“Letter” from Kenyon to MA leaked to gross Ashley-a-like Martin Samuel of the Daily Mail, no doubt Bishops idea....” This will keep the plebs quiet for another couple of weeks, then you can bring in your anonymous Ivorian left back from Sion & the part time window cleaner from Forfar Athletic who can play up front or on the wing. Job done till the summer Mike. Invoice to the usual address?”
We begin at the end, and one of those awkward questions designed to wrap up the unwrappable. If you had to boil down the present state of Newcastle United into a single word, what would it be? Alex Hurst pauses for a moment. “Sad,” he says, “because it’s so unnecessary.” Chris Betts agrees. “Sad,” he says. “Desperate. Petrified of the worst-case scenario.”
For the previous hour, we have been sitting in The Forth, one of Newcastle’s great bars, down the hill from St James’ Park, attempting to unpick a beautiful, baffling club who, not for the first time, teeter on a cliff edge. This is a difficult story to tell — a shape-shifting sort of crisis — so consider this pint, this chat, a public service. Or maybe it is just catharsis.
Empathy has been difficult to summon from supporters beyond Tyneside, in part because, on the face of it, Newcastle are blessed — mid-table in the richest, brassiest division in the world, a fine manager, a full stadium — and in part because they remain the subject of grotesque stereotype. Geordies? Malcontent horse-punchers with inflated expectations.
We begin at the end, and one of those awkward questions designed to wrap up the unwrappable. If you had to boil down the present state of Newcastle United into a single word, what would it be? Alex Hurst pauses for a moment. “Sad,” he says, “because it’s so unnecessary.” Chris Betts agrees. “Sad,” he says. “Desperate. Petrified of the worst-case scenario.”
For the previous hour, we have been sitting in The Forth, one of Newcastle’s great bars, down the hill from St James’ Park, attempting to unpick a beautiful, baffling club who, not for the first time, teeter on a cliff edge. This is a difficult story to tell — a shape-shifting sort of crisis — so consider this pint, this chat, a public service. Or maybe it is just catharsis.
Empathy has been difficult to summon from supporters beyond Tyneside, in part because, on the face of it, Newcastle are blessed — mid-table in the richest, brassiest division in the world, a fine manager, a full stadium — and in part because they remain the subject of grotesque stereotype. Geordies? Malcontent horse-punchers with inflated expectations.