Big mistake was not to act quickly

Mar 29 2009 by Neil Farrington, Sunday Sun

WHERE would Newcastle United be now had they looked for a new manager, rather than to manage the news, in Joe Kinnear’s absence?

No worse off, that’s for sure.

I only ask because it seems that, seven weeks and a pitiful five points since Kinnear took ill, the Magpies are still skirting the real issue now all too much at hand.

Why else would they see fit to ban a journalist from St James’s Park while keeping blind faith in the men covering for Kinnear?

After all, the faith in his ability to keep United afloat after his return looks short-sighted in itself.

When Kinnear underwent a heart bypass, it offered Newcastle a chance to properly usher in the post-Keegan era by identifying a new full-time manager. Instead, in their trademark presumption and complacency, they fudged it by allowing Hughton — Granville to Kinnear’s Arkwright — to continue minding the shop.

That they now see Kinnear — he of four league wins in 18 — as a saviour says everything about that decision.

Had they half the business nous they claim to possess, or a passing knowledge of football, they might have realised that Hughton’s real vocation was matchmaking, not caretaking.

Who better, might I suggest, to tempt Martin Jol back into English football than his former right-hand man? Instead, the nearest the good ship Newcastle gets to going Dutch is to drift rudderless into ever choppier waters with its very own Del Boy at the wheel, like that classic Only Fools and Horses, where the Trotters set sail for Amsterdam.

The name of that episode — To Hull and Back — also sounds all too appropriate.