MATCH PREVIEW: LIVERPOOL v NEWCASTLE UNITED on Thursday 16 December 2021.
KO 8pm
I used to like Newcastle United a little bit. Newcastle and West Ham. Partly I suppose because none of my mates ever supported them and that frees you up a bit and allows you to show some charity. But mainly it was because their fans seemed to live football in the way that we do as Liverpool supporters. In the age of terracing St James’s (and Upton Park) were great places to go. You knew they’d be up for it and that the atmosphere would be hot. You sensed they cared that little bit more about football than other places. Neither ground was anything like Anfield of course, but they were a cut above Stamford Bridge and Maine Road and those other desolate mausoleums.
I still don’t mind West Ham although I do have a good mate now who is a Hammer and therefore I’m beginning to dislike them a bit too. You have to. But Newcastle is a wholly different matter. There’s nothing personal about my new-found contempt for this club. It’s simply the fact that since the Premier League capitulated and stated, in black and white, that Mohammed bin Salman qualifies as “fit and proper”, Newcastle United are now owned by a bloody despotism. More importantly still, none of their supporters appears to care.
I was shocked by that. Call me naive and sentimental but I imagined that the socialist traditions of Tyneside actually meant something. I thought the Geordies might have shown a bit of solidarity for the underdog - or, failing that, a bit of respect for themselves. But the scenes that greeted the Saudi Arabian regime’s purchase of their football club were ones of pure delirium. The club’s new owners operate one of the most oppressive political systems in the world. They kill dissenters and political critics with relish. They finance Islamist terrorism world-wide (including in this country). They possess medieval attitudes to marriage and sexuality and base their vicious laws on those attitudes. The Premier League executive committee has welcomed these thugs to Newcastle for the simple reason that they are weighed down with money. That’s the only thing that matters to those bastards.
I’m in the school that would now want Newcastle relegated before Manchester United. And I’m just not very keen on Manchester United.
Relegation has been a central part of the Newcastle experience of course. It’s years since they won anything. In my lifetime I believe they’ve only ever won the Fairs Cup (the predecessor of the UEFA Cup). On the few occasions they’ve reached a domestic cup final in that time they tend to get royally thumped. We thumped them famously, in 1974. (By the way that Alec Lindsay goal was not offside).
This long and continuous record of failure is why their supporters are apparently now showing no objection about being commandeered by a dictatorship. They even state this themselves! They’ve “suffered”, they say, and therefore they feel morally obliged to take the bloody lucre. I don’t know what system of ethics supports that conclusion, but it’s evidently a popular one in Newcastle.
That’s the second reason why we need to destroy them on Thursday night. The first reason is clear. We need to grab these three points to maintain the pressure on the other oil-doped club at the top of the table.
Will we do it? Well, it would be a calamity if we didn’t. Man for man Newcastle are at a severe disadvantage to Liverpool, even if we rest some of our best players in anticipation of the match against Tottenham (which may, or may not, happen). In addition we have Jurgen Klopp - a manager that the new Newcastle owner would dearly love to have as his own coach, but which could never, ever happen. Some people cannot be bought. So Eddie Howe against Klopp isn’t just a moral mismatch. It’s a tactical mismatch too.
This is a game we can expect Thiago to run. If that happens then we can also expect Trent and Mo to have a field day. An early goal from Liverpool ought to open the floodgates. Newcastle could then expect inundation.
Hopefully it’s the last time we’ll see them at Anfield for a couple years. How enjoyable it would be if it were longer. Here, by way of homage to a club that has sold its soul, are the new words to their favourite song:
We got ourselves a new boss, they call him MBS
And all the Geordies I know think he is the best
The fella’s “fit and proper”, some find that proper weird
But what the hell do we care, ‘cause now we live in Riyadh
Ah me lads, the news has got us rowdy
It’s time to get the swords out cos now we’re owned by Saudi
The gays are strung from lampposts, the lasses in seclusion
Gannin’ along to Gallowgate, to see the execution.
He owns a million oil wells, the chap is filthy rich
And soon those million oil wells will be playing on our pitch
When journalists go missing we sing this from the Leazes
The boss has got his chainsaw out and cut the bloke to pieces.
Yes me lads, the river Tyne is foggy
And now the place belongs to the killer of Khashoggi
It’s time to ditch our principles, there’s no point acting bravely
Gannin along the Scotswood road, behind Amanda Staveley.
And when we get the chequebook out on the first day of New Year
There’ll be Kylian Mbappe and Salah coming here
The shallow grave for Eddie, the throne for Jurgen Klopp
‘Cause once we start the spending we won’t know how to stop.
It was down in southern Yemen we had a spot of trouble
And so we got our Air Force out and turned the place to rubble
The Houthis died in thousands, you should have seen their faces
But what the hell do we care, ‘cos now we’re going places.
