The Devil In Me

The following is an edited transcript of Newcastle interim manager Joe Kinnear’s first official press conference yesterday

JK Which one is Simon Bird [Daily Mirror’s north-east football writer]?

SB Me.

JK You’re a cunt.

SB Thank you.

JK Which one is Hickman [Niall, football writer for the Express]? You are out of order. Absolutely fucking out of order. If you do it again, I am telling you you can fuck off and go to another ground. I will not come and stand for that fucking crap. No fucking way, lies. Fuck, you’re saying I turned up and they [Newcastle’s players] fucked off.

SB No Joe, have you read it, it doesn’t actually say that. Have you read it?

JK I’ve fucking read it, I’ve read it.

SB It doesn’t say that. Have you read it?

JK You are trying to fucking undermine my position already.

SB Have you read it, it doesn’t say that. I knew you knew they were having a day off.

JK Fuck off. Fuck off. It’s your last fucking chance.

SB You read the copy? It doesn’t say that you didn’t know.

JK What about the headline, you think that’s a good headline?

SB I didn’t write the headline, you read the copy.

JK You are negative bastards, the pair of you.

SB So if I get a new job next week would I take the first day off? No I wouldn’t. If I get a new job should I call my boss and tell him I am taking the first day off?

JK It is none of your fucking business. What the fuck are you going to do? You ain’t got the balls to be a fucking manager. Fucking day off. Do I want your opinion. Do I have to listen to you?

SB No, you can listen to who you want.

JK I had a 24-hour meeting with the entire staff.

SB Joe, you are only here six weeks, you could have done that on Sunday, or Saturday night.

JK No, no, no. I didn’t want to do it. I had some other things to do.

SB What? More important things?

JK What are you? My personal secretary? Fuck off.

SB You could have done the meeting Saturday night or Sunday. You could have had them watching videos, you could have organised them.

JK I was meeting the fucking chairman the owner, everyone else. Talking about things.

SB It is a valid point that was made in there. A valid point.

JK I can’t trust any of you.

Niall Hickman Joe, no one could believe that on your first day at your new club, the first-team players were not in. No one could believe it in town. Your first day in the office.

JK My first day was with the coaches. I made the decision that I wanted to get as much information out of them.

NH But why Monday, no one could believe it?

JK I’m not going to tell you anything. I don’t understand where you are coming from. You are delighted that Newcastle are getting beat and are in the state they are? Delighted, are you?

NH Certainly not. No one wants to see them get beaten, why would we?

JK I have done it before. It is going to my fucking lawyers. So are about three others. If they can find something in it that is a court case it is going to court. I am not fucking about. I don’t talk to fucking anybody. It is raking up stories. You are fucking so fucking slimy you are raking up players that I got rid of. Players that I had fallen out with. You are not asking Robbie Earle, because he is sensible. You are not asking Warren Barton? No. Because he is fucking sensible. Anyone who had played for me for 10 years at any level … [but] you will find some cunt that …

Other journalist How long is your contract for Joe?

JK None of your business.

SB Well it is actually, because we cover the club. The club say you are here to the end of October, then you say six to eight games which would take it to the end of November. We are trying to clarify these issues. We are getting no straight answers from anyone. How long are you here for. It is a dead simple question. And you don’t know …

JK I was told the length of contract. Then I was told that possibly the club could be sold in that time. That is as far as I know. That’s it finished. I don’t know anything else. But I have been ridiculed. He’s trying to fucking hide, he’s trying to do this or that.

There follows an exchange regarding the circumstances under which Kinnear had met the owner Mike Ashley and executive director (football) Dennis Wise.

Steve Brenner (football writer for the Sun) We are all grown men and can come in here and sit around and talk about football, but coming in here and calling people cunts?

JK Why? Because I am annoyed. I am not accepting that. If it is libellous, it is going to where I want it to go.

Newcastle press officer What has been said in here is off the record and doesn’t go outside.

Journalist Well, is that what Joe thinks?

JK Write what you like. Makes no difference to me. Don’t affect me I assure you. It’ll be the last time I see you anyway. Won’t affect me. See how we go at Everton and Chrissy [Chris Hughton, assistant manager] can do it, someone else can do it. Don’t trust any of yous. I will pick two local papers and speak to them and the rest can fuck off. I ain’t coming up here to have the piss taken out of me. I have a million pages of crap that has been written about me. I’m ridiculed for no reason. I’m defenceless. I can’t get a point in, I can’t say nothing, I can’t do nothing, but I ain’t going to be negative. Then, half of you, most of you are trying to get into the players. I’m not going to tell you what the players think of you, so then you try and get into them in some way or another, so I’ve got a split camp or something like that, something like that. It’s ongoing. It just doesn’t stop.

Journalist It’s only been a week.

JK Exactly. It feels more like a year.

Journalist It’s early days for you to be like this.

JK No, I’m clearing the air. And this is the last time I’m going to speak to you. You want to know why, I’m telling you. This is the last time. You can do what you like.

Journalist But this isn’t going to do you or us any good.

JK I’ll speak to the supporters. I’m going to tell them what the story is. I’m going to tell them. I don’t think they’ll interpret it any different, I don’t think they’ll mix it up, I don’t think they’ll miss out things. I mean, one of them last week said to me … I was talking about in that press conference where you were there, I said something like “Well, that’s a load of bollocks …”

Journalist “Bollocks to that” is what you said.

JK Bollocks to that. And what goes after that?

Journalist That was it.

JK No it wasn’t, no it wasn’t. What was after it? I don’t know if it was your paper, but what went after it?

Journalist I don’t know.

JK It even had the cheek to say “bollocks to Newcastle”.

Journalist I didn’t write that.

JK That was my first fucking day. What does that tell you? What does that tell you?

Journalist Where was that? Which paper said that?

JK I’ve got it. I can’t remember. It was one of the Sundays, not a Saturday. It was a Sunday.

Journalist But you didn’t say that to the Sundays, you said that to us. That was during the Monday press conference.

JK I’ll bring it in and show it to you. Why would I want to say that?

Journalist Are you saying that someone has reported you saying “bollocks to Newcastle?”

JK Yes. Lovely.

Journalist I don’t know who’s reported that.

JK I’ll tell you what, I’ll bring it in.

Journalist That’s obviously going to damage you. That’s not a good thing. But I don’t think someone’s done that. We have to have some sort of relationship with you.

JK So have I. But I haven’t come in here for you lot to take the piss out of me. And if I’m not flavour of the month for you, it don’t fucking bother me. I’ve got a job to do. And I’m going to do it to the best of my ability. I’m not going to spend any more time listening to any crap or reading any crap. Stick to the truth and the facts. And don’t twist anything.

Journalist You know, you know the game …

JK Of course I know, but I don’t have to like it.

Journalist Today we’ll print the absolute truth, that you think we’re cunts, we can all fuck off and we’re slimy. Is that fair enough?

JK Do it. Fine. Fucking print it. Am I going to worry about it? Put in also that it’ll be the last time I see you. Put that in as well. Good. Do it.

Much, much later after long discussions over whether Kinnear had promised Alan Shearer and Kevin Keegan would be returning to the club

Press officer Let’s get on to football. Let’s have an agreement that everything said so far, if anyone has got their tapes on, it’s wiped off and we’re not discussing it.

Journalist But that’s what Joe has said he thinks of us.

Press officer I’m saying don’t push it. Let’s accept what’s been said and try and move on.

Journalist: Move on to not doing any more press conferences?

PO: No, to doing something now.

Journalist: What, one press conference only?

(Silence)

Journalist: Any knocks?

PO: Come on, let’s go football.

Journalist: What are your plans for training in the next three days? How’s the training going?

JK It’s going very well. No problems at all.

Journalist Enjoyed getting back in the swing of things?

JK Absolutely. I’ve loved every moment of it.

The judge has predicted we’ll win so obviously we’re doomed.
Sorry guys, no way out of that one.

Fratton Park is a place we haven’t had a great record over the past few seasons so to get a win with such a threadbare squad is quite satisfying. After seeing Chelsea and Liverpool record such ludicrously flukey results we would have been under more pressure in the Monday night doldrums slot. The players responded and the movement of our play was much more polished than it was at the same stage last season, lest we forget some of our more skillful players are still on the way back. We’ll just keep doing our jobs and see what happens. It was a bit of a comedy goal but what price odds on Darren Fletcher for the Golden Boot now? All in all this was a United performance that calmed the nerves a bit. They were slick today but can get slicker and soon the goals should start going in.

We all need to calm down a bit here. As I keep stressing the situation has not changed. Ronaldo gave an interview and said that he agreed with Sepp Blatter and it has been twisted into ‘Ronaldo Wants Out of Slavery Shocker’, by those stout chaps in Fleet Street who want to fill up a few more pages in their newspapers.

What Sepp Blatter said was in direct support of player power and freedom of movement. I think you will find that every single professional football player on the planet would agree with him. But if Ronaldo says he agrees with him we all read..’Ronaldo Wants Out of Slavery Shocker’ and are led to believe that it is gospel. It is not.

The man who decides who goes in and out the door at Old Trafford is Scottish, and probably in a very bad mood right now. I once met a sage old man in the pub who informed me with great confidence that Blatter was in fact a complete prat and that he should not be allowed to speak in public at all. I, of course, thoroughly disagreed with his opinion (it would be libelous not to), but thought his point of view was interesting.

Ronaldo has had his head turned by all of this interest and he stands nothing to lose by making a few cryptic comments here and there, it might make him a bit more money. He does have a wandering eye, now some people use this as reason character assassinate him, I think he’s a 23yr old bloke so be realistic and try to remember the 23yr old Giggs. Fergie will sort him out when he gets back. Besides, the guy has been out of the country for ages now and probably doesn’t even realise what a fuss he has stirred up.

Honestly, I can’t wait for the games to just get going. When we are subjected only to the ‘football machine’ and not the matches themselves I start to wonder if I enjoy football or just suffer from it. This saga is overwhelmingly disappointing and it is not going to end yet. Did we even get a full day to enjoy winning the European Cup before all of this started?

Could it simply be the weather? For a man who spends the majority of his professional life wearing a pair of shorts, is the opportunity to do that in you spare time as well such a draw?

After this morning’s press leakage (which I am led to believe emanates rather bizarrely from a Brazilian tabloid) the mood has gone immediately to one of resigned acceptance. How much money can we get? We didn’t really need him anyway, etc. etc.

He would not be the first genius winger to ship off early to the Iberian peninsular but Ronaldo seems to want to go for slightly different reasons to the ones George chose.

At the moment I am slightly peeved to be honest with. With no England failures to cloud my summer I was expecting another couple of months of basking in glory.

Let’s just wait and see…

With six hours to go I cannot with any sense of honesty say that I am all that confident. Barcelona are highly, highly likely to score which leaves us in the position of needing to score more. The more we attack, the more space we will leave at the back and they have a who’s who of attacking players with pedigree at exploiting defensive errors.

If they win they will deserve to go through, it really is that simple. I only wish I hadn’t said something similar about Stamford Bridge and the title…

It was a delicious story at the time, an ego-centric clash of the titans, money defeats charisma, and back stabbing galore. Yet there will be few football fans who would stake their mortgage on the argument that Jose Mourinho’s departure could be anything other than a loss for English football. Chelsea would fall into disarray, the power would shift back up the M6 and Manchester United would begin a slow, predicatble march towards the sextruple. Or so we thought. What nobody expected in those heady days of September was that the 2007/2008 season would turn out to be one to savour, remember and cherish.

The cups have had a far more dramatic effect on the league this year than in others and that, despite the protestations of the managers, has been a great thing. Whilst the Carling Cup exposed the more machiavellian machinations of the Glazer regime at Old Trafford (through the outcry over forced ticket buying for season ticket holders) it brought salvation for Spurs too. A team widely tipped to trample its way into the top 4 wheezed into the season and seemed almost bad enough to go down at one point. Yet they have now won one of the better finals seen in this country for a while, and a trophy escapes the clutches of the aforementioned four for the first time in far to long.

The FA cup has also rediscovered its huff and puff. If anybody had said to us 8 months ago that a non-league team called Havant and Waterlooville would, before the ides of March set in, restore their faith in the sport. Perhaps we would have recommended that they seek immediate psychiatric care. Yet it came to pass and the team who took the lead twice at Anfield are now part of Cup legend. The situation of a final involving a Welsh team has even seen Michel Platini need to step in and say its okay for the them to play in the UEFA cup next year should they win. Great exposure for the competition.

The Premier League is often criticised as being a collection of three mini competitions and whilst this is largely the case, can we not enjoy how tight those three battles have become? At the top Liverpool have been undone by the kind of behind the scenes efforts that belong in the court of Hamlet whilst Arsenal have dished out some great football to lead for much of the season before running out of steam. The imperious Manchester United have begun to wobble at precisely the right time to make it interesting and Chelsea have risen from Jose’s ashes to irk us all once more, it has been great stuff. Even the battle for fifth will now go to the wire as Everton and Villa scrapped out a 2-2 draw over the weekend.

The gloomy reality of relegation has so far only managed to darken Derby’s season and with two matches to play three points separate four teams and six could still technically go down. The games just played showed that the sides who are fighting for their lives know how to fight. Birmingham took points from Liverpool where Fulham rallied from nowhere to defeat Manchester City and can now taste fairytale on their cornflakes.

So what has made this season more eye-catching than perhaps the last two or three? You would have to say that it could be the pressure placed on all of the teams. Eight managers have so far jumped on or off the merry-go-round and the ascendancy of Roy Keane along with the return of Kevin Keegan means that nobody can complain of being bored. We are even in the ridiculous situation where Avram Grant and Sven Goran Eriksson are under geniune pressure to hold onto their jobs. Can anybody think of two other managers who have achieved as much as those two in their first seasons? I think not.

Looking around the European leagues you will see that the title has been pretty much decided already in France, Spain, Germany and Portugal yet in the premier league there are still ten teams left with something to play for. Whether or not the English Premier league is the best in the world or merely the richest is not a argument that concerns me. At the moment it is definitely the most interesting and I for one, am still watching.

The world seems to be a different place after this weekend. Usually the onset of friday afternoon accompanies huge swathes of relief and relaxation which gently carry us into the calm of saturday and sunday. But this football fan busines is causing me all sorts of stress at the moment. It is no exagerration to say that I aged approximately a decade during a two hour period on saturday and I expect more over the coming weeks.

Courtesy of Jono our term du jour is ‘bananaskin’ and he has rightly spotted another one coming up in the shape of Blackburn. With foresight like this I wonder if history would have been re-written had there been a Callaway on the Titanic’s lookout deck. The Lancashire sheep are certainly no mugs and Roque Santa Cruz is a player that can unsettle a Vidic-free defence.

Fortunately the nouveau London pinstripe brigade have managed to pile the pressure on themselves. Heskey for England. Alas, I fear Everton are a team deflated and that Chelsea will dispatch them fairy easily, Everton may yet relinquish fifth to an in form Portsmouth.

So again it is down to winning at the Bridge, I honestly believe that if we do this that there can be no debate over who wins the title. The bananaskin in this equation is Nou Camp sized and sandwiched around that fixture. Europe I fear, rests on the squad juggling of certain Mister Ferguson. For the sake of our health I hope he gets it right.

Through not being able to avoid it more than anything else I have found myself watching the occasional rugby game over the last few weeks.

The anorak in me has happily stumbled across a piece of information of the highest quality. South Africa have a player called Bryan Gary Habana and he is named after Bryan Robson and Gary Bailey. He is also absolutely brilliant, well he would be wouldn’t he?

Those wishing to shake his father’s hand please form an orderly queue.

Usually during the international break I sit around feeling slightly bored, maybe watching the meaningless qualifying game or even, God-forbid, talking about something other than United.

The main function of the England team as far as I can see it is to either, a) injure United players, or b) provide an opportunity for Chelsea’s hooligans to wear a different coloured shirt for the day.

But this time it is different. This time we have so many players out injured that I am genuinely grateful for the break as it gives our guys a chance to recover, while we get the chance to be reminded that manager of the England football team is the most masochistic job in world sport.

Now, I suppose I’ll go and watch the, erm, Rugby. Strange, strange game.