Damned Uniteds

There are two small problems with this: one, it requires a quite staggering conceit to believe in the first place you occupy such rarefied airs; and two, you limit yourself somewhat as to who’s actually fit to represent your club, puritanical alcove of footballing integrity that it is. Either they don’t play ‘your’ way, or they’re too Southern, or they’re not quite Catholic enough… the list is endless. Hence, why Sam Allardyce lasted ten minutes at St. James Park, and yet the veneration of Kevin Keegan would have us believe that he is still the only man genetically equipped to manage Newcastle United. And that Alan Shearer is not only a possible choice as his successor, but a necessary one.

Unfortunately, it’s also much, much easier to pander to The People when their criteria are so publically defined. This is precisely how Mike Ashley, a sportswear magnate from south Buckinghamshire, had only to down some pints in Bigg Market in order to seduce an entire city. That flimsy, calculated show of ladishness, that badge-on-the-sleeve artifice and public chest thumping, was all that was needed to send the Toon hordes a-swooning.

They were duped. They were naive. But herein lies the whispered reality of the Toon Army – they’re a modern bunch. Keegan’s triumphs (one promotion) did not resuscitate a city’s soul; they merely eased the gravitation of manfolk in a large, one-club town towards the pioneering zeitgeist of a young Premiership. Football was already tumbling back into national vogue. With the same circumstances, the same investment and similar exposure, it could have happened in Stoke, Bristol, Bradford or Cardiff. Plymouth or Wolverhampton. Hull. Most of them one-club cities. All of them more populous. But by accident or design, Newcastle timed their ascent to absolute perfection. New recruits piled into the Toon Army, and the wheels on British football’s biggest bandwagon were set into motion.

Geordies often legislate for Keegan’s kamikaze reign by claiming that he turned them into everyone’s second favourite team. No he didn’t. People watched Newcastle then for the same reason that they’ll always watch the start of a Grand Prix; because of a very peculiar bloodlust, the promise of chaos on a Sunday afternoon, just before the paralysis of roast beef and dumplings kicks in. It is not craft or consideration that defines Newcastle United, but that chaos; a raw, clumsy, unfettered sort of excitement. In that respect, I suppose, this season can be considered nothing less than a roaring success. Beware the Chinese curse, lads – “may you live in interesting times.”

The Toon Army are heralded in these clinical, joyless times as a model for fans across the world. Still, they demand Keegan, the Dr. Frankenstein to their reawakening. But barring a couple of seasons under Bobby Robson, Newcastle have been mired in the inflexible guff of their own fans for years. Nobody can seem to understand how or why they expect to succeed, beyond smug little contentions that, as a cornerstone of their community, they ‘deserve’ it. This would be fine, if only there was some kind of consistency woven into their silly expectations. But there isn’t. It’s all well and good flogging the ‘Cockney Mafia’ horse, as if there’s something intrinsically trustless about anything south of Wakefield, but then we all know your average Geordie would have Al-Qaeda splashed across his XXL shirt, if that money then spawned a shot at the top three. Such is the myopia of your average football fan; principles are something to be dusted off only when things are going wrong. Mike Ashley and Dennis Wise are unwelcome in Toon because Newcastle are, currently, rubbish. Nothing more, nothing less. This imposition of creed and conviction – the ‘football town’ argument, the suggestion that so-and-so just doesn’t ‘get’ it, basic protectionism – is just a time-honoured rhetorical device for deposing the weak. It’s a powerful, almost inarguable contention, that’s dislodged bigger names from richer traditions. Reid from Man City. Souness from Liverpool. It was an absolute triumph of selectivism when Glen Hoddle’s Tottenham side “weren’t quite ‘Spurs’ enough.”

Another example of this parochialism is Leeds United fans, whose rabid insistence on ‘keeping it in the family’ wouldn’t be out of place in Deliverance. In West Yorkshire, where football attained perfection some time in the early seventies, ‘Leeds’ is now anchored in their sanctimonious prattle as the ultimate affirmative adjective, a mantle forged in the furnace of those old, embattled days, when they were hated and feared. ‘Passion is knowledge’ should be scripted beneath the club crest. Simply, you are or aren’t ‘Leeds’. As managers, Allan Clarke, Billy Bremner, Norman Hunter and Eddie Gray (twice) failed to do themselves or the club any sort justice, but crucially, they were of its fabric. All was forgiven. The same could not be said of Terry Venables or Brian Kidd, both onto losers from the start. Or Dennis Wise, for that matter, which is odd, because if ever two entities should have been able to reconcile their innate villainy, it’d be the Poison Dwarf and Dirty Leeds. A match made in Hades. Yet it didn’t work for Wise: whilst he was nasty, he wasn’t Nasty. Because theirs’ is a pantomime kind of knavery, a caricature of sorts, and without the legislative suffix of ‘Leeds’ lopped on the end, it just doesn’t work. He was, as my Wortley-born friend declared, “a cheap, cheating, Chelsea t*@t.” Alliterate and to the point.