JFK

This weekend the Newcastle United soap opera took another incredible and very disappointing turn as the news that Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley had appointed Joe Kinnear as the club's new Director of Football.

Kinnear has been out of the game since he left NUFC 4 years ago, in fact NUFC are the only football club to hire Joe Kinnear in the last 10 years. Joe is a Dinosaur who had an average managerial career in the dark days of 1990's English football, however Joe is obviously a close friend of Mike Ashley and therefore has landed a top job at a top club.  Kinnear certainly wasn't appointed on merit.

This whole embarrassment was played out before the world live on Sky Sports news as Kinnear took it upon himself reveal his appointment even though he still has been on official word from the club.


Kinnear began in bumbling fashion, the like we all heard during his caretaker stint in charge.
"This has been an ongoing situation for three weeks with David, erm, Dave, erm with Mike . . I will be in charge of finance, erm in charge of transfers and looking at the strengths and weakness of the side."

If Joe is now our transfer manager what does this mean for Graham Carr who has found some aabsolute gems in recent years? Is it believed Kinnear has a better eye for a player than our client scout?
"I will help out Alan Pardew in every possible way that I can."

Yet he also confirmed he was yet to speak Pardew. I am by no means a big Pardew fan yet feel he has been put in a impossible situation. I have the feeling it will not be long until Pardew leaves and Kinnear assumes the managerial role at SJP. Of course we have been in this situation before when Kevin Keegan was asked to work under the rule of Dennis Wise. That situation ended in KK leaving the club and suing Mike Ashley - lets see how this episode plays out.

So why has Ashley made this appointment?

Basically this is a situation of 'Jobs for the boys' - worryingly this is how Mike Ashley chooses to run our beloved club. 

We now have a owner we don't want, a chairman who is clueless, a manager who, at best is average, a captain who does not want to be at the club and now we appoint a Director of football who is regarded as a foul mouthed Dinosaur by 99% of the clubs fans. 

What can possibly be behind this appointment:

-A move designed to force Alan Pardew toward the exit?

-A set of eyes on the day to day running of the training ground?

-A mate who can conduct a postmortem on our disaster season?
-Maybe just a way for Mike Ashley to reassert his control of the club

Joe Kinnear is not qualified to do this job no matter what lines he tries to spin us. As part of Sunday's interview he claimed to have no part in the relegation of Newcastle at the end of the season in which he took charge of 26 games but won only five (19 percent).

"I intend to make Newcastle far better than they are now."

Nice one Joe..

We should be hell Bent on Darren

Darren Bent to Newcastle was certainly not the headline we all expected, yet when you let it sink in and think it through he would be a good signing for our club.

Admittedly Bent would of been no where near the top of supporters wish list for a summer signing especially after his problematic spell at Aston Villa which has been  Bent really fell of the face of the planet. After public falling out with Paul Lambert Bent and really has become the forgotten man of English football. Yet when you look at Bent's premier league record he is player worthy of close consideration.

Our interest come as a surprise as he does not fall within the transfer blueprint used by the current leadership at NUFC, yet they did talk about adding Premiership experience to squad - Bent ticks alot of boxes. He is goal scorer which is exactly what we need. He does not score the spectacular goals like Cisse - yet he will feast on the 'easy' chances Cisse spurns every other week. He is a goal poacher

Picking up a player of Bent's ability and experience for a fee of around 6m is not something that can be ignored and to be honest lets look at where we are as a club right now - we finished 16th and currently have only 2 first team strikers - one of these being Shola. Bent is big improvement on Shola and has a goal record the Cisse would be proud of.

Add to that the fact that Darren has a lot of prove after the battering his ego has taken since joining Villa. If the price tag and wages package fits into our structure then this is a deal we need to persue.

I am not saying Bent would come in and be our leading forward  - for me we need 2 first team forwards to join the club this summer and hopefully the NUFC leadership realise this!
 IF we could deliver Pierre Emerick Aubameyang or Loic Remy plus Darren Bent then i wold be over the moon. This would give us plenty of options and also much needed competition for Cisse.

Yesterday I read an article discussing the prospect of signing Remy and Bent for a total of 13m
 and I believe this would be great business for NUFC and would solve a lot of our problems from this past season.

Now if only Bent had 'eke' at the end of this name...