Wise roughly around about the time of the event

I know everyone's sick of hearing about Newcastle, but there's something that's been bothering me...

You know what the most infuriating thing about the unravelling of the Tyneside branch of Kevin Keegan's Soccer Circus is? We can't even have a proper go at Dennis Wise.

I can't believe I'm about to stick up for this fella. He appears to be a deeply unlikeable person. He played for the most obnoxious team in history. You know he'd like nothing better than to tie you to a chair, slice off your eyelids, eat them, tell you how they "jas' mel' in the maaaf," douse you in diesel and set you alight, all the while wearing that cherubic grin.

But all that he appears to have done at Newcastle - apart from being a Cockernee - is his job. Of course, the way in which his post was created by Mike Ashley was, like the entire Ashley project* - akin as it is to someone tripping like bejaysus on the aul' lysergic, breaking into an architect's office, messing about with instruments he has no idea how to use, then trying to build from the plans - of dubious soundness. Nonetheless, he was tasked with finding good, inexpensive players in nooks unchecked by others - quite a sensible policy - and he appears to be doing just that. How successful he has been in what may prove to be his brief tenure is impossible to judge when his recruits have played a mere handful of matches.

Maybe Wise was somehow conspiring against Keegan, but it's doubtful. It seems that Wise has angered the devotees of the god Wor'kev simply by being born within twenty-five miles of Ashley** and because him being in a higher position than Keegan supposedly contravened whatever the Wor'kevian version of the Second Commandment is. I supposed it's just a matter of time before Wise and Ashley are captured by a mob of Keeganites and bound to a gigantic pyre underneath the Angel of the North. I'm not against the ritual slaughter of Dennis Wise per se, you understand - let's just get our pretexts straight, yeah?

Photo by Nurbity Burbity.


*Though the word 'project' suggests something altogether more considered than what one would expect from someone who has reportedly lost hundreds of millions of pounds betting on the share price of HBOS.

**24.9 miles, to be Google Maps-precise. Incidentally, Wise comes from Kensington and Ashley from Buckinghamshire. Perhaps the air was especially still and the Bow Bells especially loud on the respective days they were born.