Paul Dixon has been following Newcastle United for more than 35 years, 17 of which have been as a season ticket holder in the Gallowgate End at St James’ Park. Each week in his column, he takes a wry look at all things football – from a black-and-white perspective.
WHAT can you get for £820 million these days? A Mediterranean country? A round of drinks at the ‘Beyond’ bar in The Gate? No, what you get is the future of English football.
Like it or not, Man Al City are going to clean up domestically. Money does not guarantee success, but it makes a good starting point.
When you can leave your best player on the bench for 70 minutes because the poor lamb had to sit on an aircraft for a few hours, and pay one of your main strikers £200K per week to play truant, then you have arrived.
Oh, we battled manfully, but to be brutally honest we are in the same league in name only.
Our season is not going to be defined by Saturday’s result, or indeed this Saturday’s, but it will underline how the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ are now separated by a footballing chasm so wide we are in different time zones.
City are big, powerful and carry the air of a team who know their own power but, as one of their supporters pinched my hat after a match when I was 11, I hope the wretches get pipped at the post.
Rumours abound, of course, about the identity of the unfortunate saps who will try to convince everybody we do not play at St James’ Park anymore.
Everybody in the industrial alphabet has been mentioned, and the obvious tag-line to being called the ‘Virgin Arena’ is something I think best left to the saloon bar.
It is a sad reflection on modern times, though, that we are selling our ground’s soul for less than City are paying Tevez a year to go and play golf.
I love football to bits. I love the emotion it creates, I love the new friendships it forms.
Unfortunately, though, it also attracts all too many people who would have sold advertising space on Jesus’ crucifix given the chance.
Sepp Blatter. One day he will pull that mask off and reveal it was Harry Enfield doing a sketch all along.
To his credit, though, it is a fantastic trick, running football in the 21st century from the 1970s.
blackadderboy@yahoo.co.uk
