Don't be a wanker!

A supporter isn't on the fence about the noise surrounding Eddie Howe!

Let me introduce you to some people you may, or may not have heard of.

Charlie Mitten, Norman Smith, Joe Harvey, Gordon Lee, Richard Dinnis, Willie McFaul, Bill McGarry, Joe Harvey (again), Arthur Cox, Jack Charlton, Willie McFaul (again), Colin Suggett, Jim Smith, Bobby Saxton, Ossie Ardiles, Kevin Keegan, Terry McDermott, Kenny Dalglish, Ruud Gullit, Steve Clarke, Bobby Robson, John Carver, Graeme Souness, Glenn Roeder, Nigel Pearson, Sam Allardyce, Nigel Pearson (again), Kevin Keegan (again), Chris Hughton, Joe Kinnear, Chris Hughton (again), Alan Pardew, John Carver (again) Steve McLaren, Rafa Benitez, Steve Bruce, Graeme Jones and Eddie Howe.

Thirty-eight managerial appointments (including interim) since we last won a domestic trophy in 1955, including managers who have won titles and cups with other clubs home and abroad, won the Champions League, managed international teams and even been given shitloads of money to spend at Newcastle (see especially McFaul and Keegan) and won precisely NOTHING.

All except one man, the man who has led us to the Champions League for the fifth time in the club’s history, and the second time in three seasons. Just over a year ago we were just less than a month from winning that first trophy, followed by an emotion packed, never to be forgotten victory parade around the city, overlooked by an eleven-storey high picture of the man we all had come to idolise.

Eddie Howe, the most successful manager the club has had since 1955, and even then, we finished 8th in the league, having lost 16 games. So arguably the most successful manager since Frank Watt and a side including Hughie Gallacher won the league NINETY- NINE years ago. I’ll say it again. The most successful manager since Frank Watt NINETY-NINE years ago.

Yet we go through a bad patch and the idiots are calling for his head. Keep looking at the list above, he’s more successful than the whole lot of them put together. Our most talented manager for almost a century and the keyboard warriors, the boo boys and those “fans” who would be soundly beaten in the annual “Scrabble Championship for the Clumsily Lobotomised” still want him gone. I mean, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Yes, I realise that I’m not really sitting on the fence here and I know I’ll get the comments from those above saying that they pay their money and save up all week, that their kids don’t get ice-cream or toys or clothes or food because all of their money goes towards watching Newcastle United and they’re entitled to their opinion.

I fully understand that, but the thing with opinions is that, whilst you’re more than welcome to air them, it doesn’t mean they’re not bollocks.

Personally, I couldn’t give a shit if you do nothing but spend all of your money going to the match while your kids are at home alone eating tripe for breakfast, playing with the knife drawer, dressed in rags and pissing in a bucket. That doesn’t make you right. If it did it would constitute a sound basis for electing a competent government, and it doesn’t. It just indicates you might need some assistance with making better life choices.

Social media has a lot to do with this, particularly “X”. For some reason even mainstream broadcasters, such as Sky Sports, have taken to using “headlines” from the platform to highlight the mood of fans. It’s very easy for them to simply select a tweet that fits their agenda. @NUFC123_BillyDownThePub has tweeted “Get the man out of my club!” - all of a sudden, it’s being sold to the public as the opinion of all of the fans.

The problem with “X” is that it is full of absolute wankers. I would go as far as to say that it’s a sea of wankers, serpentine wankers, all slithering around and egging each other on. Yes, there are some sensible people who want a genuine debate and can think for themselves, but they are in small boats so far away from each other, sailing on the sea of wankers that they can seldom hear one another over the noise.

Sometimes the wankers will capture one of these boats as a disguise and submit what looks like a sensible viewpoint, only to reveal their true identity when you disagree with them and their response is to falsely claim what they did to your mother last night. Well, I assume it’s false, or at least that she had a wash before she made the cheese scones.

We have to be very careful who we are listening to, as everyone has an equal voice now - the idiot on the bus can have just as legitimate an “X” account as a former footballer or genuine pundit. Just don’t get so annoyed with a single result or a bad run that you find yourself swimming with you know who. Once you fall out of your boat, the wankeritus seems to be catching.

I’m pleased that United is quite rightly making positive noises over Howe’s future. So they should. He inherited a team (little over four years ago) that included the likes of Dwight Gayle, Jeff Hendrick, Ciaren Clarke and Ryan Fraser. He kept us up and we finished 11th after looking like we were preparing for the championship.

Alex Ferguson took over a Manchester United team in 1986 which included the likes of Gordon Strachan, Norman Whiteside, then England captain Bryan Robson, Paul McGrath, Frank Stapleton and many other regular international players. They had finished 4th the season before and were looking for a vast improvement. He didn’t win anything for almost four years, when he took the 1990 FA Cup to Manchester, after a draw and a replay against Crystal Palace.

Six months earlier, and with Manchester United sitting just above the relegation places (around Christmas 1989) the Man U fans were calling for him to be sacked. Banners held up by fans read “THREE YEARS OF EXCUSES, UNITED IS NOT ABERDEEN!” suggesting the leap from the top Scottish League to the top English league was too much for the Scot to handle.

And who could forget the infamous “3 YEARS OF EXCUSES AND IT’S STILL CRAP... TA RA FERGIE” displayed after a 2-1 home defeat to Palace in December 1989? The humiliating 5-1 derby loss to (pre-takeover) Manchester City three months earlier had made their minds up that he definitely wasn’t the right man for the job.

They would finish 13th that season, despite having added the likes of Steve Bruce, Mark Hughes, Paul Ince, Gary Pallister, Brian McLair and Mike Phelan to the ranks of their superstars. It would be another three years - seven years after his appointment - before they would win their first title.

However, Martin Edwards, the Manchester United chairman, always maintained that Fergie was the right man for the job and refused to so much as discuss his future with the board. He was their man and they would work with him for as long as it took.

Their patience paid off and he went on to win a record breaking 38 trophies with the club, including thirteen titles and two Champions Leagues. He was manager of the club for twenty-six years.

Since he left in 2013, they’ve had ten different managers and are a shadow of what they were under Ferguson. No consistency, almost £2bn spent and only since Carrick took over are they starting to show any sort of form, but for how long?

I can’t think of a single club that has been successful when changing managers so often, with Spurs being the latest example of that.

But to sack the manager who has brought a club the most success that they’ve had in almost a century and won a trophy where 37 managers before him failed, just because he’s had a poor few months, loads of injuries and a pre-season that couldn’t have been more unsettled?

A man who’s been the most successful manager since nine years after the First World War, when Albert Einstein was 48 years old, not all women could vote, seven years before Elvis Presley was born, three years before we discovered Pluto and Jackie Milburn’s favourite food receptacle was still “tits”?

A manager who has had a more difficult, yet more successful start than Ferguson. A manager who inherited a significantly worse squad in a much worse league position and has to deal with PSR, when Sir Alex didn’t even have to deal with transfer windows?

And you want him sacked, do you?

Don’t be a wanker!

STEVE BLAKENEY