Articles of Faith (12 page)

RB:
I saw some bloke yesterday and he was going, ‘We’ll get ’em taken over and then we’ll just get Kev back.’ You can’t just get Kevin back.

NG:
I saw this woman on
Match of the Day
and she had a big placard saying ‘Bring Back Kev!’. It was on
Match of the Day 2
and she was going
(Geordie accent)
‘Oh, since the notice has come through man, my whole life’s been ruined’ and there was a guy kind of stood beside her just going, ‘I just don’t know what to do, my life’s ruined.’ What, because Kevin Keegan has quit the football club? Who fucking cares!

RB:
Yeah, how could they not know that that was absolutely inevitable, that it was just a ridiculous stopgap employment to distract from all the nonsense going on behind the scenes. He made a lot of mistakes, like that Ashley sitting in the crowd wearing that tigger fucking strip.

NG:
Well in one photograph…it’s like some of the people from the hierarchy of the other club cease to take him seriously and are just like well, you’re just a fucking fat
idiot downing pints in one, when really you should be trying to be an ambassador for Newcastle United. And the fans won’t take you seriously because they can see through all that. You know the new owners are gonna turn up at City in City kits and all that shit, you go along with it because it’s a laugh but you can see through it.

RB:
Do you think it’s a bit mad that they’re called something like Abu Dhabi United Consortium or something? They’ve got United in their name.

NG:
You know I think the whole thing is ludicrous – it’s just beautiful lunacy, whereas the takeover of Liverpool, Liverpool have been willing to be bought out by this group from Dubai for the last six months because their take-over’s gone mad, and the richest family in the world have just wafted fucking thirty miles up the road, to say, ‘Here you are here’s all the money in the world.’ They’ve gone from being owned by the Hood, to the richest fucking Arab in the world.

RB:
What’s it been like, your journey? For me personally it’s really mad – I’ve gone to see West Ham with my dad when I was up to see him at weekends since I was five or six years old and then I’d go with mates when I was a teenager and then I’d go on my own when I was a bit older. It was mental getting famous and then suddenly that thing when you’re not just anonymous and suddenly that becomes the focus of attention, but then you get to meet players and have dinner with the chairman.

NG:
I remember when City got promoted to the Premier League when Keegan was in charge. After the game they took us into the boardroom and my mate – nobody – just a guy I’ve known from Manchester all my life, happens to be with me and they were celebrating winning the League and I said ‘Can me mate come?’ and within twenty minutes they’re showing us the plans for the new stadium and he’s just some scallywag from Manchester and they’re there with a big knitting needle showing us where this is going to be and we’re going, ‘Yeah, that’s fucking brilliant’…but it’s mad that you become a focal point and every time something used to go wrong people would shout ‘Fucking go on Noel, sort it out’. What am I gonna do you know? Fucking sort it out! I’m like, ‘Right, yeah, I’ll write a song, that’ll inspire them, yeah.’ When they were in the third division, we were at the lowest of the low, I remember going to see them play Wycombe Wanderers away on a Tuesday night, fucking shit it was, one nil down after an hour, it was freezing cold with the City fans going, ‘Come on Noel, get your fucking hand in your pocket, sort it out!’ And I remember going, ‘I’ve got £175. That’s all I’ve got on me, enough to get a decent pair of boots, that’s it. “Fucking sort it out, Noel, come on!” What do you want me to do, go in and fire the club? I’m a supporter like you are.’ But you become this focal point for all their
frustration, and all me mates are going like ‘I’m fucking sick of this, Noel why don’t you buy the fucking club?’

RB:
One of the things that has changed a lot in my life is the idea of having something that’s the same, that’s good, I’ve still got that.

NG:
That’s what’s the great thing about football, that’s why people don’t understand it’s the greatest sport in the world, it’s all the teams – not like in American football, when they call a team a franchise that they can move to whatever city they want. They can play in Oakland or they can just move the stadium to wherever they want to because they’ve got no local fan base as such. People from Dallas support the New England Patriots because they’re the best team last year, whereas with all football clubs all over the world they’re all part of the community and no matter what situation you’re in, the one constant thing in your life is looking for the football results. Which is why football is such a special thing because it’s all part of the community.

RB:
It’s pretty mad to think that your journey went from looking at the floodlights at Maine Road through your bedroom window to meeting the players and them showing you the plans for the new stadium.

NG:
The journey is the middle bit, Oasis playing at Maine Road – fucking mental you know. When they said you had a chance of playing Maine Road it’s amazing to think that you were taken there as a four-year-old boy who was like, ‘Oh yeah, fucking wow,’ and then growing up there and throwing coins at all the fans and all that, and then you end up standing back of the terraces, and then you’re making your way to the fucking boardroom. Because for a while we were bigger than Man City so when we went there it was a major fucking deal, you were brought out onto the pitch. Whereas if you were a Man United fan when you’re a celebrity it didn’t wash there ’cos Man United were bigger than anything.

RB:
Writing that column in a way I get good access to West Ham now, and so say you’d see a game and you’d think that wasn’t a very good performance, but you’d know you were going to meet them later. I can’t go, ‘Fucking hell, what a ridiculous display, you played shit’, or ‘He’s put on weight, should be playing with his heart on his sleeve’. You’d think, I’m gonna meet him behind the scenes.

NG:
Well, you can’t speak objectively. When it all went tits up at City for Stuart Pearce, I’d already met him and he’s a great guy. And people would say, ‘What the fuck’s going on at City, it’s fucking awful,’ and I’d go ‘Yeah…he’ll get it right,’ and you just want to go, ‘Oh that’s fucking useless, what a load of shit that is,’ but because they know who you are, you can’t. It’s usually when things are going wrong you’ll get the call from Five Live saying ‘What’s going on at Man City?’

RB:
The first time they ever let me on the pitch I was just sort of there hanging about and when you thought about it everything was abstract. When you’re watching it and you’re part of 30,000 people or whatever, and then when you’re famous you get level pegging with them.

NG:
But don’t you find that once you’ve been brought in to the other side you start talking in those clichés where you never actually say anything. ‘What do you think of Alan Curbishley?’
(Cockney accent)
‘I think given time he’s gonna get it right you know, I think it’s a tough job and you’ve got to let ’em bed in and all that.’ I think given time you start talking in those clichés.

RB:
‘What do you think about Frankie Zola? You know he’s an inspirational player at Chelsea and…’

NG:
You turn into a pundit because you know everything you say is going to get written up, whereas if you’re just a fan you can just say it like it is.

RB:
He shouldn’t be at fucking West Ham, he’s got no experience! Italy play negative, that’s the only experience he’s got, it’s against West Ham’s nature.

NG:
I’ll give him six weeks.

RB:
It’ll be over! ’Cos the reality is with anything like that if West Ham lose eight or ten consecutive games, what are they gonna do? I know Steve Clark has joined him and Mourinho really rates Clarke and he’s been at Chelsea under three managers…

NG:
I think with West Ham…the managers never seem to be the problem, it’s the overall running of the club. It’s not the fans because the fans are fucking brilliant, they had the greatest manager in the world in Harry Redknapp and if they’d have kept him what a team they’d have now. It just seems there’s always a kneejerk reaction to a minor problem, it’s the same with City, I think for the likes of Curbishley to quit anyway, I think he was looking for a way out because a real manager wouldn’t just fucking quit and go public and say, ‘They wouldn’t let me run the fucking club how I wanted but I’ll put up with it because I’m a professional.’ Whereas Keegan and Curbishley were very quick to say, ‘Right I’m off, bye!’

RB:
(Laughter)
You know Irvine Welsh, the
Trainspotting
writer said this very interesting thing. He supports Hibs and he’s always secretly believed that other fans think Hibs is the best club and are jealous and want to support Hibs. Not that they are saying Hibs is the best club but that there’s something cool. And I’ve always thought that a bit, you can support Liverpool or United or Arsenal or Chelsea or Spurs but I’ve always thought there’s something about being a West Ham fan that’s somehow cool, it’s East London.

NG:
I think only West Ham fans and Man
City fans think that. We always have this thing in Manchester where all United fans somehow they were all juniors within the young City Fans Club from when you were like three to a teenager, called the Junior Blues, we always said, ‘Oh they’re all fucking Junior Blues,’ you see, like Manny, they all went to City first then they changed. But it’s only City fans and West Ham fans that think, ‘Oh we don’t need the trophies, ’cos we’re cool as fuck.’ And the reality is, I’d trade a little bit of cool for one tiny little trophy.

RB:
You’d trade a bit of cool for one trophy? West Ham were 4–0 against City! And City scored twice in the last ten minutes, the West Ham fans were doing a conga, just oblivious!

NG:
When Man City were in the old third division and then when they were in the Championship, Maine Road had sold out every week, the worse it got, the more people came. That mentality is mental, that blackness, ‘I’m not going, no I’m not going, I need extreme shitness before I go and watch that club.’ The stadium was only full for the first time this year on Saturday because Robinho was playing.

RB:
What is that, what is that mentality? Is it representative of something? I saw this thing once when West Ham played Liverpool at the Cup Final a few years back. I went with my mate Adie and he’s in a wheelchair and we were in the disabled section. There was this dad there with this lad who was in a wheelchair and this bloke was a proper hard West Ham fan and this lad was frozen with cerebral palsy in a wheelchair. And the dad was getting more and more agitated over the course of the game and I noticed that most of his vitriol and raging was reserved for the referee, he’d go ‘Oh, referee, it’s not fair, it’s not fucking fair,’ and I started to realise as I started to romantically conjure up in my head that he’d always wanted his lad to be a footballer and to be a West Ham fan and some unfair authority figure, God or whatever, had meant that his kid was in a wheelchair and so he vented most at the referee, ‘It’s not fair, it shouldn’t be like this.’ He was just a man standing next to his kid in a wheelchair going ‘It’s not fair, it’s not fucking fair,’ and I thought, ‘Wow, for him this represents the unfairness of his life.’

I think that quality is a consistent thing no matter how much money you give it, or how much the players cost, or how many European players are in the team: it is made consistent in that it is something that is representative of your life.

NG:
West Ham would be one of those clubs where you’d think if they get relegated it really wouldn’t fucking matter. Whereas for Newcastle it would be devastating, they go on about the Geordie Nation and all that, but you check back and see how much the crowds were down. But you think for West Ham they’d still all go there because I think West Ham fans and City fans have this romantic
notion that everyone that supports the club lives within 500 yards of the club. Even when we go abroad we meet a foreign City fan and it’ll be like
(American accent)
‘Oh, my Dad supported them,’ yeah, well why do you support them, what’s it gotta do with you? You know, you’re not from Manchester, you have to be from Manchester to support them, ‘Oh Man City, Man City rule!!!’

RB:
I’ve been going to football a few times when it’s a season like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re gonna get relegated, no no we’ll still turn it around,’ and then it turns into, ‘We’re definitely gonna get relegated,’ and it’s a turning point of acceptance, or, ‘At least we’ll see them win some games,’ and it’s like we look on the bright side.

NG:
That’s it. Every time City got relegated we’ll think, at least we’ll get to the play-offs then we’ll get to Wembley!

RB:
Now what about England, I know that Frank Skinner believes that he supports England but it’s a working-class preserve to have an affinity to a club, that it’s more middle class and indicative of the way that football has changed to follow England. I know that a lot of people who support Mansfield or whatever and smaller clubs will give a lot of affection to England to have a bigger thing.

NG:
I don’t think you can pin it down to one kind of group in society. There are toffs that go, you know Mick Jagger and all that, then the middle classes that go and then the out-and-out fucking thugs that go, the racists…it’s just a nice cross section of this beautiful country that I live in…To me, if you support Mansfield or if you support Halifax they’re not going to win fuck all, but you won’t support Man United, won’t fucking support Liverpool ’cos they’re not your local team, the next thing is England. I’ve got a feeling that when the players are getting booed, like Frank Lampard, it’s by Derby Country fans or Halifax fans because they’re used to watching local lads you know. ‘Honest fucking football and that cunt there’s earning 80 grand a week.’ I don’t think you’ll see an Arsenal supporter who watches the Premier League every week give a big boo to Frank Lampard or Beckham. That’s all these fat-head fucking Northerners who come from fucking Burnley.