LOCKER ROOM:Sunderland's search for a cure for club flakiness engages but KK's own quest is an absolute hoot
WHAT A weekend in England's Northeast. Sunderland drew with Wigan but Newcastle lost at home to Hull City, which converts Sunderland's draw into a 3-0 win in terms of satisfaction.
It must be odd to be a Sunderland fan of long standing and to feel so smug.
We started this off as just a column about Kevin Keegan but like the Toon Messiah himself, we couldn't stick with the job. Even as the rain came down yet again in the gloom of Croke Park yesterday we lost the will to go through with a full Kevin Keegan column. We knew we would digress. We felt the pull of a camogie column coming on. We felt the siren call of Sunderland.
I'm not sure why but writing about Kevin Keegan always feels like writing about a cartoon figure. There is some ethereal lightness about Keegan that for most people makes him a figure not worth taking seriously. He seems to be missing a dimension. Yet across the water there has always been a market for whatever it is he sells.
People keep giving him jobs and other stuff. They gave him an OBE. They gave him the England job. They made him sing songs in recording studios. Does anybody else remember the one-man assault on tunefulness that was Head Over Heels in Love?
They even had a television vote once to decide whether Keegan or George Best was the better player. Absurdly they settled on Mr Bubble Perm ahead of Mr Bottle of Bubbly.
Keegan's latest flit is perhaps his most understandable. I wouldn't like to be trapped in an office with Dennis Wise either, but it says a lot about the sheer unviability of Newcastle as a footballing club or a business entity that it is presided over by people who thought that making Keegan and Wise work in harness would provide the secret to success. Two flightier merchants of flakiness it is harder to imagine.
Ah! They must be chuckling to themselves over at Sunderland, where Niall Quinn's chairmanship and Roy Keane's frequent but increasingly wise dabblings in the market are starting to make the Black Cats look like the Bank of England in terms of solidity when compared with their northeastern neighbours.
All of which brings us to the central digression of this column. Keegan and Wise are flaky and as yet there is no medical cure for the condition but can clubs who are beset by flakiness shake off the condition? Will Sunderland pull it off?
Keegan, who carries the virus of flakiness, has always managed clubs which have been triumphs (well score draws) of style over substance. Newcastle. Fulham. Manchester City. There is something about the culture of each place which is allergic to prudence or common sense. Before Big Niall arrived Sunderland would have been the sort of club you could have imagined Keegan pulling up outside in his Messiahmobile. Not now, though.
Instead, he is Taylor to Newcastle's Burton. They have deserved each other. Long before such things were commonplace, Newcastle were soft for a bit of bling. It was the Toon who imported the first exotic Brazilian to English football.
Mirandinha won four caps for Brazil, all of them in May 1987. In the course of his run of international games he scored a goal (his only international goal) against England in the Rous Cup.
Newcastle promptly went weak at the knees and bought him for £575,000 (€726,000), which at the risk of sounding very old, was a lot of money in those days, kids.
Even then being signed by Newcastle and being whisked of to the Siberia of the northeast was not exactly what a Brazilian footballer might dream of, but Mirandinha had worked in salt mines before becoming a footballer and was thus conditioned to accepting Newcastle as a vibrant centre of culture.
Fulham, another of Keegan's old loves, have long been resistant to success and at one time embarrassed themselves but amused their fans by becoming a sort of Harlem Globetrotters outfit employing former greats like George Best, Rodney Marsh, Alan Mullery and Bobby Moore.
Even the arrival of Al Fayed money two-and-a-half decades later couldn't make Fulham a club one would take entirely seriously and their primary contribution to the gaiety of Premiership life in the last five years or so has been there ability to effect great escapes when the noose of relegation has been placed about their neck.
Manchester City, the other club to have been affected by the strange, delusional condition that makes sane men think Kevin Keegan might be the answer to whatever it is that ails them, are, of course, the poster boys of flakiness, and if the economy of the Premiership - which at the best of times is run like that of a banana republic - is finally to be tipped over into a state of outright anarchy, it is fitting it should be the Blues who are doing the pushing.
All that money for Robinho, a man who attracts accusations of flakiness as readily as Keegan himself! And it is just the beginning! We are promised come the next transfer window a crazed spending spree the excesses of which will make Roman Abramovich seem stingy. One imagines Robbie Keane's agent hoping for a little string of goals from his walking goldmine in late December, just enough to get Robbie a move to City for £69 million in January.
Flakiness, it would appear, is incurable. It doesn't preclude us loving those afflicted with it; sometimes, indeed, it helps. The world would be very boring if it were filled with Arsenal football clubs and the actuarial presence of a few more Arsene Wengers.
Manchester City are distinctly disastrous and loveable, as are Crystal Palace. Neither club can be taken entirely seriously and both belong in a class of such clubs (Birmingham City, Middlesbrough, Newcastle, etc).
But back to the primary question. Flakiness as a personality defect can't be shaken off but as a part of the culture of a club can it be cured? One has always suspected not but Sunderland might just be about to pull it off. Blackburn went from being unsuccessful to being successful to being solid on the back of Jack Walker's money but in their worst days they were always dour rather than flaky.
Chelsea were another thing entirely, though, and represent a better case study. With all that Russian money and a series of top-drawer managers they have bought themselves a place in the top bracket these past few years, shaking off the shackles of the Ken Bates era (shaking them off on to Leeds United, sadly) to become a top European side.
The question that hangs over Chelsea, though, is where they will be when the Russian gets bored. Running at a massive deficit when you are the plaything of a billionaire is the sort of fun we Leeds fans would happily pimp our team for again (Where are ya, Mr Ridsdale? Come back!). But long term, you wonder if Chelsea aren't going to wake up one morning feeling used.
Sunderland, though, while every purchase of the past couple of years hasn't been wise, have several things going for them. Roy Keane draws headlines but is oddly immune to flashiness. He claims Brian Clough to be the best manager he ever worked for but he has more in common as a boss with Alex Ferguson.
And the club appears to have a plan. Promotion. Consolidation. Europe. An attempt at a wage structure. Great attendances. Discipline.
Keegan has fled the northeast again, his departure marked by a landmark home defeat to Hull City and spokespeople for the Toon Army announcing gloomily they can see themselves being the next Leeds United.
It's only football, which is two-thirds entertainment anyway, so we can afford to grin.
But Sunderland's battle to find a cure for flakiness, to become a long-term model of stability and success. It's as enjoyable in its own way as watching Keegan but with extra dimensions.
