First Drafts - The Prospect magazine blog

Can it get any worse for the Geordie nation? First, King Kev does a runner. Then everyone else turns them down while West Ham find an excellent new manager in as long as it takes Big Mike to down a litre of alcohol-free lager. Then there’s talk of Newcastle being bought up by a Nigerian financial consortium (how’s that going down with the Geordie nation?). Everyone else gets an Arab oil billionaire or at least an American magnate. But, oh no, not Newcastle. And now they’ve been turned down by managers who haven’t had a job since Bobby Robson was a lad (El Tel, Glenn Hoddle, George Graham — the list goes on, how long have you got?). And now they’ve found a ’short-term’ stopgap: Joe Kinnear. Dennis Wise is taking the mickey. All that Geordie stuff about hating cockneys. You knew it would end in grief.