After the Reading defeat it was hard to know where Newcastle United could go.
Under the watchful eyes of Mike Ashley a promising Toon performance suddenly ended in total capitulation. Alan Pardew looked on his knees, the team looked like they were bracing themselves for impact and the fanbase was on the verge of collectively snapping. Some already had, with many calling for Pardew out.
Ashley's glimpse of a season's mess suddenly made him realise that his gamble not to spend in the summer of 2012 had failed and there was no point in arguing any longer that his attempts to play the same game as the year before were not going to end in similar glory.
Much as sacking the manager would have been a bold move, in hindsight it was never a likely option we were going to take. In the early days you suspect it would have been but instead, a mass recruitment drive was commissioned.
This move could well have saved the season. At a total cost of £2.7million, Yoann Gouffran and Moussa Sissoko have moved to St. James' Park, and have jumped straight into the first time. They had a positive impact against Aston Villa but against Chelsea they stole the show.
Our two more expensive signings of the crazy four players in four days spree - the £6.5million centre-back Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa and the £3million full back Massadio Haidara - are yet to start, but you sense they will get opportunities, not least in the case of the former if Fabricio Coloccini, as expected, leaves in the summer.
The Villa game was surreal - a first half of dominance was followed by a second half of almost total submission, and if the Villains had shown some of the nous they showed at Everton, they might have stolen a point or more.
But the Chelsea game saw us get a vital and deserved three points. Six points in two games for the first time since breezing past Bolton and Stoke in April - then the last two in a six game winning streak - have suddenly changed our outlook from drop certainties to an outside bet for top half, especially if West Brom and Norwich continue their recent implosions.
Of course it's important not to get ahead of ourselves. Two games are two games and while we've begun to creep away we still remain within easy reach of the relegation zone.
However the signs are promising. The players look more composed in a 4-2-3-1 formation than they have done in every other formation, and the players bought in look better. As was probably to be expected, Steven Taylor has returned from injury and helped provide defensive solidity that Mike Williamson just didn't.
Further forward and James Perch has been a surprise choice ahead of the improving Vurnon Anita but he's justified his position by looking more assured than recently. It could even help give Cheick Tiote an incentive he has been lacking almost all season to perform closer to the standards he's managed.
Perch is forming a solid pairing with Yohan Cabaye, who has been a bright spark since returning from injury. In front of him Sissoko has proven to be a valuable presence in an attacking position with Gouffran providing a very handy and nifty option on the left flank. Even Jonas Gutierrez - frequently given a kicking by Toon fans, not least on here - has perked up and provided his best performances this season.
There are still question marks over Papiss Cisse, whose goal against Aston Villa was sandwiched by missing several easy chances against Reading and Chelsea. But the service is now finally coming in for the Senegalese international and he should be about to pick up soon enough.
A new striker in the summer is still a must. Whether it's Andy Carroll or not - likely the latter if Liverpool don't budge on their £17million - we could still use a replacement for Demba Ba, not least given our main back up is still Shola Ameobi.
But the midfield is chipping in, with Cabaye and Sissoko scoring goals and more odd-goals like Gutierrez's - his goal against Chelsea was his first in almost a year - will certainly help.
The promise of a better season from now have arrived. Now it's a question of maintaining this, starting with what is understandably a tough test against Spurs and then a big game against Southampton, who are at the bottom and have won many plaudits for their attacking football, if not quite for their defending. Obviously acting cocky that we're going to stay up is something to be avoided - after all, a home win against Middlesbrough in May 2009 was thought to be all that was required to keep us up only for the team to collapse.
The chances of that happening again are unlikely but the team needs to be vigilant to avoid this. But the signs are there that, after the bleakness against Reading, we look set to start a recovery that should at least get us clear of the dropzone and possibly even towards mid-table. It's now up to the players to see if they can fulfill this aspiration.
Wednesday, 6 February 2013
Friday, 1 February 2013
Biffy Clyro - Opposites: First Impressions
The double album has a massive stigma attached to it. The Beatles may well have pulled it off with the White Album, but with three strong-writers each refusing to budge, a wedge of quality tunes from all of them and even a song from Ringo Starr, they had more than enough varied material for the job.
Other double albums have struggled to get interest, whether it be long running times, lack of tunes or lack of different tunes. The latest band to fall into such a trap are Green Day, who tried to do a triple album but didn't have the tunes to maintain their sound over three hours.
Next to take on the double album is Biffy Clyro. The Scottish rock band made three albums on an indie level and accumulated a good following for their unusual brand of weird-rock. Then 4th album Puzzle saw them make a major label debut, where they begun to play bigger gigs and support slots for major names like Muse, Red Hot Chili Peppers and (bizarrely) The Rolling Stones, despite fans considering this record their weakest.
Afterwards came Only Revolutions - a brilliant record that acted halfway house between the poppier Puzzle and their more histronic first trio - and they hit the jackpot, with arena tours, a headline slot at Sonisphere and more stadium support slots that saw as many people there for them as the likes of headliners Muse and Foo Fighters.
At the end of 2011 Biffy told Q magazine they had 45 potential songs. While they have wittled away more than half that number, it's somewhat of a challenge to get people onboard over such a wide and vast assortment of tunes.
For those who don't think they can manage the whole thing, there is a 14 track single-disk version. But the full 20 songs are all bursting to be heard and chances are the 14 could have cut out a gem or two. But how does this break down and does it all deserve to be heard or have Biffy fallen into rock fallacy?
Disc One - The Sand At The Core Of Our Bones:
1. Different People
This song opens the single disk version as well the 'more negative' first disk. An elongated swell of church organ, gently strummed guitars and atmospheric vocals plays a more serene, almost hymn-like opening. It's a lovely, almost ballady structure, that turns into a more rock sound around 2 1/2 minutes.
2. Black Chandelier
The lead single is more of the slow-Biffy that was out in vogue on Puzzle and Only Revolutions, albeit with a pleasing and slightly random heavy riff after the second repetition of the chorus. The drip-drip-drip-drip intro is a novel introduction for what is, the most part, a classic ballad-y lead single. A few listens in however and it clicks into a pleasing mixture of melancholic ballad, stadium rock and heaviness.
3. Sounds Like Balloons
Classic Biffy arrives on a song that was first aired on the 2012 festival circuit. A jazzy stop-start rhythm underpins jittery, nervous verses, before bursting into full rock chorus that quotes the names of both disks and heavy riff. This is definitley the strongest of the first three on first listen - it has the power, the choruses, the verses and the rhyhtm to make it big.
4. Opposite
Musically this is quite a nice, chill number with gentle guitar work and a simple drum riff topped off with some strings. Lyrically, it's anything but nice and the negative side this album is billed as is out in force - "You are in love with a shadow that won't come back" is possibly the song's most positive lyric - but it's a great chorus and it is a well crafted track.
5. The Joke's On Us
After a slower, a heavy fast one belts out. This song is technically the first cut to be aired from either album after Biffy surprisingly debuted it at their Foo Fighters support slots at the MK Bowl in 2011. The original version was fairly unspectacular compared to this one, which explodes with a supermassive riff, an even huger chorus and some classic fiddly guitar parts. Another winner in this one.
6. Biblical
This song has a big misleading impression with it's restrained intro. Once Simon Neil and the guitar have opened, it gives way to a stomping verse, and then that subsides for a synthesizer-led massive chorus. There's plenty of massive riffing and woooahhh-ohs like recent Muse to bring the end to this song, before it reverts to the opening line. This song was mooted as a possible single and it definitley has potential for such a role.
7. A Girl And His Cat
More misleading fun as a twinkly synthy intro is quickly suplimented by a batshit riff. The rock stays atop a base layer of twinkling synthesizers, and creates a classic mass-rock song for the most part. This song certainly could've belonged on Only Revolutions, and certainly helps its credentials as classic Biffy by a misleading twinkly bit that gives way to even heavier riffs. Quite why this is cut from the 14-disk edition is a bit of a mystery.
8. The Fog
A third tune in a row to have the touch of twinkling synthesizers, and second to start as such. However this one is a lot more minimal. There's a very filmic vibe to a lot of the music, particulary when a huge dramatic buzz fills the speakers about 2/3rds of the way through. Like Opposite, this song is a slow song about a lover's distress, but of those two it is certainly the better song.
9. Little Hospitals
The last song to be recorded for the album is also one of the more old skool Biffy tunes. Some cleverly flickering guitar touches atop a pummelling groove as it piles through choruses. The more recent touches of echo-ing up the vocals is in forth, as are a lot of squeaking vibes, which comes from adding a bunch of kazoos. However the kazoos aren't loud enough in the mix, which is the slight disappointment to quite a good track.
10. The Thaw
Disc one ends with a track led by an old Swedish proverb - "The secrets buried in the snow will always come out in the thaw". Starting out as a fairly simple ballad it grows in bombast with surging strings before paring down and wondering "Tonight we shared the same space - has anything become of it?". It's a nice tune and is again well put-together but it does lack a little oomph...
Disc Two - The Land At The End Of The Toes:
1. Stingin' Belle
Chances are you'll have heard this one already. This is recent Biffy with a different twist - a staggeringly heavy nailgun riff, soaring stadium rock choruses piling after one another and then a euphoric outro replete with a bagpipe-y solo played on guitar. It's definitley a triumphant opener to this mammoth onslaught.
2. Modern Magic Formula
Far from content of starting with one heavy song, this song explodes out the speakers. Swaggering heavy bursts flavour the first 2 1/2 minutes. A quiet whispered mid-section emerges in this one before the guitars are thrashed even harder, through a mass of solos and riffs that end the song on full heaviness.
3. Spanish Radio
In the words of a popular sweet commercial, bring on the trumpets. A lone trumpeter opens up the song and the chorus in this bounding mid-tempo number is also layered over with the rest of the mariachi band. Suddenly the song builds up more, with the pummeling bass layered over by scores of trumpets, chants and Mexican instruments. Then, just as the song seems to slow down, the trick of coming back louder rockets in again as a trumpet-led swell of rock riffery brings an unexpectedly impressive fusion of genres.
4. Victory Over The Sun
There's an almost filmic touch to the intro of the song, with strings and percussive shakers accompanying a ringing lonesome guitar and echoing vocals. This peace lasts a minute and a half, before the rhythm gets faster and jerkier. This is a pretty pleasant tune, if the weakest so far on disc 2, but it is certainly another worthy tune.
5. Pocket
Having previously been cut from both Puzzle and Only Revolutions, and also cut from the 14-track edition, this song has the air of possibly the most elusive song ever. There's an almost 90s-touch to the tune, with stop-start clicking rhyhtms and a few touches reminding of things big in the 90s. It's not a bad song but it's not as good as others here one.
6. Trumpet or Tap
This one starts as a more laid-back tune with guitar work that recalls Red Hot Chili Peppers. It gets more intense for its chorus, with the catalyst for this weirdly being the clip-clap moves of a tap dancer. As is a habit of a lot of songs here, it gets more intense as it builds on further with frenzied cries of "can you just say it's true?" heralding the arrival of a cocktail of strings and riffs. Not that it helps with the impression a lot of songs are sounding similar, although again it is very well crafted.
7. Skylight
Like Pocket, this song did not emerge earlier despite being written before Only Revolutions. It is also the lighter songs on the second album, beginning with just an acoustic guitar, before strings, bleeping keyboards and industrial-sounding electronic drums pile in. Like The Fog, there's a pleasingly punchy film soundtrack vibe.
8. Accident Without Emergency
This song that blossoms from slower to heavier sections, but it isn't one of the all-out rock moments. There's a U2 vibe with touches from heavier acts. It is certainly a song that would sound at home in bigger venues. Certainly, it's a rather pleasant listen.
9. Woo Woo
The shortest song on the album, easily distinguishale by a simply "woowoo...woowoo" that heralds the return of swaggering, jerky riffs. Particulary pleasant is the jerkiness as Simon Neil chants "I. Will. Love. You. For the rest of my life" over some fiddly guitar and a stonking stop-start bassy punch. It could use with being longer but it is certainly delightful.
10. Picture A Knife Fight
The church organ used in the very first song some 85 minutes ago is back, and used to great effect to pin down the riffs to the ground. There's a stronge sense of purpose and urge to this one, which is raised by the organ to pleasingly melodramatic levels. A rousing cry of "We've got to stick together" is a good high to end the record on.
The songcraft on show here is very well done. Even if some songs are not strong as others, the weakest song is still very well put together and despite one song feeling a little barer than promised. Naturally, a lot of the more experimental touches stand out here and, as is the case with double albums, an 11-14 album would have worked just as well.
But fair play to Biffy for making such an album - as well as having the unenviable task of sifting through the 45 songs they reportedly wrote. Although all the songs here are well crafted, some do tend to sag a little while others are a lot more attention grabbing and masterful, and there have certainly got a work they can be proud of with plenty to admire.
7.9/10
Other double albums have struggled to get interest, whether it be long running times, lack of tunes or lack of different tunes. The latest band to fall into such a trap are Green Day, who tried to do a triple album but didn't have the tunes to maintain their sound over three hours.
Next to take on the double album is Biffy Clyro. The Scottish rock band made three albums on an indie level and accumulated a good following for their unusual brand of weird-rock. Then 4th album Puzzle saw them make a major label debut, where they begun to play bigger gigs and support slots for major names like Muse, Red Hot Chili Peppers and (bizarrely) The Rolling Stones, despite fans considering this record their weakest.
Afterwards came Only Revolutions - a brilliant record that acted halfway house between the poppier Puzzle and their more histronic first trio - and they hit the jackpot, with arena tours, a headline slot at Sonisphere and more stadium support slots that saw as many people there for them as the likes of headliners Muse and Foo Fighters.
At the end of 2011 Biffy told Q magazine they had 45 potential songs. While they have wittled away more than half that number, it's somewhat of a challenge to get people onboard over such a wide and vast assortment of tunes.
For those who don't think they can manage the whole thing, there is a 14 track single-disk version. But the full 20 songs are all bursting to be heard and chances are the 14 could have cut out a gem or two. But how does this break down and does it all deserve to be heard or have Biffy fallen into rock fallacy?
Disc One - The Sand At The Core Of Our Bones:
1. Different People
This song opens the single disk version as well the 'more negative' first disk. An elongated swell of church organ, gently strummed guitars and atmospheric vocals plays a more serene, almost hymn-like opening. It's a lovely, almost ballady structure, that turns into a more rock sound around 2 1/2 minutes.
2. Black Chandelier
The lead single is more of the slow-Biffy that was out in vogue on Puzzle and Only Revolutions, albeit with a pleasing and slightly random heavy riff after the second repetition of the chorus. The drip-drip-drip-drip intro is a novel introduction for what is, the most part, a classic ballad-y lead single. A few listens in however and it clicks into a pleasing mixture of melancholic ballad, stadium rock and heaviness.
3. Sounds Like Balloons
Classic Biffy arrives on a song that was first aired on the 2012 festival circuit. A jazzy stop-start rhythm underpins jittery, nervous verses, before bursting into full rock chorus that quotes the names of both disks and heavy riff. This is definitley the strongest of the first three on first listen - it has the power, the choruses, the verses and the rhyhtm to make it big.
4. Opposite
Musically this is quite a nice, chill number with gentle guitar work and a simple drum riff topped off with some strings. Lyrically, it's anything but nice and the negative side this album is billed as is out in force - "You are in love with a shadow that won't come back" is possibly the song's most positive lyric - but it's a great chorus and it is a well crafted track.
5. The Joke's On Us
After a slower, a heavy fast one belts out. This song is technically the first cut to be aired from either album after Biffy surprisingly debuted it at their Foo Fighters support slots at the MK Bowl in 2011. The original version was fairly unspectacular compared to this one, which explodes with a supermassive riff, an even huger chorus and some classic fiddly guitar parts. Another winner in this one.
6. Biblical
This song has a big misleading impression with it's restrained intro. Once Simon Neil and the guitar have opened, it gives way to a stomping verse, and then that subsides for a synthesizer-led massive chorus. There's plenty of massive riffing and woooahhh-ohs like recent Muse to bring the end to this song, before it reverts to the opening line. This song was mooted as a possible single and it definitley has potential for such a role.
7. A Girl And His Cat
More misleading fun as a twinkly synthy intro is quickly suplimented by a batshit riff. The rock stays atop a base layer of twinkling synthesizers, and creates a classic mass-rock song for the most part. This song certainly could've belonged on Only Revolutions, and certainly helps its credentials as classic Biffy by a misleading twinkly bit that gives way to even heavier riffs. Quite why this is cut from the 14-disk edition is a bit of a mystery.
8. The Fog
A third tune in a row to have the touch of twinkling synthesizers, and second to start as such. However this one is a lot more minimal. There's a very filmic vibe to a lot of the music, particulary when a huge dramatic buzz fills the speakers about 2/3rds of the way through. Like Opposite, this song is a slow song about a lover's distress, but of those two it is certainly the better song.
9. Little Hospitals
The last song to be recorded for the album is also one of the more old skool Biffy tunes. Some cleverly flickering guitar touches atop a pummelling groove as it piles through choruses. The more recent touches of echo-ing up the vocals is in forth, as are a lot of squeaking vibes, which comes from adding a bunch of kazoos. However the kazoos aren't loud enough in the mix, which is the slight disappointment to quite a good track.
10. The Thaw
Disc one ends with a track led by an old Swedish proverb - "The secrets buried in the snow will always come out in the thaw". Starting out as a fairly simple ballad it grows in bombast with surging strings before paring down and wondering "Tonight we shared the same space - has anything become of it?". It's a nice tune and is again well put-together but it does lack a little oomph...
Disc Two - The Land At The End Of The Toes:
1. Stingin' Belle
Chances are you'll have heard this one already. This is recent Biffy with a different twist - a staggeringly heavy nailgun riff, soaring stadium rock choruses piling after one another and then a euphoric outro replete with a bagpipe-y solo played on guitar. It's definitley a triumphant opener to this mammoth onslaught.
2. Modern Magic Formula
Far from content of starting with one heavy song, this song explodes out the speakers. Swaggering heavy bursts flavour the first 2 1/2 minutes. A quiet whispered mid-section emerges in this one before the guitars are thrashed even harder, through a mass of solos and riffs that end the song on full heaviness.
3. Spanish Radio
In the words of a popular sweet commercial, bring on the trumpets. A lone trumpeter opens up the song and the chorus in this bounding mid-tempo number is also layered over with the rest of the mariachi band. Suddenly the song builds up more, with the pummeling bass layered over by scores of trumpets, chants and Mexican instruments. Then, just as the song seems to slow down, the trick of coming back louder rockets in again as a trumpet-led swell of rock riffery brings an unexpectedly impressive fusion of genres.
4. Victory Over The Sun
There's an almost filmic touch to the intro of the song, with strings and percussive shakers accompanying a ringing lonesome guitar and echoing vocals. This peace lasts a minute and a half, before the rhythm gets faster and jerkier. This is a pretty pleasant tune, if the weakest so far on disc 2, but it is certainly another worthy tune.
5. Pocket
Having previously been cut from both Puzzle and Only Revolutions, and also cut from the 14-track edition, this song has the air of possibly the most elusive song ever. There's an almost 90s-touch to the tune, with stop-start clicking rhyhtms and a few touches reminding of things big in the 90s. It's not a bad song but it's not as good as others here one.
6. Trumpet or Tap
This one starts as a more laid-back tune with guitar work that recalls Red Hot Chili Peppers. It gets more intense for its chorus, with the catalyst for this weirdly being the clip-clap moves of a tap dancer. As is a habit of a lot of songs here, it gets more intense as it builds on further with frenzied cries of "can you just say it's true?" heralding the arrival of a cocktail of strings and riffs. Not that it helps with the impression a lot of songs are sounding similar, although again it is very well crafted.
7. Skylight
Like Pocket, this song did not emerge earlier despite being written before Only Revolutions. It is also the lighter songs on the second album, beginning with just an acoustic guitar, before strings, bleeping keyboards and industrial-sounding electronic drums pile in. Like The Fog, there's a pleasingly punchy film soundtrack vibe.
8. Accident Without Emergency
This song that blossoms from slower to heavier sections, but it isn't one of the all-out rock moments. There's a U2 vibe with touches from heavier acts. It is certainly a song that would sound at home in bigger venues. Certainly, it's a rather pleasant listen.
9. Woo Woo
The shortest song on the album, easily distinguishale by a simply "woowoo...woowoo" that heralds the return of swaggering, jerky riffs. Particulary pleasant is the jerkiness as Simon Neil chants "I. Will. Love. You. For the rest of my life" over some fiddly guitar and a stonking stop-start bassy punch. It could use with being longer but it is certainly delightful.
10. Picture A Knife Fight
The church organ used in the very first song some 85 minutes ago is back, and used to great effect to pin down the riffs to the ground. There's a stronge sense of purpose and urge to this one, which is raised by the organ to pleasingly melodramatic levels. A rousing cry of "We've got to stick together" is a good high to end the record on.
The songcraft on show here is very well done. Even if some songs are not strong as others, the weakest song is still very well put together and despite one song feeling a little barer than promised. Naturally, a lot of the more experimental touches stand out here and, as is the case with double albums, an 11-14 album would have worked just as well.
But fair play to Biffy for making such an album - as well as having the unenviable task of sifting through the 45 songs they reportedly wrote. Although all the songs here are well crafted, some do tend to sag a little while others are a lot more attention grabbing and masterful, and there have certainly got a work they can be proud of with plenty to admire.
7.9/10
Sunday, 20 January 2013
Time is Running Out...
Every manager has had a point where, for better or worse, the end of their tenure becomes unpreventable. Recent Newcastle managers certainly have a spectacular litany of moments where the tide has overwhelmed them.
From the infamous Tyne-Wear derby defeat in 1999 to missing out on the Champions League in 2004, and from losing Michael Owen to a crazy 12 months in 2007/08 where a UEFA Cup exit, a change in ownership and the presence of Dennis Wise effectively put paid to three managers, each manager has often met their maker after a sequence of things going wrong builds to a head.
It is ridiculous to think that, just a year after Alan Pardew won LMA Manager of the Year and finally looked to have become the elite manager he had potential to be, he has reached this moment. But a catastrophic home defeat by Reading is certainly as big a moment as any to end his spell.
As mentioned several times, the team has failed to match the heights of the spectacular 2011/12 campaign, where we got 5th place in the Premier League table. This was probably to be expected as it was unlikely we could match the heights with a squad that was still wafer-thin and faced additional games with Europa League football.
But only the most pessimistic could have predicted a relegation battle. Most fans were expecting top half but instead we are in a battle to stay in the Premier League and looking like the fall guys. We are in worse shape, both in terms of squad depth and points, then we looked in January 2009 when we ultimately fell through the trap door - even before Shay Given and Charles N'Zogbia's departures that month - and we don't look like getting the vital points required.
Obviously one win can make a difference and a valuable three points off Aston Villa on the 29th will go a long way to keeping us up. But the fact of the matter is that it's outrageous we are even in a position where we are facing relegation.
There have been many blogs and comment pieces - not least this one - arguing reasons why we find ourselves in this mess. Some cite the refusal to strengthen the squad after last seaon's heroics. Other cite tactical failures that have seen us somewhat avoid using our players in positions that a cohesive team could come from. Another popular explanation is luck, both with the fact a lot of our best players have been injured - something we didn't have much trouble with last year - and in actual games where a lucky break for the opponents has seen them take a game we should have won. There is also the likelihood of arrogance and complacency in some sectors after the success, and feeling it could be so easily replicated.
In combination, all four look like a very detailed and accurate explanation for our relegation, but the first two reasons are definitley fair indicators.
The club should have seen the unexpected success last year as a chance to strengthen and build on it. But instead Mike Ashley and Derek Llambias decided they wanted to gamble that the previous season's strategies would pay-off again. There were some youngsters bought in to flesh out the side, a replacement for the departed Danny Guthrie in the form of Vurnon Anita and that was that.
Trouble is that when someone gambles a lot and think they are on a permanent winning streak, they almost inevitably lose a massively high-risk game and lose everything. Ill fortune often follows the ill-prepared and the weaker overall squad than the one 12 months ago meant that there was no back-up when there were inevitable injuries.
Take Mike Williamson. No doubt a handy defender at lower league level, this season he has been the mother of all weak links. The former Portsmouth defender has made countless crucial errors that have repeatedly cost us, but in the absence of either the unsettled Fabricio Coloccini or the injury-prone Steven Taylor there is no other option.
Or take Nile Ranger. The 'striker' has more arrests than goals for the club, and has made laughable attempts to lecture Newcastle fans on how to behave after the boos during the game. Any sane club would've sacked or sold him ages ago - to be fair to the club, he was transfer listed in the summer - and found a better player with less baggage. Yet following the loss of Demba Ba, he not only remains but is one of our only options, which is just madness.
We had to strengthen in the summer. New right back Mathieu Debuchy is a great signing and a vast improvement on Danny Simpson. But while we were stunned by Loic Remy's decision to chase the money at QPR, we still need a new striker. Montpellier centre half Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa would be a great signing, and a steal given he's been linked with Arsenal, but our entire squad needs renovation that looks impossible to accomplish in this window.
As for tactics, Reading became the latest team to expose our failings after spending most of the game on the end of our best football of the campaign. A passing trio of Sylvain Marveux, Anita and the world-class playmaker Yohan Cabaye created opportunities at will, even if Shola Ameobi and Papiss Cisse both displayed spectacular failings at scoring them. But the removals of Marveux and Cabaye for the more defensive James Perch and Gael Bigirimana gave us trouble.
With the creative heart of the team replaced by a utility man and a youngster with barely more than 10 Premier League games in him, we were asking for trouble. This was only exacerbated when Anita was hooked off for the hit-and-miss Gabriel Obertan, leaving Ameobi and Jonas Gutierrez - both of whom had horrible games - on the field.
Like the end of the game against Everton, we looked nowhere near getting an equaliser and the visitors were allowed to close things out.
Pardew tried to say the same fans he'd been bigging up the day before had cost them the game by creating a negative atmosphere, but giving them a negative team that looked in no way like maintaing the team's advantage was never going to end well.
His excuses all season long have been tiring and exhausting. His attempts to blame the fans for spreading a negative atmosphere were stupid, as the atmosphere was kicked off by his idiotic substitutions.
Although replacing him was booed, it is probably understandable that Cabaye could not play 90 minutes against Reading - it was his first start in two months and after an afternoon running the show 75 was probably enough. But the tactical decision making all season long has been unimpressive and this was the undeserved face of it.
This saw the biggest show of dissent against the manager all season long and such dissent is counterproductive. But with reports he's lost the dressing room as well as the fanbase and SkyBet making him the odds-on favourite to be next out the door, a perfect storm appears to be building.
Defeat against the claret and blues already saw for two managers. A 2004 defeat was the end of the road for Sir Bobby Robson, which at the time seemed a harsh sacking, while the infamous 2009 game where a pathetic Toon display ended in relegation was Alan Shearer reach the end of the road. We've already lost one must-win game amid a firestorm of protest. Another one will leave us in a desperate position, louder protestations and the probability of a managerial chance go higher.
From the infamous Tyne-Wear derby defeat in 1999 to missing out on the Champions League in 2004, and from losing Michael Owen to a crazy 12 months in 2007/08 where a UEFA Cup exit, a change in ownership and the presence of Dennis Wise effectively put paid to three managers, each manager has often met their maker after a sequence of things going wrong builds to a head.
It is ridiculous to think that, just a year after Alan Pardew won LMA Manager of the Year and finally looked to have become the elite manager he had potential to be, he has reached this moment. But a catastrophic home defeat by Reading is certainly as big a moment as any to end his spell.
As mentioned several times, the team has failed to match the heights of the spectacular 2011/12 campaign, where we got 5th place in the Premier League table. This was probably to be expected as it was unlikely we could match the heights with a squad that was still wafer-thin and faced additional games with Europa League football.
But only the most pessimistic could have predicted a relegation battle. Most fans were expecting top half but instead we are in a battle to stay in the Premier League and looking like the fall guys. We are in worse shape, both in terms of squad depth and points, then we looked in January 2009 when we ultimately fell through the trap door - even before Shay Given and Charles N'Zogbia's departures that month - and we don't look like getting the vital points required.
Obviously one win can make a difference and a valuable three points off Aston Villa on the 29th will go a long way to keeping us up. But the fact of the matter is that it's outrageous we are even in a position where we are facing relegation.
There have been many blogs and comment pieces - not least this one - arguing reasons why we find ourselves in this mess. Some cite the refusal to strengthen the squad after last seaon's heroics. Other cite tactical failures that have seen us somewhat avoid using our players in positions that a cohesive team could come from. Another popular explanation is luck, both with the fact a lot of our best players have been injured - something we didn't have much trouble with last year - and in actual games where a lucky break for the opponents has seen them take a game we should have won. There is also the likelihood of arrogance and complacency in some sectors after the success, and feeling it could be so easily replicated.
In combination, all four look like a very detailed and accurate explanation for our relegation, but the first two reasons are definitley fair indicators.
The club should have seen the unexpected success last year as a chance to strengthen and build on it. But instead Mike Ashley and Derek Llambias decided they wanted to gamble that the previous season's strategies would pay-off again. There were some youngsters bought in to flesh out the side, a replacement for the departed Danny Guthrie in the form of Vurnon Anita and that was that.
Trouble is that when someone gambles a lot and think they are on a permanent winning streak, they almost inevitably lose a massively high-risk game and lose everything. Ill fortune often follows the ill-prepared and the weaker overall squad than the one 12 months ago meant that there was no back-up when there were inevitable injuries.
Take Mike Williamson. No doubt a handy defender at lower league level, this season he has been the mother of all weak links. The former Portsmouth defender has made countless crucial errors that have repeatedly cost us, but in the absence of either the unsettled Fabricio Coloccini or the injury-prone Steven Taylor there is no other option.
Or take Nile Ranger. The 'striker' has more arrests than goals for the club, and has made laughable attempts to lecture Newcastle fans on how to behave after the boos during the game. Any sane club would've sacked or sold him ages ago - to be fair to the club, he was transfer listed in the summer - and found a better player with less baggage. Yet following the loss of Demba Ba, he not only remains but is one of our only options, which is just madness.
We had to strengthen in the summer. New right back Mathieu Debuchy is a great signing and a vast improvement on Danny Simpson. But while we were stunned by Loic Remy's decision to chase the money at QPR, we still need a new striker. Montpellier centre half Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa would be a great signing, and a steal given he's been linked with Arsenal, but our entire squad needs renovation that looks impossible to accomplish in this window.
As for tactics, Reading became the latest team to expose our failings after spending most of the game on the end of our best football of the campaign. A passing trio of Sylvain Marveux, Anita and the world-class playmaker Yohan Cabaye created opportunities at will, even if Shola Ameobi and Papiss Cisse both displayed spectacular failings at scoring them. But the removals of Marveux and Cabaye for the more defensive James Perch and Gael Bigirimana gave us trouble.
With the creative heart of the team replaced by a utility man and a youngster with barely more than 10 Premier League games in him, we were asking for trouble. This was only exacerbated when Anita was hooked off for the hit-and-miss Gabriel Obertan, leaving Ameobi and Jonas Gutierrez - both of whom had horrible games - on the field.
Like the end of the game against Everton, we looked nowhere near getting an equaliser and the visitors were allowed to close things out.
Pardew tried to say the same fans he'd been bigging up the day before had cost them the game by creating a negative atmosphere, but giving them a negative team that looked in no way like maintaing the team's advantage was never going to end well.
His excuses all season long have been tiring and exhausting. His attempts to blame the fans for spreading a negative atmosphere were stupid, as the atmosphere was kicked off by his idiotic substitutions.
Although replacing him was booed, it is probably understandable that Cabaye could not play 90 minutes against Reading - it was his first start in two months and after an afternoon running the show 75 was probably enough. But the tactical decision making all season long has been unimpressive and this was the undeserved face of it.
This saw the biggest show of dissent against the manager all season long and such dissent is counterproductive. But with reports he's lost the dressing room as well as the fanbase and SkyBet making him the odds-on favourite to be next out the door, a perfect storm appears to be building.
Defeat against the claret and blues already saw for two managers. A 2004 defeat was the end of the road for Sir Bobby Robson, which at the time seemed a harsh sacking, while the infamous 2009 game where a pathetic Toon display ended in relegation was Alan Shearer reach the end of the road. We've already lost one must-win game amid a firestorm of protest. Another one will leave us in a desperate position, louder protestations and the probability of a managerial chance go higher.
Thursday, 10 January 2013
Money to Burn
Never too far from being in the spotlight is discussions about the cost of football.
The nation's sport was, once upon a time ago, a cheapish day out. A fiver/tenner or so for a ticket on the terraces, a bit more cash to eat and make the trip down and your weekly entertainment was set.
Time has put paid to this, as you would expect. Everything seems more expensive, which is small wonder given there has been roughly 77% total inflation between 1990 and 2011, which will ramp up prices a fair bit. Lots of cash was forked out to upgrade decaying stadiums in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster to make them safe again, or to build new stadiums which has also ramped up the prices.
But no one could quite forsee the exact level this has reached. Many fans feel they can no longer the season ticket price, nevermind the cost of actually following the team around the nation. Small wonder too - while no other tickets reaches the mindblowing extent Arsenal reach, Premier League teams and a number of Championship sides still charge crazy money.
To put it into context, you could watch a category A match on the terraces at Old Trafford in the 1989-90 season would set you back £3.50 and if it was mere the inflation rate posted above, it would now be an equivalent of £6.20. No chance of that, given few teams charge below £40 for a ticket, which is a long and frankly insane way from rationality. To put it into context, German top tier teams normally come to around £15 - in the UK, you have to go to the lower leagues to get such value.
The valuation also seems absurd when it comes to the action - although there is a lot of top quality action, it's a bit of a game of chance to whether or not you make a classic or a clunker. Not to mention that it can be a struggle to also afford Sky, long painted as an essential for football fans despite their prices looking set to rise again.
Value for money is certainly questionable, not least when you throw in the increased travel costs - petrol is forever on the increase, at a rate only train fares seem able to beat.
Long before Sunday's big game between Arsenal vs Manchester City hit the headlines for this reason, it seemed something have to give, and sure enough a good chunk of away end tickets are unsold. Of a 3,000 allocation, City returned almost a third of this, with seats instead fully sold to the home support.
The City fans certainly have sane reasoning - £65 for a ticket, getting there, either by fan coach or by the stupidly overpriced Manchester-London line, and of course the addition of food, drink and other potential expenditure, is a thoroughly draining experience on the wallet.
With City classed as category A, this sort of treatment is commonplace. Along with their visit to the Emirates Stadium, City's next few league away trips seem them visit QPR (a monumental £55), Southampton (£38), Aston Villa (£45), Everton (£42) and Manchester United (at least £45, but could well be higher). All this after some of the more devoted spent £90 on tickets alone for trips to Sunderland and Norwich over Christmas, nevermind the expense of doing 700-odd miles of round travelling over the notoriously difficlut holiday season.
Season ticket holders do get a fairly raw deal for their loyalty, and those in the away end of Sunday's game will be surrounded by a pretty prime example. Arsenal fans have the country's (and possibly the world's) most expensive season tickets, with the cheapest costing £985. Even with free European and Cup games, this is a truly outrageous cost, and that's before factoring in the additional expenses for away games.
Arsenal will justify this as part of their efforts to meet Financial Fair Play regulations while they are paying off the stadium they moved into back in 2006. But fans are beginning to feel alienated by the sheer cost of it, not least during the sharpest recession for over 70 years and where Arsenal fans feel alienated by their lack of recent success.
Of course it is not only Arsenal that do this - they are merely the top of the expenses tree and they do make some concessions for less inticing games, which is something you can't say for Chelsea or Spurs. City themselves are also fairly pricy, with Southampton fans having to stump up £52 for their season opener in Manchester.
It's not just these high-profile games where this is a problem, as there is growing feelings the sport as a whole is becoming vastly unaffordable for the common man.
Football as a sport has critics that use the cash in the game as an argument, and times like these are when even the hardcore can sympathise. With players, agents and directors getting the stupid money that even dictators can only dream of, it seems more absurd that the extra cash generated by the expanded Sky/BT television deal seems to be being funneled direct to them.
It is hard to see how economically sustainable modern football is. At some point, if maybe not just yet, there will be a point when a significant majority of fans of all colours will declare enough is enough and refuse to pay the prices expected of them. But even if fans keep paying, most of the Premier League make huge losses to afford the massive wages that their players and directors expect to be paid for their services.
There's only so long you can continue making losses in any business before they inevitably catch up and consume the business. Football certainly has its own examples - Leeds United and Portsmouth spent way above their means to get success and soon enough their finances screwed up, leading to a massive collapse and plummet down into League One.
The case of Portsmouth could still end in further misery, with doubt on the clubs overall future after several administration attempts, nine players already leaving in the transfer window and the team on a losing streak that leaves them in the League One relegation zone.
Many lower league sides are barely scraping by as it is, with one football administrator claiming that the majority of these teams are in some form of financial difficulty or another.
The majority of the Premier League make losses, with some - Man City with an impressive figure of -£195million - massive ones amongst the names. Only a handful of clubs make profits and even then these are fuelled by the odd mega-bucks transfer, or from real trimming of the fat. It is likely that the increase in cash the Premier League's new £3billion TV rights deal will plug this gap rather than alleviating pressure on the fans' wallets, even despite calls for this money to help give fans some relief.
As a result, fans are having to finance rampant overspending at all levels as teams try to find success. People can no longer afford to go with their kids, who have now grown used to seeing all the games for free on a proxy site instead of actually sampling the stadium's atmosphere, and puts future support out of kilter.
Of course it's not just football - other sporting events, major concerts, massive comedy shows, theatre productions, even film tickets are all pretty expensive - but nowhere quite like football is this being felt. Questions will always be raised but unless something can be done about it the sport once described as the working man's ballet will be all out unaffordable to those people, taking the game's atmosphere with it.
The nation's sport was, once upon a time ago, a cheapish day out. A fiver/tenner or so for a ticket on the terraces, a bit more cash to eat and make the trip down and your weekly entertainment was set.
Time has put paid to this, as you would expect. Everything seems more expensive, which is small wonder given there has been roughly 77% total inflation between 1990 and 2011, which will ramp up prices a fair bit. Lots of cash was forked out to upgrade decaying stadiums in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster to make them safe again, or to build new stadiums which has also ramped up the prices.
But no one could quite forsee the exact level this has reached. Many fans feel they can no longer the season ticket price, nevermind the cost of actually following the team around the nation. Small wonder too - while no other tickets reaches the mindblowing extent Arsenal reach, Premier League teams and a number of Championship sides still charge crazy money.
To put it into context, you could watch a category A match on the terraces at Old Trafford in the 1989-90 season would set you back £3.50 and if it was mere the inflation rate posted above, it would now be an equivalent of £6.20. No chance of that, given few teams charge below £40 for a ticket, which is a long and frankly insane way from rationality. To put it into context, German top tier teams normally come to around £15 - in the UK, you have to go to the lower leagues to get such value.
The valuation also seems absurd when it comes to the action - although there is a lot of top quality action, it's a bit of a game of chance to whether or not you make a classic or a clunker. Not to mention that it can be a struggle to also afford Sky, long painted as an essential for football fans despite their prices looking set to rise again.
Value for money is certainly questionable, not least when you throw in the increased travel costs - petrol is forever on the increase, at a rate only train fares seem able to beat.
Long before Sunday's big game between Arsenal vs Manchester City hit the headlines for this reason, it seemed something have to give, and sure enough a good chunk of away end tickets are unsold. Of a 3,000 allocation, City returned almost a third of this, with seats instead fully sold to the home support.
The City fans certainly have sane reasoning - £65 for a ticket, getting there, either by fan coach or by the stupidly overpriced Manchester-London line, and of course the addition of food, drink and other potential expenditure, is a thoroughly draining experience on the wallet.
With City classed as category A, this sort of treatment is commonplace. Along with their visit to the Emirates Stadium, City's next few league away trips seem them visit QPR (a monumental £55), Southampton (£38), Aston Villa (£45), Everton (£42) and Manchester United (at least £45, but could well be higher). All this after some of the more devoted spent £90 on tickets alone for trips to Sunderland and Norwich over Christmas, nevermind the expense of doing 700-odd miles of round travelling over the notoriously difficlut holiday season.
Season ticket holders do get a fairly raw deal for their loyalty, and those in the away end of Sunday's game will be surrounded by a pretty prime example. Arsenal fans have the country's (and possibly the world's) most expensive season tickets, with the cheapest costing £985. Even with free European and Cup games, this is a truly outrageous cost, and that's before factoring in the additional expenses for away games.
Arsenal will justify this as part of their efforts to meet Financial Fair Play regulations while they are paying off the stadium they moved into back in 2006. But fans are beginning to feel alienated by the sheer cost of it, not least during the sharpest recession for over 70 years and where Arsenal fans feel alienated by their lack of recent success.
Of course it is not only Arsenal that do this - they are merely the top of the expenses tree and they do make some concessions for less inticing games, which is something you can't say for Chelsea or Spurs. City themselves are also fairly pricy, with Southampton fans having to stump up £52 for their season opener in Manchester.
It's not just these high-profile games where this is a problem, as there is growing feelings the sport as a whole is becoming vastly unaffordable for the common man.
Football as a sport has critics that use the cash in the game as an argument, and times like these are when even the hardcore can sympathise. With players, agents and directors getting the stupid money that even dictators can only dream of, it seems more absurd that the extra cash generated by the expanded Sky/BT television deal seems to be being funneled direct to them.
It is hard to see how economically sustainable modern football is. At some point, if maybe not just yet, there will be a point when a significant majority of fans of all colours will declare enough is enough and refuse to pay the prices expected of them. But even if fans keep paying, most of the Premier League make huge losses to afford the massive wages that their players and directors expect to be paid for their services.
There's only so long you can continue making losses in any business before they inevitably catch up and consume the business. Football certainly has its own examples - Leeds United and Portsmouth spent way above their means to get success and soon enough their finances screwed up, leading to a massive collapse and plummet down into League One.
The case of Portsmouth could still end in further misery, with doubt on the clubs overall future after several administration attempts, nine players already leaving in the transfer window and the team on a losing streak that leaves them in the League One relegation zone.
Many lower league sides are barely scraping by as it is, with one football administrator claiming that the majority of these teams are in some form of financial difficulty or another.
The majority of the Premier League make losses, with some - Man City with an impressive figure of -£195million - massive ones amongst the names. Only a handful of clubs make profits and even then these are fuelled by the odd mega-bucks transfer, or from real trimming of the fat. It is likely that the increase in cash the Premier League's new £3billion TV rights deal will plug this gap rather than alleviating pressure on the fans' wallets, even despite calls for this money to help give fans some relief.
As a result, fans are having to finance rampant overspending at all levels as teams try to find success. People can no longer afford to go with their kids, who have now grown used to seeing all the games for free on a proxy site instead of actually sampling the stadium's atmosphere, and puts future support out of kilter.
Of course it's not just football - other sporting events, major concerts, massive comedy shows, theatre productions, even film tickets are all pretty expensive - but nowhere quite like football is this being felt. Questions will always be raised but unless something can be done about it the sport once described as the working man's ballet will be all out unaffordable to those people, taking the game's atmosphere with it.
Saturday, 5 January 2013
Bursting Bubbles
Back in November, it looked like things could not possibly get any worse for Newcastle United.
Four defeats in a row, a pile-up of talented stars suffering injury, a manager with perceived complaceny after getting an eight year contract (actually eight one year contracts subject to performance) and wondering whether this misery would end in the drop.
Although a pair of wins have been put on the board in vital games against Wigan and QPR, extra notches have been registered on the defeat counter.
Some have been expected - few fans expected victory over Manchester City. Some have been incredibly unlucky - having led three times at Old Trafford, it was gut-wrenching to see Sir Alex Ferguson's wee club from the North West nick it. Some have been preposterous - four goals in 10 minutes saw Arsenal get seven in what had been an even game.
But all have ended the same way - no extra points to a kitty already registered as the worst in club history at this stage in a Premier League season. Not even Dalglish, Gullit, Souness, Allardyce or the Keegan/Hughton/Kinnear roadshow that got us relegated have been this low at this point in a league season.
The icing on the cake was served up at Brighton in the FA Cup. Unusually for a cup tie, the odds for an upset were not so much in favour as they were expected - with the first eleven virtually absent and those left out of form, expectations were that a Toon win might well be the surprise.
Lo and behold, those clad in the burgundy away kit did nothing to confound even the minimal expectations. Surprisingly the stats paint a picture of an upset, saying we had more shots. But Brighton dominated possession and the chances they did create were better.
Even before a harsh red card for the day's captain Shola Ameobi, it looked unlikely that there would be an away goal. After the red card the probability reduced further, with only Nile Ranger - an arrogant useless waste of a shirt that had been transfer listed back in August - holding the line with little support.
Some fans have tried to get positives out of our more recent affairs and to be fair there have been some positives to take out of our more recent defeats. But there are none out of today's shambles, and certainly not for the devoted fans that travelled down at 1am for a ludicrously scheduled 12:30pm kick-off - as an aside the ITV commentator had cheek trying to sympathise with them when his broadcaster had scheduled the stupid time.
Last season also saw Brighton dump us out of the FA Cup. That was arguably more of an upset given the teamsheet we put out had most of our strongest players and we wound up 5th in the final table in 2012, but this year we look a shadow of that side.
Somehow, like last season, what went out was (more or less) the strongest team available. This is nothing short of insane and a damning verdict on Mike Ashley's transfer policy.
Obviously, you cannot forsee the sort of sagas we have had, and 12 injuries, absences and players moving on is something you cannot forsee at the start of the season. But you have to have some preperation for even the slightest injury crisis.
Earlier in the season, Derek Llambias admitted he views the squad as 11 first team options and senior reserves/youngsters. While we are not in a position like Chelsea or Manchester City, who can legimately claim they have 23 first team options, even teams lower down like Stoke, Swansea, hell even QPR, have more options when their first team is neutered.
By contrast, we don't, and this ill-advised gamble by Mike Ashley looks set to be our undoing. Take central defence - James Perch is seen as more of a full back or midfielder, and full back is also the better place for youngster James Tavernier. This leaves Fabricio Coloccini, Steven Taylor and Mike Williamson as our only centre backs. With Taylor injured, it's left the out-of-form Coloccini and error-prone Williamson for the bulk of the campaign, meaning that keeping goals out is starting to prove a challenge too far. And remarkably, this short-sighted policy is not just in defence but all over the pitch.
The first half of this season has been galling to watch, with part seeing Alan Pardew change the tactic despite it being clear the players could not play in the new system, and then trying to revert just as players dried up.
Players are coming in, with French international Mathieu Debuchy joining from Lille and a replacement for Demba Ba expected to join ahead of the next match against Norwich City. But more is needed, and a number of fans are holding the view that replacing squad members that are being far from good enough is required.
A lot of this could well be heat-of-the-moment play after a bad result but after a while of performances like this, the views build up. Today's display at the AMEX Stadium was the worst display by a Newcastle team since the day in May 2009 when they didn't even put up a fight as they were relegated from the Premier League.
Unthinkable as it was back in May 2012, we need to buck up our ideas or a return to the Championship will happen. But unless we sign the players we needed in August and players we also needed added now, it's all over for Pardew, for the talented players we had, and for us as a whole.
Four defeats in a row, a pile-up of talented stars suffering injury, a manager with perceived complaceny after getting an eight year contract (actually eight one year contracts subject to performance) and wondering whether this misery would end in the drop.
Although a pair of wins have been put on the board in vital games against Wigan and QPR, extra notches have been registered on the defeat counter.
Some have been expected - few fans expected victory over Manchester City. Some have been incredibly unlucky - having led three times at Old Trafford, it was gut-wrenching to see Sir Alex Ferguson's wee club from the North West nick it. Some have been preposterous - four goals in 10 minutes saw Arsenal get seven in what had been an even game.
But all have ended the same way - no extra points to a kitty already registered as the worst in club history at this stage in a Premier League season. Not even Dalglish, Gullit, Souness, Allardyce or the Keegan/Hughton/Kinnear roadshow that got us relegated have been this low at this point in a league season.
The icing on the cake was served up at Brighton in the FA Cup. Unusually for a cup tie, the odds for an upset were not so much in favour as they were expected - with the first eleven virtually absent and those left out of form, expectations were that a Toon win might well be the surprise.
Lo and behold, those clad in the burgundy away kit did nothing to confound even the minimal expectations. Surprisingly the stats paint a picture of an upset, saying we had more shots. But Brighton dominated possession and the chances they did create were better.
Even before a harsh red card for the day's captain Shola Ameobi, it looked unlikely that there would be an away goal. After the red card the probability reduced further, with only Nile Ranger - an arrogant useless waste of a shirt that had been transfer listed back in August - holding the line with little support.
Some fans have tried to get positives out of our more recent affairs and to be fair there have been some positives to take out of our more recent defeats. But there are none out of today's shambles, and certainly not for the devoted fans that travelled down at 1am for a ludicrously scheduled 12:30pm kick-off - as an aside the ITV commentator had cheek trying to sympathise with them when his broadcaster had scheduled the stupid time.
Last season also saw Brighton dump us out of the FA Cup. That was arguably more of an upset given the teamsheet we put out had most of our strongest players and we wound up 5th in the final table in 2012, but this year we look a shadow of that side.
Somehow, like last season, what went out was (more or less) the strongest team available. This is nothing short of insane and a damning verdict on Mike Ashley's transfer policy.
Obviously, you cannot forsee the sort of sagas we have had, and 12 injuries, absences and players moving on is something you cannot forsee at the start of the season. But you have to have some preperation for even the slightest injury crisis.
Earlier in the season, Derek Llambias admitted he views the squad as 11 first team options and senior reserves/youngsters. While we are not in a position like Chelsea or Manchester City, who can legimately claim they have 23 first team options, even teams lower down like Stoke, Swansea, hell even QPR, have more options when their first team is neutered.
By contrast, we don't, and this ill-advised gamble by Mike Ashley looks set to be our undoing. Take central defence - James Perch is seen as more of a full back or midfielder, and full back is also the better place for youngster James Tavernier. This leaves Fabricio Coloccini, Steven Taylor and Mike Williamson as our only centre backs. With Taylor injured, it's left the out-of-form Coloccini and error-prone Williamson for the bulk of the campaign, meaning that keeping goals out is starting to prove a challenge too far. And remarkably, this short-sighted policy is not just in defence but all over the pitch.
The first half of this season has been galling to watch, with part seeing Alan Pardew change the tactic despite it being clear the players could not play in the new system, and then trying to revert just as players dried up.
Players are coming in, with French international Mathieu Debuchy joining from Lille and a replacement for Demba Ba expected to join ahead of the next match against Norwich City. But more is needed, and a number of fans are holding the view that replacing squad members that are being far from good enough is required.
A lot of this could well be heat-of-the-moment play after a bad result but after a while of performances like this, the views build up. Today's display at the AMEX Stadium was the worst display by a Newcastle team since the day in May 2009 when they didn't even put up a fight as they were relegated from the Premier League.
Unthinkable as it was back in May 2012, we need to buck up our ideas or a return to the Championship will happen. But unless we sign the players we needed in August and players we also needed added now, it's all over for Pardew, for the talented players we had, and for us as a whole.
You've Got Mail
There is nothing out there that eats up talking time quite like whipping up a good scandal.
The right story, when it's spun out, can develop such unbelievable traction and become a major talking point that can even define a year.
It is safe to say that the Daily Mail has fine form on both sides of this space-filler, both as instigating the fires and being on the receiving end. In 2008 it managed to whip up an incredible firestorm against Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross, where it turned 2 complaints against a BBC Radio 2 programme into 45,000. This also wound up with resignations from Brand and the head of the station, a suspension for Ross, egg on the face for the BBC and MP support to clean up the media, even if most of them came from people that didn't actually hear the initial broadcast.
But the paper faced a firestorm of it's own making the year after when columnist Jan Moir incredibly linked Boyzone singer Stephen Gately's homosexuality with his death, leading to 25,000 complaints to the Press Complaints Comission.
Bizarrely the newspaper defended this spot of opportune gay-bashing under free-speech and the PCC allowed it to pass through despite classing it as 'extremely offensive to certain groups'. Not that it did the career of Jan Moir any favours, with the columnist deried by almost everyone else and given an award as Bigot of the Year by a gay newspaper.
Not that this stops campaigns that essentially look like something from the down with this sort of thing scene from Father Ted. For those who haven't seen it, this sees the main character and his hapless fellow priest Father Dougal try and protest a sexually eplicit film showing in their local cinema, and then promptly make it the most succesful film in the history of their parish's local cinema. This is more or less the effect, as attracting attention to something deemed offensive promptly makes people more eager to see it, and possibly more popular.
The Mail has happily got back on it's high horse and had a campaign go only to fall into this trap. In it's firing line this time is The Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2012, which aired on Channel 4 the night before New Year's Eve and received less than 10 complaints in the first few days to OFCOM. This is a mere drop in the ocean and is hardly a big story - three million people watched the initial broadcast.
These odds did not stop Mail attempts to whip up a storm, describing jokes offered up by James Corden, Jack Whitehall and presenter Jimmy Carr as "vulgar", "crass" and "puerile" among other things. These were served in an article peppered with quotes from MPs looking for something to do and from the worst rated on its comment board - ironically the best rated were comments from people who felt the Mail needed to get off it's high horse.
For those readers who prefer to know what they are being outraged by, the Mail reprinted bleeped versions of the material in question and also tried to outrage viewers further by saying that Whitehall and Corden were having a dinner of pizza and wine while making jokes about the Queen, Susan Boyle, Usain Bolt and President Obama among others.
Unlike Sachsgate, though, this was not really a campaign that was going to draw up the same hysteria. While that incident created a truly incredible tidal wave of hysteria, this one failed to get to the same blockbuster proportions, with OFCOM receiving less than 100 complaints and Channel 4 repeating the show anyway.
Any further campaigning seems like flogging a dead horse to faintly incredible levels. If you're not a fan of Carr or Whitehall, you're hardly going to suddenly turn around afresh at the comedy that they perform. Also, one fair indication is the time in question - the 9pm watershed is the point when swearing and more out-there lines can be merrily recounted to the extent they normally are.
Despite this the Daily Mail has carried on undaunted. There is something to admire about its commitment to the cause despite other sources, ranging from other newspapers to bloggers and further onto the commenters on it's own website, just looking on at its attempt with bewilderment.
Certainly, they're hardly going to convince Jonathan Ross, a man who once described Daily Mail journalists as "insincere hypocrites", to suddenly tone down his act.
I watched the show and found it fairly amusing, albeit not the best installment of the Big Fat Quiz - that honour is jointly shared by it's 2006-09 broadcasts. While it's understandable not everybody will find it amusing, the bulk of the reception on the night of broadcast was mostly positive. Negative comments online have mainly been from people who don't rate the comedians in the first place, which is fair enough - for instance I find my enjoyment of any comedy programme significantly reduced by the appearance of the painfully unfunny Mickey Flanagan.
Natrually, some people will be offended in any case - it is hard to get all of the people to like you. But there is certainly one possible option for people offended by this programme, one magic option. It is called the television and, more precisely, its remote control - there are hundreds of other channels providing entertainment, and some of it will be to the liking of the people offended, even at the time of broadcast.
Back in 2010, newspaper editor Paul Dacre was hilarious in commenting that most of the complaints around the Moir article were from people who hadn't read the article, which is somewhat two-faced given his paper have been encouraging people who haven't seen the broadcast to complain.
It is certainly a strange affair the Mail has decided to call for censorship of the programme. A few weeks ago it campaigned against the Leveson Report, arguing that said report was against press freedom. Whether or not the actual report is harmful to free speech is ultimately down to personal opinion, but certainly, as the paper says, a free media is essential for a free democracy.
Despite this, it seems faintly weird that the Mail has decided free speech does not apply to Channel 4 or topical comedians, who are certainly a form of media. But then such pick-and-mix decision making to flavour its campaigns is commonplace. There is certainly vindication for the Mail's campaign to try and protect kids from illicit material online, which is fair enough. But illicit material does also cover the Daily Mail online, which regularly features naked models and remarking on 13/14 year olds that look "all grown up".
It is an interesting conumdrum really, but in any case it seems that this time the Mail's valiant efforts against perceived rudeness is set to hit the wall on this occasion.
The right story, when it's spun out, can develop such unbelievable traction and become a major talking point that can even define a year.
It is safe to say that the Daily Mail has fine form on both sides of this space-filler, both as instigating the fires and being on the receiving end. In 2008 it managed to whip up an incredible firestorm against Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross, where it turned 2 complaints against a BBC Radio 2 programme into 45,000. This also wound up with resignations from Brand and the head of the station, a suspension for Ross, egg on the face for the BBC and MP support to clean up the media, even if most of them came from people that didn't actually hear the initial broadcast.
But the paper faced a firestorm of it's own making the year after when columnist Jan Moir incredibly linked Boyzone singer Stephen Gately's homosexuality with his death, leading to 25,000 complaints to the Press Complaints Comission.
Bizarrely the newspaper defended this spot of opportune gay-bashing under free-speech and the PCC allowed it to pass through despite classing it as 'extremely offensive to certain groups'. Not that it did the career of Jan Moir any favours, with the columnist deried by almost everyone else and given an award as Bigot of the Year by a gay newspaper.
Not that this stops campaigns that essentially look like something from the down with this sort of thing scene from Father Ted. For those who haven't seen it, this sees the main character and his hapless fellow priest Father Dougal try and protest a sexually eplicit film showing in their local cinema, and then promptly make it the most succesful film in the history of their parish's local cinema. This is more or less the effect, as attracting attention to something deemed offensive promptly makes people more eager to see it, and possibly more popular.
The Mail has happily got back on it's high horse and had a campaign go only to fall into this trap. In it's firing line this time is The Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2012, which aired on Channel 4 the night before New Year's Eve and received less than 10 complaints in the first few days to OFCOM. This is a mere drop in the ocean and is hardly a big story - three million people watched the initial broadcast.
These odds did not stop Mail attempts to whip up a storm, describing jokes offered up by James Corden, Jack Whitehall and presenter Jimmy Carr as "vulgar", "crass" and "puerile" among other things. These were served in an article peppered with quotes from MPs looking for something to do and from the worst rated on its comment board - ironically the best rated were comments from people who felt the Mail needed to get off it's high horse.
For those readers who prefer to know what they are being outraged by, the Mail reprinted bleeped versions of the material in question and also tried to outrage viewers further by saying that Whitehall and Corden were having a dinner of pizza and wine while making jokes about the Queen, Susan Boyle, Usain Bolt and President Obama among others.
Unlike Sachsgate, though, this was not really a campaign that was going to draw up the same hysteria. While that incident created a truly incredible tidal wave of hysteria, this one failed to get to the same blockbuster proportions, with OFCOM receiving less than 100 complaints and Channel 4 repeating the show anyway.
Any further campaigning seems like flogging a dead horse to faintly incredible levels. If you're not a fan of Carr or Whitehall, you're hardly going to suddenly turn around afresh at the comedy that they perform. Also, one fair indication is the time in question - the 9pm watershed is the point when swearing and more out-there lines can be merrily recounted to the extent they normally are.
Despite this the Daily Mail has carried on undaunted. There is something to admire about its commitment to the cause despite other sources, ranging from other newspapers to bloggers and further onto the commenters on it's own website, just looking on at its attempt with bewilderment.
Certainly, they're hardly going to convince Jonathan Ross, a man who once described Daily Mail journalists as "insincere hypocrites", to suddenly tone down his act.
I watched the show and found it fairly amusing, albeit not the best installment of the Big Fat Quiz - that honour is jointly shared by it's 2006-09 broadcasts. While it's understandable not everybody will find it amusing, the bulk of the reception on the night of broadcast was mostly positive. Negative comments online have mainly been from people who don't rate the comedians in the first place, which is fair enough - for instance I find my enjoyment of any comedy programme significantly reduced by the appearance of the painfully unfunny Mickey Flanagan.
Natrually, some people will be offended in any case - it is hard to get all of the people to like you. But there is certainly one possible option for people offended by this programme, one magic option. It is called the television and, more precisely, its remote control - there are hundreds of other channels providing entertainment, and some of it will be to the liking of the people offended, even at the time of broadcast.
Back in 2010, newspaper editor Paul Dacre was hilarious in commenting that most of the complaints around the Moir article were from people who hadn't read the article, which is somewhat two-faced given his paper have been encouraging people who haven't seen the broadcast to complain.
It is certainly a strange affair the Mail has decided to call for censorship of the programme. A few weeks ago it campaigned against the Leveson Report, arguing that said report was against press freedom. Whether or not the actual report is harmful to free speech is ultimately down to personal opinion, but certainly, as the paper says, a free media is essential for a free democracy.
Despite this, it seems faintly weird that the Mail has decided free speech does not apply to Channel 4 or topical comedians, who are certainly a form of media. But then such pick-and-mix decision making to flavour its campaigns is commonplace. There is certainly vindication for the Mail's campaign to try and protect kids from illicit material online, which is fair enough. But illicit material does also cover the Daily Mail online, which regularly features naked models and remarking on 13/14 year olds that look "all grown up".
It is an interesting conumdrum really, but in any case it seems that this time the Mail's valiant efforts against perceived rudeness is set to hit the wall on this occasion.
Wednesday, 2 January 2013
2012: A Review
As the most extreme of the New Year's Eve hangovers fade, there is stuff all over the place reflecting upon the year 2012. The year has seen many cultural highlights and lowlights emerging at various points as the year spiralled on, as year's tend to do, and has produced some many talking points.
Despite this, there is a surreal air to actually looking back. This is because 2012 was surprisingly quiet between January and June.
Obviously this is not an indicator that the world as a whole was dormant during the first half of the year. There were still big events and it is possible this view is only possible as the second half of the year was much more eventful. 2012 only looks quiet in comparison to 2011, which was a truly hysterical year that seemed to lurch from one major event to the next on a weekly basis.
Despite this, 2012 does look exceedingly backloaded - starting with the Queen's wet and wild Jubilee celebrations, the big events for which the year ultimately looks set to be remembered for took place in June and onwards.
A lot of the early big stories in the first few months of the year were carried over from 2011, and in the case of Eurozone, the previous few years. Certainly, the end of the year's almost whirlwind feeling hammered home the bizarre lopsided feeling to an extent that early year news stories such as the sinking of the Costa Concordia and the bizarre Kony 2012 campaign felt like they occurred in other years.
However March did provide one original farce and perhaps the ultimate case study of the "omnishambles" popularised by television's The Thick Of It. As the month was ending the news was full of nervy talk of a petrol tankers strike that ultimately never happened.
Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude promptly poked his head above the parapet and convinced many people to panic buy petrol and store it in jerry cans. This is not exactly a good idea given that the fumes are proven to be flammable, and not least an unpleasant thing to inhale, but that didn't stop people sitting in petrol stations panic buying stocks of fuel anyway.
Just as the, ahem, fire was about to die down, George Osborne promptly came into view. This came through the faintly shambolic Budget, which resulted in the surreal Pasty Tax scandal, where both sides of the House of Commons seemed to be trying to up each other in who loved pastry products more. Pasties were not the only thing the budget led to serious questions over, with the tax affairs for charities, static caravans and question about the whole thing would actually help the British economy.
Osborne had a terrible year all round, with the previous questions about his competence magnified even further. This was before he was caught trying to skip the first class fare on a Virgin Train in the same month the government had screwed up the award of said company's franchise, and a Winter statement that promptly left him even more politically poisonous.
As a whole politics continued as usual - the coalition drafted up controversial policies then immediately withdrew nearly all of them while Labour continued criticising them and being accused of being in hock to the unions.
Various ministers also fell on their swords after rough times, ranging from the unarguable - Andrew Rawnsley had nowhere to go after his botched NHS reforms - to the baffling - Jeremy Hunt was given his job instead despite failing as Culture Secretary. But none fell more loudly and controversially than Andrew Mitchell.
Just weeks after he was appointed Chief Whip, he was accused of calling the police manning the Downing Street gates "fucking plebs" after they reportedly refused to let him out of the main gates. This was, eventually, enough to force him to resign amid cries it was proof the Tories were an out of touch party of millionaires.
But while they did little to disprove the millionaire accusation, they were at least vindicated of saying Mitchell was innocent. Video tape released after his resignation revealed Mitchell went along with police instructions rather than swearing at them. As well as this, it was shown there were no real eyewitnesses, leaving the police embarassed.
When the Jubilee rolled around it was a mixed bag overall - the flotilla could have been impressive had the sky not attempted to drown it, while the concert was faintly underwhelming. It was nice to see the nation come together but it wasn't exactly the spectacle it could well have been.
Nevertheless this was a face the Royals could appreciate as opposed to the naked photography farce, with both Prince Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge involved in naked photo scandals. These were taken differently, with The Sun trumpeting it as freedom of expression that they publish the Harry photo, and then promptly called the Duchess of Cambridge photos "violation of privacy".
Of course it is not quite that simple, with Prince Harry's photos being consensual and the Duchess' being taken without her permission with a long-zoom from a road about 2 miles away. Despite the difference, it is strange the Sun chose to mark this as the freedom of speech barometer.
Also surreal was the fact the Daily Express ranted it showed a lack of respect for the Royals despite, as Private Eye pointed out, the paper's properitor owns a porn channel that marked the previous year's Royal Wedding with a royal-theme romp.
The photo incident also proves a worrying precedent ahead of next autumn, when the Duchess is due to give birth to her first child. Paprazzi photographers and children are never a good combination but a Royal baby can only provide massive hysteria.
Seven years after it was awarded to London, the Olympics arrived and turned out to be quite a spectacular event. This dramatically subverted expectation, as so much of the coverage before the Games made out Britain was in line for an international humiliation.
The three months before the games had felt almost like the entire nation was being waterboarded, as the stereotype Britain has some of the heaviest rain in the world was visualised.
Other concerns were also high on the list. After all, the ticketing system seemed uninterested in coughing up tickets, or tickets applicants actually wanted, the already-dense London transport network looked to become impassible, the private security firm contracted had to be bailed out by the army after they only trained six people, each athlete seemed to be advertising branding amid draconian regulations and it seemed absurd that we were funding a gigantic sporting event while we were barely able to pay for anything. Hell, people were even hoping it could be given to Paris with a week to go.
But from the delightful Opening Ceremony, the games themselves provided many instances of sporting delight and a good job well done. Seemingly every effort was there for things to go wrong, and people were still trying to stoke up any small niggle. But Team GB were on fire, the crowds looked like they were enjoying themselves, the army missiles half of London had fitted weren't required and the whole country had the effect of a joyous uplift.
The games were addictive but grand viewing, made easier by the 24 Olympic channels run by the BBC. Many fresh-faced young athletes rose to prominence, the old guard put in another shift to gain further glory and highly-advertised favourites such as Jessica Ennis, Bradley Wiggins and Mo Farah took their place as national treasures.
The Olympics-related buzz was so strong, not even the underwhelming closing ceremony could dilute the invincible feeling many people felt about the nation.
The Paralympics piled on the goodwill, as the events almost came close to upstaging the Olympics themselves. The sports looked fresh and original and provided the unheralded disabled stars a platform to truly prove to the world being handicapped was not a barrier to being succesful.
This kept up the buzz and also provided some further moments, even if one of them was when George Osborne continued his farcical year by presenting medals at one of the events in the same month he had cut disability benefit. Perhaps not surprising in general context, he got 80,000 boos greeting him with a reception Sepp Blatter could only dream of.
Nevertheless it was a golden summer for sport that generated a lot of good will. But from the moment the Paralympics final ceremony bored us all with an hour of Coldplay, people were now wondering how long this would last.
Appropriately enough, it took less than 24 hours for the optimistic mood to sink as Britain's already overpriced railway network decided to increase their fares again. It also heralded more miserable weather - the games themselves were the one period of the entire summer where the rain held off, and almost as soon as the last bits of the Paralympics Closing Ceremony were cleared away the clouds promptly resumed soaking the nation.
Little wonder that 2012 has gone down as one of the wettest years in history - somewhat ironically as in March it was seriously looking that Southern England was about to be declaring a drought. This has almost gone down as a sort of raindance - flooding has struck almost every part of the UK at least once, with some unlucky areas (i.e. Devon/Cornwall) spending the last 2/3 months of the year underwater.
Sporting goodwill was also reduced as attention turned to football, a sport long since stereotyped as being a haven for rich arseholes. Sure enough, the sport played to type, as racism, violence, financial, diving and refereeing related incidents ensured football's talking points were as much about the negative as the actual action.
This was no mean feat given the top quality action. The previous season's Premier League ended in magnificent style as City somehow managed to win the division just as United were about to put the gloss on title number 20. Chelsea then trumped this as they beat Barcelona and Bayern Munich and lifted the UEFA Champions League to go with the FA Cup, even if deputy coach Roberto Di Matteo was promptly rewarded with the boot.
Away from football and British athletes kept up their success. Wiggins had earlier threatened to upstage the Olympics when he won the Tour de France the week before the Opening Ceremony, and Andy Murray went from being the nearly man of tennis to a success story. He won the US Open after a tense victory over Novak Djokovic, adding it to Wimbledon runner-up and Olympic gold and silver medals to cap a fine year. Not everyone was succesful though, with Lewis Hamilton and Jensen Button unable to prevent Sebastien Vettel from winning his third successive Formula One title.
There seemed a cautious overall optimism, even despite the rain, as the nation reflected on a summer well done. But nothing could truly sink the nation's goodwill quite like what was about to follow.
October 29th 2012 was the first anniversary of the death of television entertainer Jimmy Savile, but while his death the year before was greeted with outpourings of grief and TV tributes, the first anniversary was not quite so keenly greeted.
Earlier that month, ITV aired "The Other Side Of Jimmy Savile", which blew the lid off almost 40 years worth of peadophile allegations. The initial ITV documentary was then followed up by a tidal wave of further stories that truly blew apart Savile's previous reputation.
Following in his wake other cult figures of the time and more recent stars were locked away as people begun to view celebrities with suspicion. But nowhere was the scrutiny more felt than at the BBC. Savile was the broadcaster's biggest name in the 70s, 80s and early 90s and people begun to speculate the corporation turned a blind eye to his antics.
There was also speculation that the BBC pulled a Newsnight investigation into the incidents so they could air a couple of fairly desperate air-time filling tribute shows around Christmas time that year. This led to Newsnight's editor and other key BBC figures resigning or being suspended in a truly uncomfortable interlude, and not just because they had dropped the ball.
It simply felt uncomfortable that the shocking core fact kids had been systemically abused was being overlooked so the BBC could get a kicking. It is arguable this felt par for the course - after feeling the Murdoch companies were unfairly kicking the state-funded Beeb, the print companies could feel they were getting mauled during the phone hacking scandal and felt they needed something to kick in return.
Not that the BBC and a truly rudderless Newsnight were about to offer a stunning example of leadership. Not content with broadcasting a discussions about a Panorama report about its own antics, Newsnight then came close to ultimate editorial suicide. In early November, it aired a ropey investigation that tried to implicate a senior 80s politican in a child sex scandal at a care home in Wales that had already been the subject of a major investigation in 2000.
Trial-by-Twitter promptly accused former Tory politican Lord McAlpine of child abuse. But unlike the previous year's superinjunction cases where trial-by-Twitter managed to be bang on the money, this was one of the biggest fiascos in recent legal history as McAlpine was revealed to have been wrongly identified by the original witness and he promptly begun trying to sue half of Twitter.
But the egg on face was stronger with the original source. The mother of all self-harm saw John Humphries rip Director General George Entwistle to shreds on morning radio, and later that evening, after just 54 days in charge, the BBC Director General resigned.
A report revealed mass failings into the corporation and mass court hearings look set to follow after one of the biggest scandals in British history.
Not that the BBC was alone as a media organisation that scandals threatened to destroy, and not the only organisation to be troubled by the initial scandal. After breaking the revelations, ITV presenter Phillip Schofield downloaded a list of alleged peadophiles and handed it to David Cameron on This Morning, in what is possibly one of the dumbest moves ever done by a presenter. As this list included McAlpine, he promptly wound up on the long list of lawsuits amid calls he should be removed.
Despite attacking the televised media with some relish, print media had a poor year. The initial scandal from 2011 that blew the lid on widespread phone hacking and shut down the News of the World resulted in the Leveson Report, which was published in November.
The report was not quite so keen on the print media's version of events, with the tabloid media accused of stalking celebrities. But David Cameron's swfit rejection of Leveson leaves an awkward position for all involved, not least given that in the year it was revealed that Cameron had been in a heavy exchange of texts with Rebekah Brooks and coalition partner Nick Clegg announced he wanted to force Leveson through anyway.
The Sun had a truly uncomfortable time of it in the latter half, as they were truly slammed by the findings of the Hillsborough report. Freedom of speech had been their argument when they printed naked photos of Prince Harry's antics in a Las Vegas hotel, and was also used back when they published "The Truth" about the stadium crush that killed 96 Liverpool FC supporters in April 1989.
"The Truth" swiftly turned out to be a load of bull and the paper has been under fire ever since, with the entire city of Liverpool boycotting the paper through general principle. Although they have apologised on a number of occasions - and in the case of then-editor Kelvin MacKenzie, redacted them - it was only now the true extent of the cover up the paper was complicit in was revealed.
The other major event of 2012 was biggest of big fish for foreign politics as the USA elected its new president. The canditates were there as Republican canditate Mitt Romney, seen by a lot of the US media as the best of a bad bunch, tried to take down incumbent Democrat Barack Obama.
Had the election been open to the rest of the world it would have been a non-starter. It seems only in America did the Republicans stand a chance with a canditate that spent the whole year insulting foreign nations and, famously, 47% of the entire US electorate.
Despite Obama not being on his usual form in the first Presidential debate, the incumbent was able to keep his job as the Republican Party begun to look like the mess literally noone thought it wasn't.
Obama also bucked the trend as one of few incumbents to keep their job. Starting in 2011 a number of Muslim dictators in North Africa and the Middle East were booted out and 2012 saw the election of their replacements. China also held it's changing of the guard as the ruling party made its every decade alterations, while Europe also saw widespread change. France, Spain, the Netherlands and, for the 900th time in the last year, Greece were among the nations to chop and change as they all battled with their respective financial crises.
Russia also had an election, and there was a real surprise as Vladimir Putin was unable to beat young up and coming star Vladimir Putin. Despite protestations from Pussy Riot, videos of people shredding votes and an investigation panel with Tiny Kox, there was never going to be any other winner.
Music's biggest story of the year came from the East as K-Pop had it's first hit to escape the Asian region. The kitsch of PSY's tune Gangnam Style and its swaggering dance moves soon saw it eat up views, plays and YouTube likes. It's margin as YouTube's most liked video ever is even more secure after 2nd place Justin Bieber had fake views and likes wiped.
While PSY became the year's breakout star, the stranglehold on pop music taken by DJs such as David Guetta and Calvin Harris was, for the most part, unbroken and their cut-and-paste music remained popular. That it is not saying all electronic music is like this because truly original stuff made electronically exists. But after a while, chart electronic stuff sounds the same to such an extent that songs like the dreadful Will.I.Am/Britney Spears collaboration Scream & Shout literally sound like the South Park parody that decried teen-wave pop as sounding like drum beats and fart noises.
Rock bands like The Killers and Muse, the dull banjo-pop of Mumford & Sons, the sprightly stylings of Jake Bugg and a number of poppier acts like Taylor Swift and One Direction all had number one album success in a blisteringly wild autumn, but the album charts were still dominated by 2011 acts like Adele and the others.
Film had a more succesful and original year. Unlike 2011, which was dominated by Harry Potter, The Inbetweeners, The King's Speech and a series of other forgettable blockbusters, a number of mega-flicks stormed the charts.
The highly anticipated Dark Knight Rises generated a ton of considerable excitement and was nevertheless a good film but was not quite the stone-cold classic everyone was expecting. To considerable surprise, it was beaten in the charts by the swaggering behemoth of Marvel's Avengers, which bought a bit more of the fun back to the comic book movie.
But neither film nor any of the other impressive films could top the delightful Skyfall, which became the UK's highest grossing film and the first ever to top £100million at box office. The Bond movie was the biggest success of 2012 and provided a darker but funnier Bond that surpassed all of Daniel Craig's previous outings as film's most famous spy.
Certainly it provided a more challenging and lovely exercise than the UK's other main baffling phenomenon, as fanfic-turned-slasher-novel 50 Shades of Grey became the best selling book of the year. The baffling success manifested itself further, as sexual bondage equipment referred in the book grew in sales and contributed to the flagging economy.
It also provided a more unedifying appearance as classic novella were re-written in that style. It all pointed to a slightly rephrasing of the classic phrase to "no conventional sex please, we're British", and even resulted further in a baby boom with people trying to re-enact their favourite moves and getting kids. Weirdly, it's not a lot different to re-enacting Star Wars scenes down the park.
With the year having come to an end there is a lot to look back on. But now the year has ended attention must look forward to 2013. Heaven knows what it might produce this time but certainly it promises to provide many more talking points and another hectic year.
Personally, I don't know what to expect - everything could improve, go downhill or, more than likely, remain on the same plateau it's always been. But every step of the way it should be an exciting and hectic ride for all involved.
Despite this, there is a surreal air to actually looking back. This is because 2012 was surprisingly quiet between January and June.
Obviously this is not an indicator that the world as a whole was dormant during the first half of the year. There were still big events and it is possible this view is only possible as the second half of the year was much more eventful. 2012 only looks quiet in comparison to 2011, which was a truly hysterical year that seemed to lurch from one major event to the next on a weekly basis.
Despite this, 2012 does look exceedingly backloaded - starting with the Queen's wet and wild Jubilee celebrations, the big events for which the year ultimately looks set to be remembered for took place in June and onwards.
A lot of the early big stories in the first few months of the year were carried over from 2011, and in the case of Eurozone, the previous few years. Certainly, the end of the year's almost whirlwind feeling hammered home the bizarre lopsided feeling to an extent that early year news stories such as the sinking of the Costa Concordia and the bizarre Kony 2012 campaign felt like they occurred in other years.
However March did provide one original farce and perhaps the ultimate case study of the "omnishambles" popularised by television's The Thick Of It. As the month was ending the news was full of nervy talk of a petrol tankers strike that ultimately never happened.
Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude promptly poked his head above the parapet and convinced many people to panic buy petrol and store it in jerry cans. This is not exactly a good idea given that the fumes are proven to be flammable, and not least an unpleasant thing to inhale, but that didn't stop people sitting in petrol stations panic buying stocks of fuel anyway.
Just as the, ahem, fire was about to die down, George Osborne promptly came into view. This came through the faintly shambolic Budget, which resulted in the surreal Pasty Tax scandal, where both sides of the House of Commons seemed to be trying to up each other in who loved pastry products more. Pasties were not the only thing the budget led to serious questions over, with the tax affairs for charities, static caravans and question about the whole thing would actually help the British economy.
Osborne had a terrible year all round, with the previous questions about his competence magnified even further. This was before he was caught trying to skip the first class fare on a Virgin Train in the same month the government had screwed up the award of said company's franchise, and a Winter statement that promptly left him even more politically poisonous.
As a whole politics continued as usual - the coalition drafted up controversial policies then immediately withdrew nearly all of them while Labour continued criticising them and being accused of being in hock to the unions.
Various ministers also fell on their swords after rough times, ranging from the unarguable - Andrew Rawnsley had nowhere to go after his botched NHS reforms - to the baffling - Jeremy Hunt was given his job instead despite failing as Culture Secretary. But none fell more loudly and controversially than Andrew Mitchell.
Just weeks after he was appointed Chief Whip, he was accused of calling the police manning the Downing Street gates "fucking plebs" after they reportedly refused to let him out of the main gates. This was, eventually, enough to force him to resign amid cries it was proof the Tories were an out of touch party of millionaires.
But while they did little to disprove the millionaire accusation, they were at least vindicated of saying Mitchell was innocent. Video tape released after his resignation revealed Mitchell went along with police instructions rather than swearing at them. As well as this, it was shown there were no real eyewitnesses, leaving the police embarassed.
When the Jubilee rolled around it was a mixed bag overall - the flotilla could have been impressive had the sky not attempted to drown it, while the concert was faintly underwhelming. It was nice to see the nation come together but it wasn't exactly the spectacle it could well have been.
Nevertheless this was a face the Royals could appreciate as opposed to the naked photography farce, with both Prince Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge involved in naked photo scandals. These were taken differently, with The Sun trumpeting it as freedom of expression that they publish the Harry photo, and then promptly called the Duchess of Cambridge photos "violation of privacy".
Of course it is not quite that simple, with Prince Harry's photos being consensual and the Duchess' being taken without her permission with a long-zoom from a road about 2 miles away. Despite the difference, it is strange the Sun chose to mark this as the freedom of speech barometer.
Also surreal was the fact the Daily Express ranted it showed a lack of respect for the Royals despite, as Private Eye pointed out, the paper's properitor owns a porn channel that marked the previous year's Royal Wedding with a royal-theme romp.
The photo incident also proves a worrying precedent ahead of next autumn, when the Duchess is due to give birth to her first child. Paprazzi photographers and children are never a good combination but a Royal baby can only provide massive hysteria.
Seven years after it was awarded to London, the Olympics arrived and turned out to be quite a spectacular event. This dramatically subverted expectation, as so much of the coverage before the Games made out Britain was in line for an international humiliation.
The three months before the games had felt almost like the entire nation was being waterboarded, as the stereotype Britain has some of the heaviest rain in the world was visualised.
Other concerns were also high on the list. After all, the ticketing system seemed uninterested in coughing up tickets, or tickets applicants actually wanted, the already-dense London transport network looked to become impassible, the private security firm contracted had to be bailed out by the army after they only trained six people, each athlete seemed to be advertising branding amid draconian regulations and it seemed absurd that we were funding a gigantic sporting event while we were barely able to pay for anything. Hell, people were even hoping it could be given to Paris with a week to go.
But from the delightful Opening Ceremony, the games themselves provided many instances of sporting delight and a good job well done. Seemingly every effort was there for things to go wrong, and people were still trying to stoke up any small niggle. But Team GB were on fire, the crowds looked like they were enjoying themselves, the army missiles half of London had fitted weren't required and the whole country had the effect of a joyous uplift.
The games were addictive but grand viewing, made easier by the 24 Olympic channels run by the BBC. Many fresh-faced young athletes rose to prominence, the old guard put in another shift to gain further glory and highly-advertised favourites such as Jessica Ennis, Bradley Wiggins and Mo Farah took their place as national treasures.
The Olympics-related buzz was so strong, not even the underwhelming closing ceremony could dilute the invincible feeling many people felt about the nation.
The Paralympics piled on the goodwill, as the events almost came close to upstaging the Olympics themselves. The sports looked fresh and original and provided the unheralded disabled stars a platform to truly prove to the world being handicapped was not a barrier to being succesful.
This kept up the buzz and also provided some further moments, even if one of them was when George Osborne continued his farcical year by presenting medals at one of the events in the same month he had cut disability benefit. Perhaps not surprising in general context, he got 80,000 boos greeting him with a reception Sepp Blatter could only dream of.
Nevertheless it was a golden summer for sport that generated a lot of good will. But from the moment the Paralympics final ceremony bored us all with an hour of Coldplay, people were now wondering how long this would last.
Appropriately enough, it took less than 24 hours for the optimistic mood to sink as Britain's already overpriced railway network decided to increase their fares again. It also heralded more miserable weather - the games themselves were the one period of the entire summer where the rain held off, and almost as soon as the last bits of the Paralympics Closing Ceremony were cleared away the clouds promptly resumed soaking the nation.
Little wonder that 2012 has gone down as one of the wettest years in history - somewhat ironically as in March it was seriously looking that Southern England was about to be declaring a drought. This has almost gone down as a sort of raindance - flooding has struck almost every part of the UK at least once, with some unlucky areas (i.e. Devon/Cornwall) spending the last 2/3 months of the year underwater.
Sporting goodwill was also reduced as attention turned to football, a sport long since stereotyped as being a haven for rich arseholes. Sure enough, the sport played to type, as racism, violence, financial, diving and refereeing related incidents ensured football's talking points were as much about the negative as the actual action.
This was no mean feat given the top quality action. The previous season's Premier League ended in magnificent style as City somehow managed to win the division just as United were about to put the gloss on title number 20. Chelsea then trumped this as they beat Barcelona and Bayern Munich and lifted the UEFA Champions League to go with the FA Cup, even if deputy coach Roberto Di Matteo was promptly rewarded with the boot.
Away from football and British athletes kept up their success. Wiggins had earlier threatened to upstage the Olympics when he won the Tour de France the week before the Opening Ceremony, and Andy Murray went from being the nearly man of tennis to a success story. He won the US Open after a tense victory over Novak Djokovic, adding it to Wimbledon runner-up and Olympic gold and silver medals to cap a fine year. Not everyone was succesful though, with Lewis Hamilton and Jensen Button unable to prevent Sebastien Vettel from winning his third successive Formula One title.
There seemed a cautious overall optimism, even despite the rain, as the nation reflected on a summer well done. But nothing could truly sink the nation's goodwill quite like what was about to follow.
October 29th 2012 was the first anniversary of the death of television entertainer Jimmy Savile, but while his death the year before was greeted with outpourings of grief and TV tributes, the first anniversary was not quite so keenly greeted.
Earlier that month, ITV aired "The Other Side Of Jimmy Savile", which blew the lid off almost 40 years worth of peadophile allegations. The initial ITV documentary was then followed up by a tidal wave of further stories that truly blew apart Savile's previous reputation.
Following in his wake other cult figures of the time and more recent stars were locked away as people begun to view celebrities with suspicion. But nowhere was the scrutiny more felt than at the BBC. Savile was the broadcaster's biggest name in the 70s, 80s and early 90s and people begun to speculate the corporation turned a blind eye to his antics.
There was also speculation that the BBC pulled a Newsnight investigation into the incidents so they could air a couple of fairly desperate air-time filling tribute shows around Christmas time that year. This led to Newsnight's editor and other key BBC figures resigning or being suspended in a truly uncomfortable interlude, and not just because they had dropped the ball.
It simply felt uncomfortable that the shocking core fact kids had been systemically abused was being overlooked so the BBC could get a kicking. It is arguable this felt par for the course - after feeling the Murdoch companies were unfairly kicking the state-funded Beeb, the print companies could feel they were getting mauled during the phone hacking scandal and felt they needed something to kick in return.
Not that the BBC and a truly rudderless Newsnight were about to offer a stunning example of leadership. Not content with broadcasting a discussions about a Panorama report about its own antics, Newsnight then came close to ultimate editorial suicide. In early November, it aired a ropey investigation that tried to implicate a senior 80s politican in a child sex scandal at a care home in Wales that had already been the subject of a major investigation in 2000.
Trial-by-Twitter promptly accused former Tory politican Lord McAlpine of child abuse. But unlike the previous year's superinjunction cases where trial-by-Twitter managed to be bang on the money, this was one of the biggest fiascos in recent legal history as McAlpine was revealed to have been wrongly identified by the original witness and he promptly begun trying to sue half of Twitter.
But the egg on face was stronger with the original source. The mother of all self-harm saw John Humphries rip Director General George Entwistle to shreds on morning radio, and later that evening, after just 54 days in charge, the BBC Director General resigned.
A report revealed mass failings into the corporation and mass court hearings look set to follow after one of the biggest scandals in British history.
Not that the BBC was alone as a media organisation that scandals threatened to destroy, and not the only organisation to be troubled by the initial scandal. After breaking the revelations, ITV presenter Phillip Schofield downloaded a list of alleged peadophiles and handed it to David Cameron on This Morning, in what is possibly one of the dumbest moves ever done by a presenter. As this list included McAlpine, he promptly wound up on the long list of lawsuits amid calls he should be removed.
Despite attacking the televised media with some relish, print media had a poor year. The initial scandal from 2011 that blew the lid on widespread phone hacking and shut down the News of the World resulted in the Leveson Report, which was published in November.
The report was not quite so keen on the print media's version of events, with the tabloid media accused of stalking celebrities. But David Cameron's swfit rejection of Leveson leaves an awkward position for all involved, not least given that in the year it was revealed that Cameron had been in a heavy exchange of texts with Rebekah Brooks and coalition partner Nick Clegg announced he wanted to force Leveson through anyway.
The Sun had a truly uncomfortable time of it in the latter half, as they were truly slammed by the findings of the Hillsborough report. Freedom of speech had been their argument when they printed naked photos of Prince Harry's antics in a Las Vegas hotel, and was also used back when they published "The Truth" about the stadium crush that killed 96 Liverpool FC supporters in April 1989.
"The Truth" swiftly turned out to be a load of bull and the paper has been under fire ever since, with the entire city of Liverpool boycotting the paper through general principle. Although they have apologised on a number of occasions - and in the case of then-editor Kelvin MacKenzie, redacted them - it was only now the true extent of the cover up the paper was complicit in was revealed.
The other major event of 2012 was biggest of big fish for foreign politics as the USA elected its new president. The canditates were there as Republican canditate Mitt Romney, seen by a lot of the US media as the best of a bad bunch, tried to take down incumbent Democrat Barack Obama.
Had the election been open to the rest of the world it would have been a non-starter. It seems only in America did the Republicans stand a chance with a canditate that spent the whole year insulting foreign nations and, famously, 47% of the entire US electorate.
Despite Obama not being on his usual form in the first Presidential debate, the incumbent was able to keep his job as the Republican Party begun to look like the mess literally noone thought it wasn't.
Obama also bucked the trend as one of few incumbents to keep their job. Starting in 2011 a number of Muslim dictators in North Africa and the Middle East were booted out and 2012 saw the election of their replacements. China also held it's changing of the guard as the ruling party made its every decade alterations, while Europe also saw widespread change. France, Spain, the Netherlands and, for the 900th time in the last year, Greece were among the nations to chop and change as they all battled with their respective financial crises.
Russia also had an election, and there was a real surprise as Vladimir Putin was unable to beat young up and coming star Vladimir Putin. Despite protestations from Pussy Riot, videos of people shredding votes and an investigation panel with Tiny Kox, there was never going to be any other winner.
Music's biggest story of the year came from the East as K-Pop had it's first hit to escape the Asian region. The kitsch of PSY's tune Gangnam Style and its swaggering dance moves soon saw it eat up views, plays and YouTube likes. It's margin as YouTube's most liked video ever is even more secure after 2nd place Justin Bieber had fake views and likes wiped.
While PSY became the year's breakout star, the stranglehold on pop music taken by DJs such as David Guetta and Calvin Harris was, for the most part, unbroken and their cut-and-paste music remained popular. That it is not saying all electronic music is like this because truly original stuff made electronically exists. But after a while, chart electronic stuff sounds the same to such an extent that songs like the dreadful Will.I.Am/Britney Spears collaboration Scream & Shout literally sound like the South Park parody that decried teen-wave pop as sounding like drum beats and fart noises.
Rock bands like The Killers and Muse, the dull banjo-pop of Mumford & Sons, the sprightly stylings of Jake Bugg and a number of poppier acts like Taylor Swift and One Direction all had number one album success in a blisteringly wild autumn, but the album charts were still dominated by 2011 acts like Adele and the others.
Film had a more succesful and original year. Unlike 2011, which was dominated by Harry Potter, The Inbetweeners, The King's Speech and a series of other forgettable blockbusters, a number of mega-flicks stormed the charts.
The highly anticipated Dark Knight Rises generated a ton of considerable excitement and was nevertheless a good film but was not quite the stone-cold classic everyone was expecting. To considerable surprise, it was beaten in the charts by the swaggering behemoth of Marvel's Avengers, which bought a bit more of the fun back to the comic book movie.
But neither film nor any of the other impressive films could top the delightful Skyfall, which became the UK's highest grossing film and the first ever to top £100million at box office. The Bond movie was the biggest success of 2012 and provided a darker but funnier Bond that surpassed all of Daniel Craig's previous outings as film's most famous spy.
Certainly it provided a more challenging and lovely exercise than the UK's other main baffling phenomenon, as fanfic-turned-slasher-novel 50 Shades of Grey became the best selling book of the year. The baffling success manifested itself further, as sexual bondage equipment referred in the book grew in sales and contributed to the flagging economy.
It also provided a more unedifying appearance as classic novella were re-written in that style. It all pointed to a slightly rephrasing of the classic phrase to "no conventional sex please, we're British", and even resulted further in a baby boom with people trying to re-enact their favourite moves and getting kids. Weirdly, it's not a lot different to re-enacting Star Wars scenes down the park.
With the year having come to an end there is a lot to look back on. But now the year has ended attention must look forward to 2013. Heaven knows what it might produce this time but certainly it promises to provide many more talking points and another hectic year.
Personally, I don't know what to expect - everything could improve, go downhill or, more than likely, remain on the same plateau it's always been. But every step of the way it should be an exciting and hectic ride for all involved.
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