When Newcastle United manager Joe Kinnear stood in front of TV cameras yesterday and announced that goalkeeper Shay Given had been left out of his squad to face Manchester City because of injury he must surely have assumed that the club’s fans are as clueless as he is.

Given will be sold to City within the next day or two for a fee that can’t match his value as the Premier League’s best shot stopper. And when the inevitable happens Newcastle will have lost more than just a goalkeeper.

Given leaving Newcastle is the Geordie equivalent of the ravens leaving the Tower of London. Over 11 years he has been, give or take Alan Shearer, the club’s most valuable player. Shoddily protected over the years by scores of inept defenders, Given has had plenty of practice, and his goalkeeping prowess has probably earned more points for his club than the strikes of any top forward could. He has been a wonderful player. But more that that, Given has been at the very heart of the club for those full 11 years. 

With a proper work ethic and a Lazarus-like ability to overcome injury, Given has been the ’consummate professional’, but was nonetheless unafraid to occasionally stick his head above the parapet to voice concerns about squad weaknesses and other issues that were playing on the minds of fans. And Given was a fan – that was evident to anyone who might have compared his post match reactions to some of his teammates. His family were happy and settled on Tyneside. He had become a Geordie. And now he is leaving because he has had enough. The Toon Army knows exactly how he feels.

Bearing in mind all of the turmoil and disappointment he has been through at the club, the fact that Given can stand no more says much about the club’s present position. Given knows as much as anyone about the inner workings of Newcastle United, and his leaving confirms he sees no rescue in sight, no light at the end of this tunnel.

Ironically, Given’s playing position is perhaps the only one on the field that Newcastle have adequate cover for. Steve Harper has been at the club even longer than Given, and he’s a good keeper, despite obviously lacking the first team experience of his mate. But what else does the club have?

Michael Owen is injured again, his Newcastle career effectively written off having cost something like £1 million per goal. Nicky Butt has the head for a relegation battle, but perhaps not the legs. Obafemi Martins has been injured almost as often as Owen. If Steven Taylor was half as good as he thinks he is, that would be about twice as good as the reality. Youngsters Bassong, Guthrie, Carroll and Edgar might show promise, but the task of saving this football club can hardly be placed on their shoulders. What’s left? Washed up pros like Geremi, Duff, the returning Smith and the early-retired Viduka have consistently proven that they are not up to the task. Newcastle’s squad is the weakest it has been for almost 20 years, and this season it might prove to be the weakest in the Premier League.

Back in September I wrote at The Times Online about the fallout after Kevin Keegan’s resignation. There was much anger in the air, and I tried to point past the so-called ‘bedsheet brigade’, with their anti-Cockney banners that so infuriated parts of the media. The Times itself had the audacity to blame Newcastle fans for their club’s failings. I pointed out that the fans are the only thing the club has left. That remains true, but, worryingly for the future of the club, anger has now turned to apathy. Ticket sales are tumbling, with even the regular travelling hardcore of thick-and-thin fans seeking alternative entertainment. Like Shay Given, the Toon Army has had enough.

Can anything be done? In spite of 40 years of mismanagement, the buck for the current situation stops squarely with Mike Ashley. He failed to appease Kevin Keegan (and Keegan’s relative success with the squad outlined above should be enough to prove that he was the right man for the job), instead backing Derek Llambias and Dennis Wise, neither of whom has contributed anything remotely positive to Newcastle United’s cause. Wise, specifically tasked with the recruitment of new players, has spectacularly failed. Of his signings, only two frustratingly inconsistent Argentinians have become first team regulars.

And then Ashley appointed Joe Kinnear, a man so ill-suited to the role it seems cruel to criticise him.

When Ashley took the club off the market he declared an interest in rehabilitating himself at the club. It might have been possible, had he replaced Llambias and Wise, appointed a real manager, and backed that manager in the transfer window. He did nothing, and as I write there are less than three days of that transfer window left.

If Newcastle are relegated they will be ill-suited to bounce back. Unlike, say, a West Brom or a Stoke, they will not be able to retain their core squad, regroup and have another go. The club’s huge outgoings will hang heavy around its neck. Players will leave, fans will drift away, money will be lost.

Newcastle play local enemies and relegation rivals Sunderland on Sunday. If, as is quite possible, Newcastle fail to win the game it will be interesting to see if apathy turns once again to anger. But by then it might be too late. Newcastle United are heading into the wilderness, and it could be a long, long way back.

[UPDATE 03/02/09: Shay Given did sign for Man City, and Charles Insomnia went to Wigan, with Kevin Nolan and Ryan Taylor coming in, and Mike Ashley making an £8 million transfer window profit. Newcastle failed to beat Sunderland - the match ended 1-1. Today George Caulkin in The Times echoes many of the sentiments raised above.]

My book, about supporting Newcastle United in happier times, is Black & White Army.

Football Newcastle United

The Wrestler: Movie Review

Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson (Mickey Rourke) is a washed-up pro wrestler, popping pills and bandaging limbs in an effort to keep his broken body in the ring and pay his rent. His estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) hates him, and the only person he has any connection with is disillusioned lapdancer Cassidy (Marisa Tomei).

Rourke, with his puffy, reconstructed face and battered body, looks a bit like a plastic He-Man action figure that’s been left on top of a radiator all winter (or, alternatively, Meg Ryan on steroids). He’s essentially playing himself here, but that shouldn’t distract from what is a really gutsy and compelling performance (Jack Nicholson has played himself for 40-odd years, and won three Oscars in the process). Both Rourke and Tomei are deservedly BAFTA and Oscar nominated.

Tomei is a consistently watchable actor who previously won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar a full 16 years ago for My Cousin Vinny. She offers a brave and heartfelt turn as the lapdancer who, like The Ram, knows she is too old for her chosen career. Like Rourke, she puts everything out there on the screen. Surprising film fact: Marisa Tomei is 45 years old.

But the most interesting thing about The Wrestler is that it manages to avoid ‘doing a Rocky’. There is nothing too sentimental or overblown about it, and the ending feels pitch-perfect. It’s a great little movie, sympathetically told by screenwriter Robert D Siegel and director Darren Aronofsky, and driven by two huge performances.

8/10

The Mist: DVD Review

Despite containing only half as much moisture density as John Carpenter’s The Fog, this Frank Darabont/Stephen King affair is fun CGI-monster B-movie, with Thomas Jane leading a group of smalltown folk trapped in a supermarket by a plague of supernatural beasties. It’s pretty standard fare – until the last few minutes, because The Mist has one of the darkest and most memorable endings you’ll ever see in a mainstream Hollywood movie, changed by Darabont from King’s original novella ending, and is worth seeing for that alone.

7/10

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Film The Mist, The Wrestler

My story on the death of the music download is in today’s edition of The Guardian. The gist is that high quality streaming services are set to replace the failing paid download. You can read the full thing here.

With computing becoming increasingly cloud-based, it no longer seems necessary to download or store music. As network connectivity becomes pervasive, the possibility of having every piece of commercially available music at our fingertips, instantly playable via our next-generation portable music players, mobile phones and Wi-Fi home entertainment systems comes closer. So will downloading digital music to an iPod soon seem as archaic as taping the Top 40 on to a C90? Read more here…

The article features comments from Mark Mulligan, vice president of Forrester Research, Eliot Van Buskirk, who writes about music technology at Wired’s Epicenter blog, and Christian Ward from Last.fm.

Mark Mulligan provided the following statistics:

How UK internet users get their music:

24 percent of UK internet users listen to streaming audio.
9 percent of UK internet users buy paid downloads.
42 percent of UK internet users buy CDs or music DVDs.

Source: Forrester Research, 2008.

While researching the story, I also interviewed James Cridland, Head of Future Media & Technology for BBC Audio & Music Interactive. There wasn’t room to include his comments in the published article, but he had some interesting things to say, and they’re worth adding here:

‘With products already available out there, I can listen to almost any commercially-available track, for free, on the internet,’ said James. ‘Whether it’s last.fm, Seeqpod or blip.fm, Limewire or BitTorrent, almost any type of music is available to anyone who is determined enough.’

‘But many listeners just want to switch something on and listen – not have to choose particular tracks and train a personalisation system. Radio offers a simple music service, without search-blindness. Radio’s strengths shouldn’t be forgotten: particularly radio presenters (“trusted guides”) introducing you to new music you’ve not heard before.’

‘Anthony Rose [BBC iPlayer boss] has already talked about increased personalisation within the iPlayer, and I’d see more recommendations and personalisation being introduced into the iPlayer in 2009.’

According to figures released by RAJAR/Ipsos MORI in December, almost a third of the UK population (16.1 million) have listened to streaming internet radio, while 2.9 million have listened to personalised online radio, a rise of 28 percent over the previous six months.

I also interviewed Dan Nash at Napster:

‘We will be launching the web version of Napster early next year, allowing for unlimited streaming playback of the Napster catalogue from the web browser of any PC,’ he said. ‘However PC consumption is still only a part of a user’s music experience. Broadband and mobile data coverage and speeds are at least five years away from providing a user experience good enough to persuade people not to download music onto their portable players and just stream.’

‘There are other factors to bear in mind: the number of users sophisticated enough to use these features in a widespread manner is still relatively small. Though the way users consume music is rapidly changing, the idea of ownership is still strong – if you pay for something, you want something tangible you can keep. Finally, the majority of digital music still comes from sharing files, whether they have been pirated or uploaded from CD compilations and this will continue for at least the next few years. So there needs to be a big cultural shift as well.’

[For the purposes of disclosure I should admit to never knowlingly having heard the word 'magnetoresistance' before it was added to this article by The Guardian!]

Music, Technology iTunes, Last.fm, Spotify, The Guardian