before a lady with an industrial mop told us we would have to get what we wanted ourselves and that the milkshake machine wasn’t working. We had been planning on sampling a few different milkshakes as the night went on and so, as Aaron removed his bib disappointedly, there was a gloomy feeling that the night had already been soured. Theirs more than mine, I must confess: in the back of my mind I was relieved that they wouldn’t be taking hands sticky with congealed sugar and syrup back to the car with them.

Beginning with a chicken nugget starter, finished in Barbeque sauce (once I got theirs open for them), there was a moment of high excitement when Emmanuel told us that he had one shaped exactly like a beak. As somebody who values presentation, I nevertheless wonder about such gimmickry. It may be an interesting quirk giving the diner “the full and visceral experience of eating a chicken”- as a staff member explained it while wiping up the juice spilt by Aaron- but novelty crutches like these lead me to wonder if the sanest path for the restaurant isn’t the one more commonly wandered. It didn’t end at the nuggets either. I was forced to complain when I found a hair in my coffee. As I pointed out to the staff, chickens don’t have hair, they have contour and down feathers.

Waiting on the main course, which Emmanuel has gone to the till to order on the condition of being timed, I reflected on our surroundings. Though the ceilings are high and the artwork- abstract and sparsely coloured drawings of Ronald McDonald and The Ham Burgular presumably on loan from the nearby Tate Modern- challenging, it’s a slightly cramped and less than relaxing venue for dining. The seating arrangements don’t help, with barely enough room for Aaron to swing backwards on his, and, in an era of fast food sushi and affordable dining for all, it feels almost like a throwback to the type of place one might have visited with friends during summers gone by way of a last resort. I mentioned my thoughts to Aaron and Emmanuel but they’d never heard of Wimpy.

As the Big Macs and Fish Fillets arrived, the table has subdued a little and we ate our meals in thoughtful silence, a silence only punctured by Aaron’s occasional claims that Emmanuel got more fries than him. The mellow mood suited the dish, even if I did get more to chew on from the fish than from the conversation.

Over After Eight McFlurrys things picked up slightly, the previous lull presumably being missed bedtimes based and nothing to do with the sogginess of the fries. (They hadn’t been prepared wrongly- Aaron had spilt his juice again.) Chatting about this and that as one does waiting for the bill, it suddenly occurred that the last time we saw a member of staff was sometime before Aaron began on that mega random thing he had watched on the tele the night before, roughly forty five minutes earlier. Furthermore, the mops had been stored away, the lights switched off and, most damningly of all, both doors bolted shut. In the distance, as we peered out the window, smoke rose from the heels of the departing staff. It wasn’t the ideal circumstances in which to enjoy a desert.

Still. It’s not all bad. I’m looking forward to sampling the pancakes and Mcmuffins

Sunderland & Howard Webb 0 1 Newcastle United

Things Sunderland fans will say this week and how you should reply.

We battered you in the first half.
You were perhaps more fluid than us in the first half and this, coupled with a home crowd who initially seemed up for it, probably made it feel as though we were creaking under pressure. I imagine this feeling was enhanced if you were actually in the stadium. Funny old places to watch games of football, stadiums- particularly if you’re not used to them. In the cold light of day, though, you created very little. In many ways your team gave a performance which reflected your support’s during the summer time: all bluster and energy, little substance. Certainly, you failed to capitalise on Larsson’s cheating, and as the half went on it was clear your team had ran out of ideas which neatly complemented our intelligent game plan. You seem a bright enough young fellow, even if this conversation did begin with you asking me which is the metro stop with all the trains in it, and I trust you won’t be swallowing your manager’s nonsense about “dominance”

We never heard a peep from your fans until you scored (they always try this one).
Can I first propose a realignment of priorities? Trying to gain an upper hand on an intangible and wholly subjective concept like a singing contest when others are attempting to analyse the game of football that has taken place is a little like judging an X Factor contestant on the quality of their back stage keepie-ups. Secondly, have you considered that, what with sound waves and acoustics and the person next to you tapping away on their annoyingly loud mobile phone keys, the Newcastle fans may have made a peep to which you were not immediately privy, given you were sat at the other end of the stadium surrounded by forty five thousand Sunderland fans? I was happy to eventually defer to you on your other argument - and yes, looking again, you’re right to say the colour of the cornflakes in your beard matches your tie- but I’m afraid I can’t let this one go unchallenged.

We have more class.
This, as I’m sure you’re aware deep down, is a laughable argument (and I don’t say that to imply anything about you personally, you strike me as the type that could get quite paranoid about that type of thing). On Saturday your fans cheered the award of a corner kick when Larsson got away with cheating, and then applauded Phil Bardsley off for attempting to break a better player’s leg. Meanwhile, study our captain’s reaction to the non-award of the penalty: a puffed out cheek, a call for calm, and an immediate intent to get back on with the game. As far as I can see this entire class idea comes from the fact that Niall Quinn talks in a soft Irish lilt during press appearances.

You just handled the occasion better.
Indeed we did: the occasion being a football match.

What hurts is that the Mags were so awful and still beat us. (They always try this one too.)
As a Sunderland supporter you are in the fortunate position of having seen your team defeated by Newcastle United teams of all shapes and sizes. With that has came a keenness to cast an eye on our relative weaknesses compared to years past. The problem with this is that- yes, don’t worry, I’ll tell you when it’s your stop- for all your post match arguments about our failings remain consistent, so too does the outcome of the match. This leaves any rumination from you on our team ring exceedingly hollow. Besides which, the best performance I’ve ever seen from Sunderland against Newcastle- the 3-2 in 2005- came from one of the country’s worst ever teams, which goes to show such judgements are pointless and mere distractions.

I’m glad- that result will paper over the cracks.

Well being that enough cracks papered over in a manner which leads to three points should see us safe from relegation, I fear Newcastle fans are rather stuck for a few years with papered over cracks. Still, as papered over cracks go it was a bit of a superb one, you have to admit. Lines about cracks being papered over is an attempt to not treat the derby game as an end, retroactively pretending to view it as a means. After months of giddy hysteria about the prospect of what you were going to do to us now you have added genuine class like Wes Brown and Craig Gardner to your squad, this is very poor, cowardly even, backtracking. Don’t try similar at the station- you’ll put someone’s eye out with your holdall.

Newcastle United 0 0 Arsenal

The problem with attempting to defend Joey Barton these days is that by the time you try to he’s already done it for himself on Twitter. There was certainly some dissatisfaction on Sky’s ghastly Sunday Supplement shout-a-thon about Barton’s medium of choice, with the argument that him stating his case on Twitter only allows for messages of “140 characters or fewer” put forward. And there we were again, at the dawn of a new season, with that oft-preached lament about modern football and its lack of characters.

There’s no doubting that, aside from a character limit that allows only double the amount of words one would ordinarily expect to hear from a footballer in a post match interview, Joseph’s online activities have been the cause of some concern over summer: I was as disappointed as anybody to discover he follows Piers Morgan. Apart from that, though, his Twitter stuff is largely harmless (does anybody believe he and the owners wouldn't have eventually found some way to clash over his new contract without Twitter- using mesenger pigeons if necessary?). And, like Eric Cantona taking a sip of water to conceal his laughter during a crucial bit in his ‘seagulls follow the trawler’ press conference, pompous journalists who can’t work out that he is clearly taking the piss with the Orwell and Nietzsche quotes are succeeding only in making themselves look stupid.

Over the weekend, he got in to an argument on there with Jack Wilshere. The fact that Wilshere (whom Barton has in the past showered with fulsome praise) instigated the argument was largely lost on everybody, which is odd. If somebody with a recent history of drinking to excess is picking fights with a teetotaller on Saturday night, one would ordinarily expect the doorman to remove to former, not chastise the latter. (The comparison of the British press and the nation’s bouncers is not a spurious one- anybody who has ever been a subject of Pubwatch will tell you that they both posses pretty nifty surveillance equipment.) Yet here the roles seemed confused in the mind of the media. Strange.

As for Saturday on the pitch? He’s probably explained already, but, for the record: there is a huge difference between diving following non-existent contact to unfairly alter the course of the game and going to ground softly to alert the referee to a genuine offence, and though the latter is dubious practice, it is understandable when the officials have previously missed a malicious stamp on the back of your leg, and certainly not comparable with the first example of genuine cheating. There is nothing people feel as smug about as pointing out supposed hypocrisory in others, which might explain why so many people rush to do it when it isn’t actually appparant in the contrasting words and actions of their subject, but in drawing attention to Gervinho’s red card offence, Barton was not cheating or conning anybody: he was aiding a referee who had displayed myopia in a previous incident. Barton- and Taylor’s- reaction is irrelevant: Gervinho was a goner anyway. And if not, if the referee is basing his calls on the reaction and behaviour of the players, then he is not doing his job correctly, and that’s nothing to do with Joey Barton.

But enough of that nonsense, what of the debutants? Ba was unlucky to get taken off before Ameobi, Cabaye struggled to impose in a game clearly not made for him, Obertan showed some promising flashes, and in my new seat in the East Stand I was immense. Obviously, pre-match nerves had been marked (I had began my previous tenure, in the Gallowgate End at the start of the 09/10 season, by attempting small talk about the new design of the metro tickets to blank embarrsment and from there never really recovered), but I put them to one side and gave a masterful display in close control- not correcting the gentleman behind me when he mistook Ameobi for Ba- and enterprising flank play- running quickly down the stairs to see the replay of the Barton/Gervinho incident and reporting straight back.

An impressive start, but nobody is getting carried away. It’s easy to get plaudits against Arsenal; will I be as well received on a cold Wednesday night in December against West Bromich Albion when the shirt lettering is frazzled and the stairways are slippery? It’s a long season and the real challenges still lie ahead.

(Incidentally, the Arsenal fans that ended their day screaming for their manager to “spend some money” had begun it by telling the home fans that they “pay [our] benefits.” There’s symmetry there, I think, and both songs manage to neatly capture an attitude of greed, entitlement and crass, finance obsessed superciliousness which contributed towards many of their city’s residents finally losing their patience last week in one of the most horrible ways imaginable. I’m not saying that Arsene Wegner’s spending policy helped cause the London riots. But, with those riots as a backdrop, the bunch of charmers in the Arsenal support may want to consider their song selection a little more carefully.)