The surprise sacking of Newcastle United manager Chris Hughton yesterday has been justified by club owner Mike Ashley on the grounds of Hughton’s “appalling cliché record”.
“Sure, Chris had points in the bag and we were on target to press for a European place late doors,” Ashley explained, “but he had neither been ‘sick as a parrot’ nor ‘over the moon’ for months. That’s no way to run a whelk stall.”
Team Captain Kevin Nolan agreed “If the boss had just come out once and said he was gutted, or that he was taking each game as it comes, he might have saved his bacon. A simple observation that football is a game of two halves, or that the lads were running their socks off and fighting for their lives might even have saved him from the early bath”.
“But I never even heard him observe that there are no easy games in this league. That is unacceptable. He’s been half a yard off the pace and it’s a big ask to come back from there. The gaffer’s basically just lost the dressing room. That’s a stonewall sacking.”
Hughton was philosophical last night as he arrived home at his gated faux-Georgian mansion in Alderley Edge with his beauty consultant wife Solange. “I’ve had a bad day at the office and I’ve been done up like a kipper. I’ve always avoided clichés like the plague. At the end of the day it’s a funny old game” he told waiting reporters.
