Smug satisfaction as we revel in Toon implosion

WE’VE had plenty of time to reflect on the Manchester City game, nobody more than Roy Keane, who was livid after the loss.

We were fairly decent in the first half, but thankfully we’ve got a manager so obsessed with success that even perfection wouldn’t be good enough for him.

After the defeat Keane was harsh on his players: “Some days you might have two or three players under-performing, I can’t think of one player today who performed to the level we know they can.”

Very unforgiving, and most supporters thought it was possibly unfair. Still, that’s Keano for you.

There was a horrible moment when I feared we could spend a fortnight between games with little going on at the club, but thankfully our nearest and dearest 12 miles up the road barged in to spoil any chance of that happening.

During our 15- and 19-point relegation seasons, Newcastle supporters released two publications, titled Let’s All Laugh At Sunderland. We might have had to wait a few years for revenge, but I know who’s laughing now.

Not long after Niall appointed Roy Keane, he spoke quite frankly about his involvement in team affairs, saying: “Roy and I are doing this the way both of us feel is the correct way for a football club to be run. I find out the team the same time as everyone else in the ground. I have no influence on the team, nor should I.”

Keane emphasised the agreement this week, saying that he ”wouldn’t last two seconds” in a set-up such as at Newcastle, adding that “nobody is ringing me every day of the week asking me this and that.

With Alan Curbishley walking out on West Ham citing similar circumstances to those of Kevin Keegan, it’s given us Mackems several reasons to be cheerful, as well as glad for Niall and the Drumaville consortium.

We’ve had belly laughs almost as vast as a Geordie gut during the TV coverage of their fans demonstrating outside of St James’ Park. Despite Newcastle’s council spending hundreds of millions of pounds regenerating the city and promoting it as a cool place to be, the moron-fest broadcast on most news programmes over the last ten days must have set them back at least 20 years.

Within an hour of the rumours emerging that Keegan would be parting company with Newcastle, hundreds of unemployed alcoholics turned up outside their ground, clutching bottles of cheap cider and drunkenly slurring embarrassing declarations of love, much the same way most of us do when stumbling in home from the pub at midnight, rather than an early midweek afternoon on live TV. One of my Sunderland-supporting journo mates, Simon O’Rourke, had the dubious honour of reporting live from St James’ Park for our local TV channel’s teatime news show.

Whilst on air he had a fat Geordie clutching a can of cheap lager burst onto screen, shouting “F*ck off Keegan” before receiving a hefty shove from Simon, then coming back again for more.

You just can’t buy class and the incident is now immortalised on YouTube should you wish to view it. Other Geordies showing themselves up were the group who erected a huge banner outside the ground, urging fans to “boycoutt the club,” which complimented a variety of misspelt signs displaying more fury.

The funniest aspect of it all was that whilst fans were outside of St James’ protesting, the chairman was continuing his mid-life crisis by blowing thousands in one night on champagne for strangers in a New York nightclub. While most men in their mid-40s buy a sports car, Ashley has bought a Premier League football club.

All that has been going on with the soccer circus up the road has helped ease tensions on Wearside to the point where we’ve barely been able to concentrate on our own house. We travel to Wigan on Saturday, who turned us over 3-0 at the JJB in one of our worst displays last season. Hopefully our new and improved side can do better than that. One thing’s for certain, we won’t be blaming the board if they don’t.