Big Sam Takes The Mature Route

By: chris | February 11th, 2008

Sam Allardyce has decided to take the high road and run with the “you weren’t good enough for me anyway!” method of dealing with breakups, though no word whether or not this involved buckets of mint chocolate chip ice cream, Puffs with Aloe and a girls night out. (I suspect it did.) And of course, the timing couldn’t have been better, as Kevin Keegan is currently hanging himself with the noose known as his defensive tactics. Ah, what a year to be a Newcastle fan.

We’ll get right to the juicy stuff.

“I think you can accept it a lot more if you can come to terms with the fact that a good percentage of it was your fault – but that doesn’t apply to me at Newcastle.”

“The usual rubbish that goes when someone like me is sacked from a club like Newcastle is that that job was too big for me. That’s just not true.

“If I’m honest the reverse is probably true. Newcastle probably wasn’t big enough for me – it didn’t live up to my ambitions in the short time that I was there. And because it didn’t do that the club missed a chance to realise its own ambitions.

“The more I analyse it, the more I come to the conclusion that it was never about me or results.

“It was about things they wanted to put in place.”

First of all, I’d like to get my cent and a half out of the way: Newcastle is just getting its share of The Curse of Joey Barton. I’m not sure if this has been surmised by the British media yet, but I’m fully of the belief that any team which ever signs Joey Barton will be absolute rubbish. You can’t have a figure that toxic in your dressing room or practice field and hope for anything besides utter failure. Big Sam could upgrade the back room staff with the top chefs from Paris and best masseuses from Sweden and Keegan could upgrade the back line with a set of miniature statues and it still wouldn’t be enough to take them past mediocrity. Joey Barton just has that effect on teams.

“It was about things they wanted to put in place”…..I have no idea what this means or what “things” these were, unless he means Mark Viduka, then I get it. However, even if it was the club, it’s hard to argue that a guy is deserving of a bigger club after netting a whole 5 wins in half a year with a lineup which is respectable at the least. Sounds a bit like sour grapes. Alright, sounds a lot like sour grapes.

* – I wrote this before seeing the video of Joey Barton throwing haymakers during the Aston Villa game this weekend. Everyone who gave that signing the thumbs up should be canned.