Caveman Joe Kinnear still stuck in football's stone age

You would expect Kinnear, given his connections at the highest echelons of Himalayan nobility, to be a touch more culturally attuned. After all, in the two decades between his South Asian sojourn and the tragedy at the Nepalese royal palace, he and Dipendra regularly kept in contact, even attending matches together in London.

But he persists, to judge from his mangled self-justification on radio, in playing the classic pub boor. At least striker Sammy Ameobi, like Yohan Cabaye another victim of the butchered surname, could be thankful he was not described as an amoeba.

Quite what Alan Pardew makes of having a liability like Kinnear parachuted in over his head at St James? Park is anybody?s guess. Understandably, the Newcastle United manager is keen to wrap his director of football?s mouth in Sellotape in the event of further media exposure.

Kinnear, of course, insists Pardew was delighted at his appointment, embracing the return on Newcastle of a ?real football man?. For in his universe such a label is the ultimate accolade, as if those managers who aspire to play the game more aesthetically than the hoof-ball once beloved of his Wimbledon side are mere plastic mannequins.

Indeed, if Kinnear is a ?real football man?, then we might as well rip up our Premier League fixture lists already. It pays to be reminded, despite his idle boasts of having Sir Alex Ferguson and Ars?ne Wenger on permanent speed-dial, that Wimbledon under his aegis were hardly the most attractive team ever to grace the English top flight. Built upon the lumpen braggadocio of Vinnie Jones, they concealed an undercurrent of malice behind that convenient 'Crazy Gang? facade.

Kinnear retains his apologists, not least those persuaded by his hail-fellow-well-met attitude in the early Nineties, when he would indulge a little ribaldry with the lads and display his Dublin roots with the odd Irish singalong. But at 66, he looks askance at the football landscape he now inhabits, conscious that it has changed beyond all recognition from his day.

He is a relic of an era when sports nutrition consisted of a half-time orange and a can of Tizer. He could count among his contemporaries such figures as Leyton Orient manager John Sitton, who infamously offered two players outside with the words: ?And you can bring your f------ dinner.?

In 2013, however, Kinnear sees so few allies that his only defence is unpleasant narcissism, full of festering resentment. Age, more is the pity, has not mellowed him.

Source: http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568360/s/2d888db8/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Csport0Cfootball0Cteams0Cnewcastle0Eunited0C10A130A9150CCaveman0EJoe0EKinnear0Estill0Estuck0Ein0Efootballs0Estone0Eage0Bhtml/story01.htm

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