…But I’m Not Down

Is it just me or is everything really s**t these days?

Books have been written on that very subject and, unless I’m mistaken, with that very title and of course there are very good reasons for that.

Apart from maybe stand-up comedy, pretty much everything you come across these days is of an inferior quality ; X-Factor, Cameron/Clegg, Shoezone, Kasabian (yes, I loved “Fools Gold” and “Elephant Stone” as well but stop going on about it), Strictly Come Dancing, (which simply added the word ‘Strictly’ to a show no one in their right mind watched in the 70’s and inexplicably hoodwinked a generation of dullards into giving a toss about)… Rory Delap. I mean, I don’t mind watchingStokeCitybut what time does the football start?

Of course, there are still treasures to be discovered milling around amongst the sea of dross which masquerades as sport, culture and entertainment these days – Black Mirror, Barcelona, Interpol, Wallander (the Swedish one, obviously), Yohan Cabaye etc. – but generally speaking, we are living in desperate times and supporting Newcastle United in the digital age is no picnic either.

Watching Sky’s Sunday Supplement on a (you’ve guessed it) Sunday morning is an increasingly depressing experience for anyone with black and white in their hearts.

Presented by Brian Woolnough, a man who looks like someone threw a bowl of mashed potato into the BHS menswear department; the show gives stupid, opinionated, self-indulgent football journalists (I won’t call them writers because, well, why would I?) a primetime opportunity to say stupid, opinionated, self-indulgent things for 90 minutes, entirely unchallenged.

Their treatment of ‘by far the greatest team, the world has ever seen’ is a case in point.

Having ignored us entirely, presumably as ‘un-newsworthy’, for almost 12 months – 12 months in which we’ve progressed steadily, brought a degree of calm and order to the dressing room (bye bye Barton and au revoir Ranger) and appointed a manager who sounds like he might actually know what he’s talking about – we are there for a good kicking now that the bubble has burst and our slide down the table has begun in earnest.

Of course, we all know that, were it not for Mike Dean’s eyes, Steven Taylor’s Achilles and Dan Gosling’s brain we could have taken 5 – 7 points from the last 12, instead of the solitary one we were gifted at Old Trafford, but then that doesn’t fit into Sky’s grand designs.

No, they’ll only be happy when Tiote departs for Manure, Krul goes to Spurs, Coloccini heads for Liverpool and Cabaye provides cover for the colossally overrated Jack Wilshire at Arsenal.

I sometimes wonder if the rules actually allow us to have good players in our team, did I miss a meeting somewhere?

So now is the time to hold firm, don’t panic, hang tough, keep calm and carry on  – I get all of this from t-shirts and coasters you know.

Hopefully we’ll have the curly-haired one back at the weekend, reinforcements arriving before too long and good times just around the corner.

Or across the next three roundabouts, through the traffic lights and 2^nd left after the zebra crossing anyway. Go the distance.