Football Poets

New Managerial Brooms- Gerrard, Howe and Smith

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 New managerial brooms
It only seemed like yesterday
Since they were young saplings
Childish colts spreading the gospel
On back streets, then the fiery
Furnace of the Premier League
Thrown heartlessly into the fire
Totally immersed in the hullabaloo
And palpitating, nerve shredding
First team, Thrown into the
Pandemonium of fresh faced debuts
The Premier League, the big time
Then Gerrard, Howe and Smith
Again, stamp their trademark
Stevie G, once a Liverpool
Monarch, now in the claret
And blue of Villa, presiding
Over the oldest of them all
Villa, once of the landed gentry
In football’s most imposing
Drawing rooms and parlours
Then among its bejewelled corridors
A footballing powerhouse
Gerrard, in charge of yet more
Greatness, many years
Ago but it’s been 39 years
Since the bearded warrior
Peter Withe headed the winner
Against Bayern Munich in the
European Cup Final, incarnation
Of another age, but Gerrard
Responsible for the slumbering
Giant, a player par excellence
Now furthering his education
In more elevated circles
In the more august of red brick
Universities of the Premier League
Where degrees of prosperity
Can often be a poisoned chalice
But Stevie G, can sense the ultimate
Challenge and never gave more
To the cause, a picture of devotion
Then Eddie Howe, from the salubrious
Breezes of Bournemouth, to the burning
Passions of Tyneside and Newcastle
Where once Wor Jackie, in his richest
Plumage mined the collieries and seams
Of Newcastle, where brown ale
Was never enough
So Shackleton, Milburn, Macdonald
All ploughed their furrow at St James
Park, digging for victory but yielding
Sore heads and bleak defeats, sorrowful
Brows, mopping fevered anguished foreheads
Nothing since the 1955 League title
Only Joe Harvey, frantically gesturing
At black and white stripes when Tyneside
Was the centre of the universe.
But defeat in the 1974 Cup Final
To Shankly’s mighty composition
The perfect chemical formula,
The Liverpool masterclass
And finally Dean Smith
Driven unceremoniously out of his
Childhood club, the Villa now just
A beloved reminder of his past
But back at Norwich, among the rolling
Fens, peaty Norfolk smells, the rural
Cattle, fertile acres of farmland
Where once John Bond owned
A yellow and green revolution
And still Delia demands an extra
Gallon of sweat, toil, mouth
Watering culinary delights
So let’s hear it for those
New managerial brooms
Sweeping the ashes of
Broken hearts, fans
Aching for restoration
Plays. New Shakesperean
Acts and dramas,
A cabaret of Cups,
Premier Leagues and Europe
The big objectives, but only
Laborious struggles briefly
They hope when
Gerrard, Howe and Smith,
Claim the dazzling limelight
Again.

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