Buying and Selling

So, Newcastle United after two games, have a point on the board. But no goals….and not even a shot on target. The performance against West Ham highlighted much of what is wrong with the club at the moment.  Tactically, the team  was disjointed, there was a lack of passion and urgency and most alarming of all a dreadful lack of creativity.  Our only creative outlet remains Hatem BenArfa, who seemed to spend most of the game, whenever he got the ball, running into blind alleys or shooting from ludicrous distances. Perhaps he has just realised that he is the only creative player at the club, or perhaps he just wants away. Who knows?

Speaking of wanting away, Yohan Cabaye was missing again. Quite frankly, I think of no other walk of life where an employee would be so pampered that interest from another employer, prompting the employee to not want to do their job, would be met with such tolerance from an employer. If what are being told is true and with this regime it is a very big if, then the situation is disgraceful. After all Baines and Fellaini have just got on with their jobs at Everton. So they should of course, given their ridicuklously high wages – and so should Cabaye. But then, to be fair to Cabaye, there might be more to this than meets the eye.  Again, who knows?

Then we had a banner removed by stewards. This is the kind of act from the ‘authorities’  which one might expect in a long-running, brutal dictatorship, rather than at a football club which likes to boast of its community links. It might be worth reminding Ashley, Kinnear and co, that it is usually in countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia that people get banners taken off them.

One other thing which I did notice yesterday was that there were numerous adverts for Sports Direct – in French. Am I being too suspicious and cynical to suggest that our whole buying policy over the last two seasons, of buying almost exclusively French players, has being aimed at nothing more than giving Ashley a way into the French market for his wares from Sports Direct? Am I being too cynical in suggesting that perhaps, just perhaps Mike Ashley only wants to use the third best supported club in England to do nothing more than promote his ‘real business’ – Sports Direct?

I think we should be told – but I don’t suppose we will be….

But the isn’t this the whole point of raw red in the tooth capitalism? A system where everybody can be bought and sold and where everyone has their price – whether it be Yohan Cabaye or long suffering Newcastle United supporters.

Personally I think that there are other values, which are more important. Amongst those are respect.  Respect by players and respect by club management to those who pay their wages. It seems to me that there is precious little of either at Newcastle United at the moment. It is little wonder then that  there is little or no respect from supporters for those running a club, who given the attendances, should be challenging for major trophies and a place in the Champions League every season.  But then those adverts in French make me wonder if all that is irrelevant – as long as Sports Direct make more profits selling their clothes to French-speaking people.

© Peter Sagar 25^th August 2013