belated tslr articles- feb

Flairwatch

by Tom Stewart

Greeting disciples. Another month passes, and it was a quiet one on the flair front. January transfer windows have often been a period of flairstivities for Albion managers, but this month it was not to be.......I mean, how do you improve on perfection? Not easily, is the answer....and we seem to have left the Premiership to own the flair spotlight for now, as my ultimate hero, Andy Carroll, becomes (quite rightly) the seventh most expensive player IN THE WORLD EVER. The only flair we have to look forward to is the possibility of ultra flairniac Emmanuel Ledesma possibility jumping aboard the flairboat.
Anyway, with an uneventful window behind us, it’s time to look back at a period in the clubs history that some onlookers described as the “Golden Age o’Flair”.
That’s right, I’m of course talking about Mark McGhee’s time in charge of the club. McGhee took charge in 2003, after Steve Coppel left for Reading. He had a decent pedigree at that level, having had decent spells at Reading and Millwall, amongst others. His task was to help the Albion return to the Championship, which he did via the play-offs, via an epic battle with a Rory Fallon inspired Swindon Town, and Christian Roberts’ Bristol City.
But it wasn’t until we reached the Championship that McGhee unleashed “Project Flair”. The standard of flairniacs that he brought to the club throughout the next two and a bit years is almost beyond belief: Florent Chaigneau; Rami Shaaban; Wayne Henderson; Alexis Nicolas; Sebastien Carole; Alexandre Frutos; Darren Currie; Maheta Molango; Georges Santos; Colin Kazim-Richards; Mark McCammon; Albert Jarrett, and of course- Federico Turienzo.
We’re a much different club then to what we are....let’s be honest, we were an utter shambles (no disrespect to Dick Knight). We were skint, Falmer seemed a million miles away.......but we still managed to hold our own in the Championship. For one season atleast.
The unlikely goalscoring feats of Adam Virgo, a tight defence, a combatitive midfield and some wins against big clubs helped us achieve 20th place- our highest league position in years.
But it was our second year where Project Flair really came into fruitition. Chaigneau, Carole and Frutos arrived from France with good reputations. A Coca-Cola sponsored competition was won by Brighton fan Aaron Berry, and the proceeds were used to secure the signing of exciting, yet temperamental and inconstant Colin Kazim-Richards. Added to that, a mysterious Argentinian going by the name of Federico Turienzo was signed for the unfeasibly high sum of £150k.
The season was a complete disaster. Mcghee completely lost the plot in the flairest Keeganesque way possible. Constant bickering with the likes of Leon Knight, Mark McCammon and Michel Kuipers.......with a reported RACIAL DIVIDE in the squad. Inconsistency throughout the season and under performance from the likes of Kazim-Richards saw the club relegated without putting up much of a fight. One of McGhee’s trademarks was labelling some league games as unimportant, culminating in one farcical night in Luton (which is bad enough as it is), with the completely adject front line of McCammon and Turienzo.

That season was the flairest that I can remember, and in true Newcastle style, it’s taken us YEARS to recover.

Mark Mcghee- I salute you.