Five minutes, 52 swear words, the start of Newcastle United’s press conference, here’s a transcript.

JK Which one is Simon Bird [Daily Mirror's north-east football writer]?

SB Me.

JK You’re a cunt.

SB Thank you.

JK Which one is Hickman [Niall, football writer for the Express]? You are out of order. Absolutely fucking out of order. If you do it again, I am telling you you can fuck off and go to another ground. I will not come and stand for that fucking crap. No fucking way, lies. Fuck, you’re saying I turned up and they [Newcastle's players] fucked off.

SB No Joe, have you read it, it doesn’t actually say that. Have you read it?

JK I’ve fucking read it, I’ve read it.

SB It doesn’t say that. Have you read it?

JK You are trying to fucking undermine my position already.

SB Have you read it, it doesn’t say that. I knew you knew they were having a day off.

JK Fuck off. Fuck off. It’s your last fucking chance.

SB You read the copy? It doesn’t say that you didn’t know.

JK What about the headline, you think that’s a good headline?

SB I didn’t write the headline, you read the copy.

JK You are negative bastards, the pair of you.

SB So if I get a new job next week would I take the first day off? No I wouldn’t. If I get a new job should I call my boss and tell him I am taking the first day off?

JK It is none of your fucking business. What the fuck are you going to do? You ain’t got the balls to be a fucking manager. Fucking day off. Do I want your opinion. Do I have to listen to you?

SB No, you can listen to who you want.

JK I had a 24-hour meeting with the entire staff.

SB Joe, you are only here six weeks, you could have done that on Sunday, or Saturday night.

JK No, no, no. I didn’t want to do it. I had some other things to do.

SB What? More important things?

JK What are you? My personal secretary? Fuck off.

SB You could have done the meeting Saturday night or Sunday. You could have had them watching videos, you could have organised them.

JK I was meeting the fucking chairman the owner, everyone else. Talking about things.

SB It is a valid point that was made in there. A valid point.

JK I can’t trust any of you.

Niall Hickman Joe, no one could believe that on your first day at your new club, the first-team players were not in. No one could believe it in town. Your first day in the office.

JK My first day was with the coaches. I made the decision that I wanted to get as much information out of them.

NH But why Monday, no one could believe it?

JK I’m not going to tell you anything. I don’t understand where you are coming from. You are delighted that Newcastle are getting beat and are in the state they are? Delighted, are you?

NH Certainly not. No one wants to see them get beaten, why would we?

JK I have done it before. It is going to my fucking lawyers. So are about three others. If they can find something in it that is a court case it is going to court. I am not fucking about. I don’t talk to fucking anybody. It is raking up stories. You are fucking so fucking slimy you are raking up players that I got rid of. Players that I had fallen out with. You are not asking Robbie Earle, because he is sensible. You are not asking Warren Barton? No. Because he is fucking sensible. Anyone who had played for me for 10 years at any level … [but] you will find some cunt that…
Other journalist How long is your contract for Joe?

JK None of your business.

SB Well it is actually, because we cover the club. The club say you are here to the end of October, then you say six to eight games which would take it to the end of November. We are trying to clarify these issues. We are getting no straight answers from anyone. How long are you here for. It is a dead simple question. And you don’t know …

JK I was told the length of contract. Then I was told that possibly the club could be sold in that time. That is as far as I know. That’s it finished. I don’t know anything else. But I have been ridiculed. He’s trying to fucking hide, he’s trying to do this or that.

There follows an exchange regarding the circumstances under which Kinnear had met the owner Mike Ashley and executive director (football) Dennis Wise.

Steve Brenner (football writer for the Sun) We are all grown men and can come in here and sit around and talk about football, but coming in here and calling people cunts?

JK Why? Because I am annoyed. I am not accepting that. If it is libellous, it is going to where I want it to go.

Newcastle press officer What has been said in here is off the record and doesn’t go outside.

Journalist Well, is that what Joe thinks?

JK Write what you like. Makes no difference to me. Don’t affect me I assure you. It’ll be the last time I see you anyway. Won’t affect me. See how we go at Everton and Chrissy [Chris Hughton, assistant manager] can do it, someone else can do it. Don’t trust any of yous. I will pick two local papers and speak to them and the rest can fuck off. I ain’t coming up here to have the piss taken out of me. I have a million pages of crap that has been written about me. I’m ridiculed for no reason. I’m defenceless. I can’t get a point in, I can’t say nothing, I can’t do nothing, but I ain’t going to be negative. Then, half of you, most of you are trying to get into the players. I’m not going to tell you what the players think of you, so then you try and get into them in some way or another, so I’ve got a split camp or something like that, something like that. It’s ongoing. It just doesn’t stop.
Journalist It’s only been a week.

JK Exactly. It feels more like a year.

Journalist It’s early days for you to be like this.

JK No, I’m clearing the air. And this is the last time I’m going to speak to you. You want to know why, I’m telling you. This is the last time. You can do what you like.

Journalist But this isn’t going to do you or us any good.

JK I’ll speak to the supporters. I’m going to tell them what the story is. I’m going to tell them. I don’t think they’ll interpret it any different, I don’t think they’ll mix it up, I don’t think they’ll miss out things. I mean, one of them last week said to me … I was talking about in that press conference where you were there, I said something like “Well, that’s a load of bollocks …”

Journalist “Bollocks to that” is what you said.

JK Bollocks to that. And what goes after that?

Journalist That was it.

JK No it wasn’t, no it wasn’t. What was after it? I don’t know if it was your paper, but what went after it?

Journalist I don’t know.

JK It even had the cheek to say “bollocks to Newcastle”.

Journalist I didn’t write that.

JK That was my first fucking day. What does that tell you? What does that tell you?

Journalist Where was that? Which paper said that?

JK I’ve got it. I can’t remember. It was one of the Sundays, not a Saturday. It was a Sunday.

Journalist But you didn’t say that to the Sundays, you said that to us. That was during the Monday press conference.

JK I’ll bring it in and show it to you. Why would I want to say that?

Journalist Are you saying that someone has reported you saying “bollocks to Newcastle?”

JK Yes. Lovely.

Journalist I don’t know who’s reported that.

JK I’ll tell you what, I’ll bring it in.

Journalist That’s obviously going to damage you. That’s not a good thing. But I don’t think someone’s done that. We have to have some sort of relationship with you.

JK So have I. But I haven’t come in here for you lot to take the piss out of me. And if I’m not flavour of the month for you, it don’t fucking bother me. I’ve got a job to do. And I’m going to do it to the best of my ability. I’m not going to spend any more time listening to any crap or reading any crap. Stick to the truth and the facts. And don’t twist anything.

Journalist You know, you know the game…

JK Of course I know, but I don’t have to like it.

Journalist Today we’ll print the absolute truth, that you think we’re cunts, we can all fuck off and we’re slimy. Is that fair enough?

JK Do it. Fine. Fucking print it. Am I going to worry about it? Put in also that it’ll be the last time I see you. Put that in as well. Good. Do it.

Much, much later after long discussions over whether Kinnear had promised Alan Shearer and Kevin Keegan would be returning to the club

Press officer Let’s get on to football. Let’s have an agreement that everything said so far, if anyone has got their tapes on, it’s wiped off and we’re not discussing it.

Journalist But that’s what Joe has said he thinks of us.

Press officer I’m saying don’t push it. Let’s accept what’s been said and try and move on.

Journalist: Move on to not doing any more press conferences?

PO: No, to doing something now.

Journalist: What, one press conference only?

(Silence)

Journalist: Any knocks?

PO: Come on, let’s go football.

Journalist: What are your plans for training in the next three days? How’s the training going?

JK It’s going very well. No problems at all.

Journalist Enjoyed getting back in the swing of things?

JK Absolutely. I’ve loved every moment of it.

Source: The Guardian.

I can’t help thinking Kinnear’s cleverly made himself centre of press attention – no mean feat considering the troubles at Newcastle.

Chelsea midfielder Michael Essien has been ruled out for “several months” after rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament, the club has announced.

A Chelsea statement read: “Michael has ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament and will undergo an operation as soon as the majority of the swelling has subsided. We expect this to happen in a week’s time.

“In the meantime, Michael has started rehab in the aqua therapy centre at Cobham which will improve the condition of the knee prior to surgery. A return to full fitness is not expected for several months.” Source: The BBC.

Well that’s blown it, there’s no replacement for Michael in our squad – it’ll make for some very difficult games, particularly Manchester United on 21st September.

We’ve waited all summer for him to turn up at Stamford Bridge and then suddenly Man City beat Chelsea to Robinho. Still I reckon City done us a favour, I don’t think he’s worth anything like the £32.5m they’ve paid – take a looking at his strike rate in Spain scoring on average once every four games, that’s not the performance of a £32.5m player. And anyway we’ve got one sulky bastard in Drogba we really don’t need another in Robinho. Still as luck would have it, it’s likely that Robinho’s first appearance will be against us on the 13th September at Eastlands.

The BBC reports that South Africa is considering legalising prostitution for the 2010 World Cup.

In January, MP George Lekgetho called for prostitution to be legalised during the tournament.

“It is one of the things that would make it a success,” he said.

You know I would have hoped that prostitution would have nothing to do with the success or otherwise of a football tournament.

Prostitution goes hand-in-hand with people trafficking, drugs and child abuse, the trafficking provides the criminals with new prostitutes, the drugs are used to control the prostitutes and children command the highest prices, simplistic, but accurate.

My instinct is always to legalise prostitution, taking the crime away from the victims, the prostitutes, the crime lies with the punters and pimps, however where it only that simple. I have difficulty with the basic premise of prostitution, which relies on a man abusing a woman for financial gain, and that gain is almost exclusively not to the benefit of the woman, but to the profit of the pimps and criminal gangs. I know prostitutes are not exclusively men but the clients certainly are.

The idea of legalising sex workers was first proposed last year by police commissioner Jackie Selebi, who has since been suspended over corruption charges.

Which should leave you under no illusion on the fate of prostitutes in South Africa or anywhere else come to that.

Still I shouldn’t be surprised as there was a massive influx of prostitutes drafted/coerced into Germany for the 2006 World Cup and what is going to happen in London in 2012? God, aren’t men nasty.

I have used a photo of a statue by Abastenia St. Leger Eberle called White Slave, which depicts a young prostitute with her pimp. Whilst no longer as controversial as when exhibited in 1913 at the New York Armory show, the work certainly has something about it, and makes one think about, lust, greed, the seamy side of life and what prostitution really means. After the New York Armory show, the work vanished. In the 1970′s a plaster cast of the work turned up and two bronzes were made, sadly the plaster cast was destroyed and of the bronzes?

FIFA president Sepp Blatter has compared long-term contracts between soccer players and their clubs as a form of “modern slavery”. There is plenty of modern day slavery in the world, Ian Black’s recent article Human rights: Saudis treat domestic staff like ‘virtual slaves’ for The Guardian springs to mind.

Asian domestic workers in Saudi Arabia face routine human rights abuses that in some cases amount to slavery, with employers often escaping any punishment.

Abuses include months or years of unpaid wages, forced confinement and physical and sexual violence, while some workers suffer imprisonment or lashings for spurious charges of theft, adultery, or “witchcraft”, says Human Rights Watch.

Now what on earth do highly paid footballers have to do with slavery? When Blatter made his comments he was referring to Cristiano Ronaldo and his desire to play for Real Madrid against the wishes of his current club Manchester United who pay him £100,000 a week for a five-year contract, which he only signed last season – I’d happily sign a contract for that sort of salary, who wouldn’t. Slaves – my arse.

Source: The Guardian.

You would have thought with Abramovich’s billions we would have stopped signing players at the end of their careers, Deco will be 31 in August, but it seems we have reverted to the days of Ken Bates, when admittedly finances meant we had little choice, so now we have Deco who is over-the-hill, over-paid and over-here.

Source: BBC.

The Times reports that we have agreed a fee of £5.5 million with Aston Villa for Steve Sidwell. Why we ever signed him I have no idea, whenever Sidwell played he was off the pace and completely clueless – I guess Martin O’Neill sees something I do not.

What do I think? I know little about him, he has been successful at international level but has no club experience in the Europe he has been successful at club level in Brazil however; my knowledge of Brazilian club football is zilch.

Will Scolari be successful? My concern is the media, Scolari supposedly turned down the England job because he feared media intrusion and let us be fair managing Chelsea will be the equal of any media attention he would have faced as England manager – so will the media be his undoing?

Two things are apparent

1) The style of Scolari’s Brazilian or Portuguese teams show we can expect a more exciting football than the moribund styles of Mourinho or Grant.

2) Scolari has the kudos to attract players that Chelsea has been unable to attract in the past – we can expect a few Brazilian and Portuguese and maybe Spanish transfers this summer.

To sum up Scolari has the reputation, presence and style Abramovich craves and given time, he will be successful. Now if he can just persuade Ronaldo to sign for us.

The Guardian reports.

Speaking from Portugal’s training camp in the Swiss city of Neuchatel on Wednesday, Ronaldo made a keenly awaited statement on his future. The 23-year-old stated that he wanted to leave Old Trafford to sign for the Spanish champions if they made good on their promises of world record transfer fees and wages. Spanish media reports have placed the value of a Madrid offer to United at €100m and the player’s salary at £15m a year.

“I want to play for Real Madrid, but only if it is true they are eager to pay me and Manchester United what they have been saying they will,” said Ronaldo in an interview with the respected Brazilian website Terra. “However, it does not depend on me.”

So is Ronaldo a greedy bastard, is he Calling Real’s bluff or is it all just bollocks – you decide. Still as a Chelsea fan, I would gladly see the back of him.

Well, if you’re an Arsenal, Liverpool or Man U fan it’ll be yes, yes, yes. The Daily Telegraph is reporting that Inter have released Mancini, now I’m a bit forgetful but hasn’t Mancini failed to overcome Arsenal. Liverpool and Man U in the Champions league? My choice? I’d pick Roy Keane, he’s impressed me greatly me with his style of management and taking Sunderland from the bottom of the Championship to the top in one season was phenomenal.