Roundup: Michael Gray Disses Again; Love The Latest Answer & Yedlin's Platitudes
In today's Roundup: Micky Gray reckons Ryan Giggs is the man for Sunderland, but he's not 'dissing' David Moyes, honest; Donald Love is the latest defender who can provide the answer to Sunderland's midfield problems, and DeAndre Yedlin has been wheeled out to massage black-and-white egos again.
The dullest embers of north east sports reporting have today been regaling the words of the dullest ember of Sunderland punditry, Michael Gray.
Micky, as he probably no longer likes to be called, has been sticking his foot where it's no longer wanted and telling talkSport listeners that Sunderland should dump David Moyes after seven games and recruit Ryan Giggs as manager instead.
No one here was listening to that rot on the radio, but the Sunderland Echo, Evening Chronicle and even The Daily Express have been full of it today, literally. Purportedly, Gray told listeners that Giggs would emulate Roy Keane at the Stadium of Light:
He [Keane] was the one who got the club back into the Premier League and that was his first job – I think Ryan Giggs would have the same effect. I’m not dissing David Moyes here, I’m not trying to get him out of the job.
So that will be the same former Sunderland left back, who only weeks ago was telling everyone to get behind our new manager, but he’s not dissing Moyes, veteran of seven Premier League games in charge, no not at all.
Admittedly Moyes start at the Stadium of Light has been poor. But for a club who have gone through fifteen managers in fourteen years, sacking one who signed a four-year deal ten weeks ago would be a kamikaze extreme, even by our standards.
Maybe his support for Giggs is something to do with Patsy Kensit. Both Giggs and Gray have dated the former model and singer. Perhaps there’s some sort of informal Ex-Patsy club where previous suitors look out for each other and recommend other members for work. Like the Masons, only more fun.
There’s a growing hysteria over Ryan Giggs and his current failure to land any managerial job. Pundits are queueing up to voice their perplexity that the former Manchester United player has yet to land any top flight post since his most recent overlooking by Swansea. And, to a man each pundit who has commented remains disdainfully oblivious as to what the actual reason might be: Giggs has zero appeal to anyone outside Manchester and outside of the media.
Certainly the sacking of Francesco Guidolin from Swansea may ramp up the pressure on Moyes. The first Premier League boss to go the journey has traditionally departed by October each year. Last season it was Brendan Rodgers, sacked from Liverpool, and of course Dick Advocaat walked out on Sunderland a little over a year ago. In the pressure cooker that is English football, the first to go often opens the floodgates as the merry-go-round gets under way.
But, can anyone recall the last time Michael Gray said anything constructive about Sunderland? It’s not that long since he was forced to apologise to owner Ellis Short; and a pundit grovelling to the chairman of a failing club is about as dismal as it gets. Sadly, the old advice about saying nowt if you have nothing useful to say doesn’t apply to radio. If it did, the airwaves would be lovely and peaceful.
He's A False Right-Back, Don’t You Just Love It
The Sunderland Echo have become increasingly frantic in a search for a solution to David Moyes’ current problems. In a mission they have admirably taken on themselves, The Echo have run a sequence of stories during the past few weeks proposing various answers to Sunderland’s current dismal start to the season.
The latest solution? Donald Love as a midfielder. Scoring a winner against Hartlepool means the 21-year old has "laid down a marker for a return to the Sunderland side – in midfield". But, much more than that as the headline tells us:
The absence of Jan Kirchhoff, Lee Cattermole, Adnan Januzaj and Steven Pienaar through injury? No problem - Love is the answer.
In previous weeks, we’ve had to endure an increasingly frantic chorus of observers declaring various players may be ‘the answer’ if they are played in a role unfamiliar to them. A couple of weeks ago, Paddy McNair was the unlikely saviour in an attacking midfield role that only the wisest of Sunderland fans had foreseen for him, and Patrick van Aanholt is now being widely hailed as a winger.
If you thought David Moyes apparent obsession with defending was bad enough, he's now turning defenders into defensive midfielders and defensive midfielders into attacking ones. It's only a matter of time before we see Billy Jones in the middle of the park. Mark my words.
Things are getting desperate.
DeAndre Yedlin – No One Is Listening
In what is surely the least significant move ever of a player to cross the notorious Wear-Tyne divide, DeAndre Yedlin continues to be completely oblivious to his new role as Mackem-knocker for the Evening Chronicle.
With Jack Colback a completely spent force since relegation, and now useless to the Tyneside media in their perpetual hunt for a talisman to knock Sunderland, Yedlin has risen to the bait admirably in his most recent puppet-like appearance in front of the Geordie press-hounds.
His latest interview has featured in three, count them - three articles across the Chronicle's online content during the past day or so. Acutely aware that DeAndre is rarely one for saying anything of interest, the Newcastle newspaper sent veteran rent-a-Geordie, Lee Ryder, to interview him. Ryder was quick to set a couple of stonking traps for young Yedders to walk right into.
First and foremost, any Newcastle United player interviewed has to praise Rafa Benitez, as the cult of Rafa on Tyneside shows no sign of abating, Yedlin said:
It’s a great move for me to come here, and working under Rafa has been unbelievable.
Second, with the effects of Dwarficationcontinuing to be felt throughout world football, any Newcastle United player interviewed has to praise the standard of England’s second tier in order to make the Geordie masses feel better about the open-sore that is relegation to the Championship:
Especially as a younger player, this league is great as there are so many games.
Yep, being a bit-part player and understudy to Vurnon Anita is simply a dream come true for the young American right-back. After all, who wants to play 39 games in the Premier League, when you can start about 20 and sit on the bench for a further 26 in the Championship?
Thirdly, praise for Newcastle itself as the bestest city in the world. If you thought the bright lights of England's capital sounded like fun for a kid from Seattle, think again - London has nothing on Newcastle Upon Tyne :
I thought moving to a big city would be a very cool thing for me. But Seattle’s not the biggest city. It’s more like Newcastle. I think I’m more comfortable here.
Seattle – the 18th largest city in the USA and the 77th largest city in the world, with a population three-times that of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, which rates as the 619th largest city in the world. They could be twins.
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