Roker Ramble: Your weekly round up of non-Sunderland news!

Mourinho and a Roma fan make massive tw*ts of themselves

I think Seville and Roma owe anyone who watched the Europa League final an apology.

What an utterly crap 131 minutes of football that was.

Unfortunately it will only be a final remembered for two disgraceful post-match incidents.

It all began when Jose Mourinho was filmed walking towards someone – alleged to be referee Anthony Taylor – in the car park post match. In a fit of pique, or more likely ridiculous affectation and histrionics, Roma’s manager called the officials a “f*cking disgrace” and “crooks”. Which of course isn’t on.

I think we can assume it was the officials he was addressing, rather than giving the hospitality department feedback.

Rather unsurprisingly, he has now been charged for those comments.

And it wasn’t the end of the matter, as while at Budapest airport Taylor and his family were accosted by furious Roma fans, who had some sort of issue with the fact he had not given a penalty to Roma in the latter stages of the final. Or maybe it was because VAR ordered a retake of the winning spot kick in the shootout.

Dick.

Photo by Cesare Purini/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images

Whatever it was, it was disgraceful and it brings into sharp focus the effect one man’s childish, rude behaviour can potentially have.

Contrast that with Tony Mowbray, who post Sheffield United this season refused to criticise the officials in any great way following perhaps the worst non-offside decision of all time.

Radrizzani rage reaches fever pitch

It’s been a difficult week at Leeds. But you know what they say right? A bad day is really just a great day to bury more bad news.

Sadly, if Leeds’ entirely avoidable relegation to the Championship (see also City, Leicester) wasn’t enough to bear, it’s emerged that head honcho Andrea Raddrizani doesn’t really fancy it either. Fine, you might think, as Leeds fans want him out. However there’s a big chance if he’s going down, the club is going with him.

Why? In his quest to complete a takeover of Sampdoria in his homeland, he has offered up Elland Road as a security against a £26m bank loan he wants to take out in order to buy I Blucerchiati.

Not KLD

Photo by Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images

Not KLD

Photo by Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images

It’s a move described as “appalling” by Leeds United’s supporters group. Raddrizana however has said he remains committed to the club.

Which obviously leaves the Yorkshire outfit in a bit of a difficult position if things go south further… south. There are worrying echoes of the mess in the Midlands at West Brom, whose owners used their stadium as collateral late last year – and we all know the mess the Baggies are in.

Makes you breathe a bit of a sigh of relief about the calm(ish) waters we currently swim in up here.

David Holloway wrote a really interesting piece reflecting back on our ownership imbroglio with Madrox earlier this week. Now you may or may not have read it but I implore you to actually go and read the full article. rather than what most people seemed to have done, and sampled some selected quotes which were floating around online this week by someone who took.

I can’t remember the person’s name who started the fume, but just like the press’ refusal to name the lad involved in the Schofield affair, I too will decline to name this fella. Mainly cos I’d need to go and check, as it wasn’t like it was a local journalist or Luke Edwards or something – or anyone of renown. I just suppose there are some Sunderland fans you wish weren’t Sunderland fans.

Though kudos to Andrew McGuinness who in the Twitter replies said “Roker Report… the enemy of true Sunderland fans.” I had a good chuckle at that. Roker Report: Just a bunch of Durham Mags.

But really, it’s true, isn’t it? Things could have been so much worse, albeit by accident rather than design. To my mind, Donald and co. did two decent things while in charge of our club: firstly, they stripped back the club to prevent it from dying a terrible, painful death. The glutinous, invasive cholesterol of debt slowly crawled through the arteries of Sunderland like fatty toothpaste for too long before their arrival. There’s no doubt it would have caused the sort of heart attack which would have left this great institution dead before it hit the floor following years of ill health if they hadn’t done what they did in 2018. It just so happened they were the surgeons on shift at the time.

I think that was David’s point?

It was all downhill from there – because as we all know, it’s easier to strip things out than redecorate to a decent standard. Now before anyone quotes the above to give me a kicking – I demand you include this as well. Now you can give me a kicking.

Secondly, they did bookend their time with us very nicely. In that they handed the reins over to someone half their age but with twice their capability in KLD. Think of the Madrox tenure as like two artisanal slices of farmhouse multigrain encompassing a filling of dog shit.

Look at the other clubs in the Championship – Leeds, Leicester, West Brom, Birmingham and Coventry have all faced or face uncertain futures for one reason or another. But not us, at least not right now.

However, I too am not a defender of Oxfordshire’s answer to Baldrick or the poster boy from Crew Clothing, Charlie Methven. They just sold to the right guy.

Anyone who occupies the space between incel vibes and lone-adult-attendance-at-an-Ariana-Grande-concert will no doubt be exploding right now, so please include the previous critique in your Twitter quotes. Let it all out on the socials, boys.

Big Sam… big regrets

Last week I had a bit of a clear out in preparation for the arrival of our second child. The many books on my desk had been gradually leaning at an ever jaunty angle for a number of years now, and more space was needed.

One of those was Sam Allardyce’s autobiography. I read it in Fuerteventura in 2016, and in the latter stages of this magnum opus, Big Sam opined that really, he was done with all this football management lark.

Obviously the following seven years has revised that thought somewhat, because what he really meant was he was simply completing another lap of the 92.

His latest stint in charge was a less-than-auspicious four game rescue job at Leeds which yielded one point.

So sadly, instead of dousing the flames in water, he ladelled on the accelerant and walked off back to his Bolton bolthole – or that place in Spain he got with his Mag redundo money.

Until next April Sam. My bet is on Notts Forest.

Photo by Gareth Copley/Getty Images

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