Sometimes wisdom is tucked away in the tiniest crevasse of a large wasteland. Years ago, I found such a crevasse and the wisdom mined from it has guided me well. In light of recent comments by Wolfsburg manager Dieter Hecking, it seems that the wisdom could have been well helpful to current Newcastle United leadership.
In the middle of the 00's VH1 struck relative gold when they signed up Public Enemy hype-man Flava Flav to be the focus of a "reality" show called Flavor of Love. It was essentially "The Bachelor" with a firm embrace of just how ludicrous the premise of the show was. Predictably, some of the women on the show competing to hear Flav tell them "You know what time it is" were directed to act batshit crazy. VH1 said to themselves "What is better than a couple of batshit crazy women in a house?" and came up with Charm School. In Charm School, comedienne Mo'nique took a houseful of Flavor of Love flunk-outs and was to teach them manners and humility. Don't judge me. It was like rubber-necking a non-injury accident on the highway. Nobody got hurt and well... it was hard to look away.
Anyway - at the end of a particularly trying episode featuring some relatively devious actions by some of the women, Mo'nique felt compelled to teach another lesson to the perpetrators of said devious actions. Essentially, the root of the lesson was a variant of "Do unto others"... but that neither keeps remotes out of hands nor gives Mo'nique a chance to deliver her hard-won wisdom to the women on the show (and the public at large!). Here was her advice:
See... when you do clownery, the clown comes back to bite.
--Mo'nique
If only Mo'nique had a place in the Newcastle United board room perhaps we wouldn't be reading stories like the quotes coming from Wolfsburg today. At the very least, she could have made us laugh as the power brokers, steeped in years of insider knowledge of the business of football, put profit over performance and thrift over all. Every year owners, directors of football, and coaches are in the papers over the summer slamming our club for lack of ambition, for "derisory bids" and for generally being a club with which they do not like doing business.
Player recruitment is difficult enough under normal circumstances. Add in the self-imposed restrictions that Newcastle are using and it becomes extremely challenging. Add in the ill-will that recent years of "business practice" have created and we're looking at what we have seen over the past several years. When these quotes come out (as they do every. single. window.), it almost doesn't register to us any longer. It's always connected to our biggest, most strongly linked and reported about transfer targets:
Why should he go to Newcastle? He can play Champions League with us. He won't be able to do that at Newcastle in the upcoming years.
Yes, this quote was about Bas Dost... this time. It could have been Bafetimbi Gomis. Or Florian Thauvin. Or Andre Pierre Gignac. Or. Or. Or. Ultimately, Bas Dost is starting to feel like this year's "Hey, guys... we tried. Don't you remember? It was all over the news!" target who is designed to make us feel better when we end up with Troy Deeney or some similar target without top-division experience. Perhaps had we not "done all those years of clownery" we would have a chance to get Bas Dost over the line. Maybe we will in the future. As it stands now, though, in every successive transfer window, the clown has come back to bite Newcastle United.