An Encounter With Kinnear & Llambias

On Saturday evening, I arrived at Newcastle airport having watched Newcastle United lose 2-1 to Blackburn Rovers in the Premier League. I got in the queue to go through security before catching an easyJet flight back to London Stansted and standing right in front of me in the queue were none other than Newcastle's new interim manager Joe Kinnear (pictured) and the club's Managing Director Derek Llambias. Llambias is a long-term associate of the club's owner Mike Ashley and it didn't surprise me to see him on the flight because on 14 September on the Sky Sports programme called Sunday Supplement, the Sun journalist Shaun Custis had said that he had seen Llambias on the easyJet flight to Stansted the previous evening after the match against Hull City - I was on that flight too, but did not notice either Llambias or Custis!

Anyway, I couldn't resist the temptation of talking to Llambias and I asked him if it had been, "another good day at the office!?". He replied saying, "no, it has been a very bad day actually". At this time, Kinnear was talking on his mobile phone and said, "half the players are totally average". On hearing this, Llambias nudged Kinnear and whispered, "be careful Joe - journalist!". Kinnear looked around and it was clear that it was me they were referring to! A minute or so later, Kinnear finished his telephone conversation, looked at me and said, "it was the Arsenal v Hull match I was talking about" - not very likely I thought!

Fortunately, the queue was unusually long for a Saturday night at Newcastle airport and this enabled me to overhear the rest of their conversation, which given they thought I was a journalist, was surprisingly frank in places. The key points from their conversation were as follows:

• Kinnear kept referring to Newcastle's long injury list. Interviews carried out with him this weekend indicate that he is very preoccupied with this - perhaps too much. He said that the way things were going he would be playing the youth team in the next first team match at Everton on 5 October.

• Kinnear said that Newcastle had picked up two more injuries during the match with Blackburn, including Michael Owen tweaking his back. I have not seen this reported anywhere else, so I consider this to be an exclusive!

• Kinnear said that he had pulled four players out of the squad for the reserve team match on Monday night to minimise the risk of further injuries. Kinnear also said that he would be being very careful in training in order to avoid further injuries - he said that he would be working mostly on, "tactics and shape".

• On the subject of injuries, Llambias said that they had tried to get to the root cause of why Newcastle's players were picking up so many injuries and he said that it couldn't be due to the pitches at the training ground because there are two pitches there, "of the same standard as the pitch at the St. James Park". He also said that the players did not train on the indoor pitch at the training ground. Reducing the number of injuries was a preoccupation of Sam Allardyce during his short tenure as manager.

• Kinnear and Llambias were very critical of Steven Taylor and his poor performance against Blackburn. Kinnear said that he had been "flat-footed and not alert" for one of the goals. Kinnear also asked Llambias how tall Coloccini was and Llambias said that he was, "tall but not a giant". He said that Carlton Cole had given him the runaround at West Ham the previous week and that he seemed to struggle against big, strong centre-forwards.

• Kinnear said that he was going back up to Newcastle on Monday and Llambias said that they should meet for dinner on Tuesday evening at Kinnear's hotel, where "Lee" could give Kinnear all the background and history on each of the players. I don't know who "Lee" is but could it be Lee Charnley, the club's Football Secretary?

• I was struck by some of the lack of knowledge that Kinnear had about the various players - not surprising perhaps but not exactly reassuring! He didn't seem certain who Andy Carroll was and he kept calling Obafemi Martins, "Obi" rather than "Oba". We know from other reports that he called Geremi, "Jeremiah" at least once this weekend.

• Intriguingly, Llambias said at one point that, "everything will be sorted out off the pitch within the next two weeks - what we've got to do is get it sorted out on the pitch".

• To be fair to Llambias, he did have a detailed knowledge of each of the players, their current ailments and how much longer they were likely to be out. He ran through the long list of injuries and said that Martins could be out for three months and he didn't seem very optimistic about Viduka returning any time soon, saying that he was currently in Australia. He said that Enrique and Beye could be back very soon and he seemed to think that this would sort out the full-back positions.

• I tried to be fair to Llambias above about his knowledge of the current situation for each of the players but listening to the conversation between Kinnear, Llambias and another youngish, suited man with them, I was not overwhelmed with confidence that these are men about to lead Newcastle away from their current travails. I also thought that there was a lack of awareness or recognition of what had caused some of the problems now being experienced - for example, Llambias was talking about the small squad and the lack of players in certain positions but he seemed to be oblivious to the fact that lots of people, including Kevin Keegan had been pointing out this problem during the final stages of the transfer window in August.

• When we went through security itself, we had to remove our belts and once through the other side, it took Kinnear a long time to get dressed again and Llambias and his colleague were waiting for Kinnear. Llambias said to his colleague that, "Joe has lost a lot of weight recently". I mention this, because I got the impression from the way this was said that he had known Kinnear for a while which is consistent with the notion that only people associated with Ashley's regime or with Tottenham Hotspur are being appointed to jobs at Newcastle! Indeed, the bookmakers Paddy Power are running a book on the next friend of Dennis Wise (Newcastle's Executive Director - Football) to be appointed to a job at St. James Park!

Having got through security, I became separated from Kinnear and Llambias and sat next to Shaun Custis - I retold my conversation to him and we had a good chat - what a decent bloke! I said at one point, that I did not blame the players for what was happening but he seemed doubtful about this and I have subsequently heard various people saying that the players need to stand-up as professional footballers and do the job that they are very well-paid to do. I have more sympathy now for this argument than I did 36 hours ago.

Overall, another fascinating day in the North East!