Newcastle United Already Getting To Martin O’Neill

The embarrassing conduct of the sunderland manager after the match has been almost as entertaining as Shola’s injury time intervention.

Having been in the mackem job for all of two minutes, Martin O’Neill is already showing all the usual signs of cracking up in the face of living in the shadow of Newcastle United.

After the trampy behaviour O’Neill showed on Sunday including refusing to hang around for the usual post-match drink with the opposing manager and falsely accusing Newcastle United staff of trying to influence the referee at half-time, today O’Fool called a special press conference to tell the world….sunderland are much better than Newcastle and the black & whites were really nasty to his players. That’s it.

Here is the Wearside comedian’s ‘professional’ opinion….

“I find it extraordinary that sort of interpretation (Pardew accusing them of being dirty mackems) has been put on the game.

How anyone could say we were the dirty side is beyond me.

The first two fouls in the game came inside the first three minutes and they were ours, but the next seven fouls over the next quarter-of-an-hour were all from the opposition.

At half-time, I think we went in with two yellows and Newcastle with four.

We also felt that there were a few yellow card decisions in there that Newcastle were lucky to get away with, so how anyone could say we were the dirty side is beyond me.

I was very proud of my players. We won the first half, had the best chance before the hour in the second-half and then held out successfully for half-an-hour with just 10 men.

It was terribly unfortunate that we conceded in injury-time, but I don’t think anyone could argue that we weren’t the better side on the day.

Well, I say I don’t think so – but it wouldn’t surprise me if someone tried”.

So the mackems aren’t dirty but had two players sent off and somebody booked within the first 30 seconds, their captain who ran directly at Tiote and launched himself at the man while ignoring the ball. You would have to be naive in the extreme to believe the captain’s manager had no part in that.

As for O’Fool claiming they were the better team on the day, I think somebody had better sack the person on the BBC Sport website who has the job of counting things…. 24 shots to 7, 57% possession to 43% and 19 corners to 4, as well as a penalty saved and a header against the crossbar. You’d think he was mental or something….

Well it didn’t take plastic Geordie Steve Bruce very long to feel the pressure and now O’Fool will be dusting down his record collection for our next visit to mackemland (if he hangs around until then…); Madness with ‘You’re An Embarrassment’ seems to fit nicely.