Newcastle Utd star downs tools after Joe Kinnear forgets his name

OF all the reasons why you’d want to leave a sinking ship football club, we’ve never heard the one used by Newcastle’s Charles N’Zogbia this week.

N’Zogbia is refusing to play for Newcastle after manager Joe Kinnear forgot his surname, twice called him “insomnia” and finally settled on “Charlie” in a television interview.

The winger’s representative, Franck Peslerbe, said that N’Zogbia had been angered by the remark and wanted to leave St James’ Park as soon as possible.

Peslerbe said: “Charles will be very angry that the manager has said that about him. It is very disrespectful. He has given many years of service to Newcastle and this is how they treat him. This means that Charles will not want to play for Newcastle again.”

Charles Insomnia. Brilliant.

Foul-mouthed Joe responded to his player’s statement with a statement of his own:

“I couldn’t believe it when I was told Charles had issued a statement claiming he was insulted, apparently for nothing more than me mis-pronouncing his name in a post-match interview at Manchester City.

“Okay, I got a little tongue-tied - but if I had a pound for every time I’ve mis-pronounced a player’s name down the years, then I’d be a very wealthy man indeed.”

You couldn’t make Newcastle up.

Anorak

Posted: 30th, January 2009 | In: Sports Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink