Friday 18 January 2008

"Pint of fog, please mate!"

Not that I care (because I really, really don't), but there is still something terrifyingly, compulsively fascinating about the mighty brouhaha on Tyneside at the moment, what with Kevin Keegan's 'third coming' as Magpies' Messiah, and feverish speculation about whether Alan Shearer will be appointed his number two. The sheer(er) emotional disconnect that happens in the footie fan's brain, especially when s/he has been reared in the fog, is a wonder to behold. For what it's worth, and with the deadly certainty that writing it will almost certainly make me sickeningly wrong, I don't think Shearer will bite. On the plus side, he would get some managerial experience and still have a way of disassociating himself from the wreckage if everything goes horribly pear-shaped. (Yup, compulsory mixed metaphor there.) Plus it might put him in line for succession. Maybe. On the negative side, he'll miss out on the BBC's money-for-old-rope punditry deal, he won't improve his tactical nous sitting on Keegan's bench, and he will become tainted goods if, er, everything goes horribly pear-shaped. He also has detractors as well as allies in the boardroom. My prediction? The initial burst of Keegan adrenalin will push Newcastle up the Premier League table. But by this time next year they will be back in the doldrums. I'm all compassion, huh? (And that Gazza-Lindisfarne YouTube video is just fantastically, wonderfully awful, n'est-ce pas? Glorious!)

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