Sonatine

Alan Pardew: Local press have not helped Newcastle United in recent weeks http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/alan-pardew-local-press-not-6982537 Maybe if your fat bastard billionaire Billy no mates boss hadn't banned them, they'd be a bit more supportive? What a pair of clown shoes this cunt is

Crisis a weary friend of the Mike Ashley era at Newcastle United George CaulkinApril 11 2014 11:04AM Quiz question: what do Newcastle United (ever-perplexing football club), Pat Sharp (DJ, recently seen in I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!), Flavia Cacace (a regular on Strictly Come Dancing), Alicia Douvall (50 Greatest Plastic Surgery Shockers), Nancy Dell’Olio (former girlfriend of Sven-Goran Eriksson) and Fue Hair Clinics (branches in Harley Street and the Midlands) have in common? The answer is a who, not a what, and he was pictured sitting alongside Mike Ashley at St James’ Park the other week. He might be an unfamiliar figure amongst supporters, so much so that some wondered whether he might be an investor seeking to take control of Newcastle, but this is a man with a deep and close association to the club and its leading protagonists. Meet Keith Bishop who, in his own words, is a “PR and crisis management specialist & celebrity agent.” The crisis management bit is (sadly) self-explanatory. From the hiring of Dennis Wise, the departure of Kevin Keegan and Alan Shearer, the baffling presence of Joe Kinnear (twice), a bitter relegation, the renaming of Newcastle’s home, Chris Hughton’s sacking, two failed attempts to sell the club, the arrival of a controversial payday lender as chief sponsor and much else besides, crisis has been a weary friend of the Ashley era, even if most of it has been self-inflicted. At Ashley’s Newcastle, a juggernaut delivering crisis has always been hurtling around a blind corner. It is a combination of the retail billionaire’s methods of doing business (just because something is done a certain way is not reason enough for him to do it), and decisions which have either been dreadful, crass or caused pain but, whatever the reason, you can understand why a “PR and crisis management specialist” might be useful. Not to mention busy. Newcastle have their own PR and media team. Good and decent people they are, too (I have to write that or I’ll get banned, obviously), even if circumstances sometimes present them with a brick wall/forehead kind of challenge. There have been victories for communication – fan forums, a Twitter feed which was one of the worst (let’s all buy a Newcastle gnome!) but is now witty and engaged – but they tend to get lost in a fog of negativity, journalist bans and other stuff beyond their control. Why an outside agency is either required or desirable is not something I can answer – aside from the sheer quantity of work – although, whether at Sports Direct or in football, Ashley has tended to surround himself with people he knows and can trust. Newcastle are not the only sporting institution on Bishop’s books; he has worked with Leeds United and Rangers, in which Ashley also owns a seven per cent stake. In a subtle way, Bishop has become part of the furniture at Newcastle and yet few fans would be aware of his involvement, let alone the extent of it. He has attended the odd Alan Pardew press conference, was in the London hotel room when Derek Llambias, the former managing director, embraced glasnost and detailed the club’s push for “stability” a couple of years ago and was recently Ashley’s match-day companion. He is not hiding. On the website for Keith Bishop Associates, he is described as “one of the best-known names in the PR business. Keith, or The Bishop, is a familiar face around Soho, the pulsing heart of the entertainment and PR industry, while he’s equally well-known in boardrooms and executive offices not just in London, but the length and breadth of Britain.” It continues. “Aside from his stunning range of skills, Keith possesses something that no amount of money can buy and no amount of wishful thinking can acquire – experience, but he also has the acumen and insight to put all this to the best possible use for his clients. “His address book has been compared with a particularly hefty volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica and it’s the envy of most others in the profession. He counts as his friends and clients everyone from archaeologists to zoologists with just about every possible profession in between, while he inspires a fierce loyalty, admiration and affection, even in such a cut-throat and instantly changeable industry as ours.” There are several points of interest here. Bishop could stroll down Grey Street and not be recognised and yet he clearly enjoys a profound influence on Ashley and others. Second, there can only be fascination at the unusual link between Newcastle, the club of Milburn, Keegan, Robson and Shearer, and the self-styled Bishop of Soho, whose varied professional clients include Aldo Zilli, the chef, Les McKeown, the lead singer of the Bay City Rollers, and the bloke who was, until recently, the face of Sky Sports News in the North East. At face value, the common ground does not appear obvious and yet the qualities which Bishop lists as his great strength, aside from the crisis part – “a deeply personal approach that gets results,” – is also fundamental to Ashley’s modus operandi. It always has been. One of Llambias’s sons was involved in designing the website in question and on his own Twitter feed (@BishopofSoho), there is a photograph of Bishop with “the fab Mrs Pards.” At a club which has occasionally veered towards the dysfunctional, where relationships can be strained and painful and where public words have been pored over and picked apart, it is easy to see how a “deeply personal approach” would be important; a whisper in the ear, encouragement, smoothing egos, networking between disparate opinions, finding common ground, drawing together. Perhaps “The Bishop” is the glue holding Newcastle together. On a related front, who knows how involved Bishop was with the 1400-word statement which accompanied Lee Charnley’s promotion as Newcastle’s managing director this week but the phrase “deeply personnel” did not apply. It read like a document that had been passed from desk to desk, office to office, caught like a piece of glass in the tide, robbing of it of edge and definition to the point of translucence. By the end, it was scarcely there at all. In normal circumstances, you would implore clubs to communicate more openly with their public, but when Newcastle do it they speak to customers, not fans. This, too, is at Ashley’s insistence, and the effect is utterly disheartening. Where was the love, the passion, the empathy, the sense of history or belonging or possibility? While there was “delight” at Wonga and praise for “dedicated, hardworking and loyal employees”, where was the thanks? Where was the thanks for that average attendance of more than 50,000 which Charnley acknowledged makes Newcastle “the third-best supported club in England”? Ticket prices may be (relatively) reasonable, but investment such as that at a time of recession is worthy of recognition beyond corporate blandishments. Where was the gratitude for steadfast backing during a season where the league position has become a mirage? Newcastle may, in Charnley’s words, have “never been in such a stable and healthy financial position,” but they have scarcely felt so empty. As Michael Martin, the editor of True Faith, put it in a brilliant, withering editorial this week, Newcastle have become a club that “exists to exist,” that does not view knockout competitions as a priority, that has lost three consecutive matches to Sunderland, that can employ Kinnear, that sold Yohan Cabaye, their best player, without finding a replacement, that has failed to make a permanent signing for two transfer windows. As Martin wrote: “This season is far from the worst I’ve seen by a long chalk. I’ve been angry, frustrated before but I’ve never felt this level of disillusion, disconnection or depression at what is going on at the sorry excuse for a football club I have the grave misfortune to have an affinity to. Whether it’s my age or the collective disappointments the club has provided down the years catching up with me, I don’t know, but I look upon almost everything associated with our club and I don’t see anything at all I actually like any longer. I am completely alienated from it.” Martin’s opinion is far from a lonely one. It is not a scientific sample, but plenty of people I know – friends, family, the Twittersphere – are questioning their ties to a club which can feel more like the footballing wing of Sports Direct than a grand old institution straining for glory. Charnley concluded his statement with a desire to “make Newcastle United the best it can be.” The addition of the phrase “pound for pound” was as depressing as it was inevitable. Within the building, his elevation has been received with relief and fragile optimism. With Kinnear no longer around, there is hope that Charnley, Pardew and Graham Carr will form a tight-knit group that can marry the wishes of the manager to the strengths of the chief scout and Ashley’s insistence that acquisitions are predominantly young and of good value, which has not always worked. Steve Harper describes Charnley as a good man and his opinion is one I trust. The statement referred to signing “one or two players per year to strengthen the squad,” but this is an aspiration rather than a reflection of what will happen this summer. After recent events – Pardew putting numbers on possible transfers followed by an agonising, slow-motion failure to get any “over the line,” – fans will take more convincing, but, someone authoritative I’ve spoken to insists that Newcastle will be more active than any club outside of the elite. We shall see soon enough. Something has to give. Newcastle may well be a “well-run club,” with players on course to meet the “incentive scheme,” which will kick in if a place in the top ten is secured (they are presently bossing the race for ninth), but they are also in a difficult and dangerous place. Sunderland have plundered more league goals at St James’ than they have in 2014 and aside from their most recent sequence (three defeats, 11 goals conceded, none scored), results have been erratic. When they lose games, Newcastle have a habit of losing badly (in ten of their defeats, they have shipped three goals or more) and coupled with a lengthy list of connected disappointments, some historical, some not, the feeling endures that the club is once again tip-toeing towards a precipice. Pardew, for one, understands that his authority has been dented, particularly in the wake of that nonsense at Hull City, and is in dire need of a positive result. And more than that. Newcastle are a contradiction, “well-run” and forever falling apart, always asking for judgement to be deferred. Whether they realise it or not – and you would hope that, in spite of this week’s life-sapping mission statement, some of them do – they are in the throes in crisis, one which is not immediately visible and one which, given their league position, might prompt confusion elsewhere. It is a crisis of meaning, of confidence, of purpose. It is a less tangible crisis than what The Bishop is used to, but recognising it and managing it is vital.

Apparently scored more league goals at SJP than we have this year too.....

Aye, if he didn't like Mondays before, he must hate them now

Good piece here about the state of the club atm. http://www.true-faith.co.uk/thru-black-white-eyes-zombies-6apr14/

Possibly should have turned the peerage down with a name like this....

Saw this on .com.....

We've gone from being the comeback kings under SBR, to the comeback cunts under Pardew.

Looks like a warm front coming in from the west.

He's the gift that keeps on giving

http://espnfc.com/blog/_/name/newcastleunited/id/1902

Desmond was a strange cove, tbf.

Currently playing the Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls expansion, huge improvement over the base game.

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/take-newcastle-united-random-excuse-6889667?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

An upgrade on this shite patter merchant wouldn't be unwelcome, tbf.