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ALAN SMITH: USELESS POSER? DISCUSS. 11-8-07
Chris Bannister
"Please allow me to introduce myself, I´m a man of wealth and taste"
Well, that´s not strictly true. Unlike the Stone´s Lucifer I´m a poor
student, discounting wealth and more importantly for the purposes of this
column, I support Boro and live in Newcastle. And so I welcome you to
Smog On The Tyne. It´s my Wigan Pier.
The column is generally my reflections on life as a Boro fan, as most
are on this cracking site, but as the more astute readers might have
guessed already I´ve got to take a certain pompous, bloated, overrated
and underachieving factor into mind. It´s with this in mind that I begin my
first foray into sports journalism on the issue of a certain blond
bombshell.
Alan ´Smudger´ Smith, more famous for his shenanigans with his
ex-teammates' girlfriend than his footballing of late, has signed for Newcastle
United.
For anyone living on the moon but with an interest in Boro
fansites; the former Leeds United ´legend´ was pipped from under Gareth and
Keith´s noses at the last minute as he plumped to buy into Fat Sam´s
dream and Mike Ashley´s wage structure, leaving Boro empty handed.
My
personal feelings on the matter are simple; we dodged a bullet. I may end
up eating my words and blondie´ll catapult the Geordies to European and
domestic success but I can´t really see that happening.
I´ve a few friends
who are Manchester United fans and they´ve kindly informed me that Smith´s return
from the seven million shelled out on him by Sir Alex was twelve goals, a
frankly pathetic record.
There are mitigating factors to this poor
return; he played a proportion of these games in central midfield as the
United regime attempted to mould him into the new Keane.
But this only
highlights further Smith´s shortcomings as a player; Roy Keane´s game
was grounded in immense talent and an ability to run box to box for ninety
minutes. The only characteristic that he and Smith shared was ´passion´
with the sight of Smith looking lost in the middle of the park a regular
occurrence in the past few seasons.
The issue of Smith´s ´passion´ would imply a commitment to a cause. It´s my belief that Alan Smith´s supposed 110% attitude is one of the
greatest misnomer´s in football.
His antics following Leeds´ first
hilarious relegation go far enough to prove he´s as much loyalty as Mark
Viduka, with him swearing that ´If Leeds go down, which they won´t, cos Billy
Bremner´s ghost´ll save us if I can´t, I´ll never go Manyoo, never, I
´ate Manyoo and I love Leeds, In fact I´ll never leave Leeds,
Superwhites, Leeds´.
I may have somewhat paraphrased but the proof of Smith´s
true character was exposed when he pulled on the Manchester United shirt
and Leeds wallowed in the Championship.
To draw a line under the whole
saga, I think a Smithless Boro team is a better Boro team and he and
Newcastle deserve each other, both being overrated, self regarding under
performers.
Saying all this, we still need a centre forward, and our current target is Mido. I´m no fan of Ahmed Hossam as he´s been a flouncy pile of trouble wherever he´s gone and the idea
of us giving Spurs money rather than them offering us derogatory
amounts for our lads is a little odd.
Surely a player like Kerlon, who we
were linked with earlier in the close-season, would provide us with at
least a little bit of entertainment or Rodrigo Palacio of Boca Juniors who
I had the privelage of seeing in the flesh (and he was shit hot) would
add more to Gareth´s vision of pacy attacking football more than Mido
and even Franco Di Santo - dubbed somewhat sensationally the ´Next
Alfredo Di Stefano´ - would get pulses racing a little more than a Spurs cast
off. All, no doubt, would be available for less than the six million
Smith was priced at.
All in all, life for Smog on the Tyne is odd at the moment, with all of
Fleet Street predicting a relegation struggle for us and a European
push for Smith et al and no-one taking into account we had a higher league
finish and were robbed in the cup rather than battered by Birmingham.
It' s all creating a classic sense of Geordie arrogance which can only
serve us well. I´ll enjoy our meeting in a few weeks. So will Alan Smith
no doubt, as being marked out of the game by Woody will remind him of the
training sessions in the days when he and Leeds were good.
Oh, and I´ll give it month before Joey Barton assaults Smith in training
for being a posey bastard.
Chris Bannister
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