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Opinion

More questions than answers

8 years ago
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When Johnny Nash sang “There are more questions than answers” in 1972 you might have been forgiven for thinking he was a top exponent of that pointless pursuit known as stating the bleedin’ obvious.

The number of answers cannot exceed the number of questions, after all. Unless there is more than one answer . . .

Let’s play the blame game, with this question for starters: if you were unwanted by your current boss, demoted and denied the chance to prove your worth, would you reject an offer of a fresh start elsewhere? Especially if you were guaranteed higher wages however you performed?

So don’t castigate any of the recent big-money recruits to the playing staff at St James Park unless your psychological doppelganger is Mother Teresa.

The deal is too good to refuse, even if your new employer is the biggest sporting joke since Eddie the Eagle.

With an owner whose business practices have prompted questions in Parliament, protests by trade unions and campaigns by a national newspaper. With a chief coach whose main claim to fame is an overriding determination to protect his dodgy barnet at the very moment his reputation is being shredded.

Did I mention your new home has for decades boasted a trophy cabinet emptier than Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, dustier than Dusty Bin, with more cobwebs than Spiderman’s lair?

Or that, despite this singular lack of success, nearly 50,000 Newcastle fans will be happy to applaud whenever you can be arsed to sweat blood for the cause?

So even if your best efforts do nothing to reverse this sorry saga of gross underachievement, no mud will stick. Except to those 50,000-odd Newcastle fans, whose ridiculous expectations will constantly be cited by so-called pundits as the reason for Newcastle United’s never ending failings.

(“So-called pundits” because the word derives from Sanskrit and means, among other things, “learned man, scholar, owner of knowledge”.)

A fraudster is one who pretends to be what he is not.

Which brings us back to Gallowgate and those gentlemen at whom the finger should be pointed. To those who are to blame for the pathetic state of this once-great football club Johnny Nash got it wrong.

There are more answers than questions, especially when you ask: Who the f*** caused this shambles? Mind, he was on the money when he sang “the more I find out, the less I know”.

(To feature like Simon, send in your articles for our website to contribute@themag.co.uk)

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