Pitch perfect for Perchinho

The Football League kicked off on Saturday, and Perchinho's Wigan debut couldn't have gone much better. Aided and abetted by a red card for Barnsley debutant Dale Jennings, the Latics romped to a 4-0 away win as they kicked off their bid for an immediate return to the top flight in fine style.

Danny Simpson's new side QPR have similar ambitions, and got off to their own winning start by beating Sheffield Wednesday 2-1. Simpson's old St James' Park colleague ASBO was partnered in central midfield by Karl Henry, the pair apparently nemeses no more following a kiss-and-make-up session shortly after the latter's arrival from Wolves.

Elsewhere in the Championship, Shane Ferguson couldn't prevent Birmingham from opening their campaign with a home defeat - though Blues do at least have the consolation of knowing they're unlikely to be the last side to be beaten on their own patch by most people's promotion favourites Watford. In the sole fixture yesterday, there was a familiar name on the scoresheet for Blackburn, first-half substitute Leon O'Best popping up with an 89th minute equaliser at Pride Park. Good to see him back playing again.

Further down the divisions, James Tavernier helped Shrewsbury keep a clean sheet at home to MK Dons, but it was a baptism of fire for Michael Richardson, whose Accrington Stanley side suffered a 4-1 spanking at League Two new boys Newport.

Trouble at t'mill town

The Two Unfortunates' season preview kicked off today with a lengthy piece on the woes of Leon O'Best's new club Blackburn contributed by yours truly. Hard to imagine, I know, but Rovers seem to be in a more parlous and farcical state than even we've managed over the years...

Hammer time for Rocky?

Might our pursuit of Rocky be at an end? The BBC are reporting that our former striker is on the verge of joining West Ham on loan for a fee of £2m. His club Liverpool seem to be giving out mixed messages about whether or not they want to keep him; if Rocky does feel to have been deemed surplus to requirements at Liverpool, then - despite apparently favouring a move back to Tyneside - he might decide to take whatever escape route is offered. If a loan deal has been agreed with Fat Sam's Hammers, then you'd imagine the only thing that could scupper it would be an acceptable bid for a permanent deal. The ball's in your court, Jabba, and you don't have much time to decide...

On a tangential note, sad news for another of our former strikers. Leon O'Best was unfortunate enough to sustain a serious knee injury in a recent pre-season friendly for Blackburn, one which looks likely to keep him out of action for six months. We wish him well for a swift recovery.

Bye bye O'Best

So it's farewell to Leon O'Best, who today completed his move to relegated Blackburn Rovers for a fee said to be in excess of £3m. That means we've doubled our money on the Republic of Ireland striker, signed in January 2010 as part of a posse to help get us over the promotion line - and the fee could rise higher should he help Rovers bounce back into the Premier League. Good business, arguably, for a player who's suffered with more than his fair share of injuries.

Most of us had O'Best pegged as an out-of-his-depth try-hard, even after he got off the mark for the club in spectacular fashion with a hat-trick at home to a hapless West Ham, and it's true that he probably didn't quite have the quality or finesse required of a real top-flight forward. Nevertheless, he scored skilful winners at St James' Park last season against both Fulham and QPR, and was also on the scoresheet in that phenomenal 4-4 draw with Arsenal. The writing was on the wall in February, though, when he limped off injured at home to Villa and had to watch from the sidelines as debutant Papiss Cisse pinged a left-foot scorcher into the top corner of Shay Given's net.

As a forward who made the most of somewhat limited abilities, he followed in the footsteps of Antoine Sibierski and, like the Frenchman, can leave the club with his head held high and with our best wishes to send him on his way.

Of course, O'Best's departure leaves us with fewer striking options - beyond Cisse and Demba Ba, we're now looking at Big Lad, essentially, as the Lone Ranger and Xisco are currently well out of the frame and Peter Lovenkrands has also left. So, in other words, selling the Irishman can only be considered genuinely good business if we can strengthen the squad by bringing in a superior replacement. Which is where Twente's Luuk de Jong comes in - and hopefully come in he will. His agent Louis Laros' recent comments will have given us some encouragement: "Luuk is still a Twente player. If the right club comes along then he will happily make the move. The club doesn't need to be a top club, but a good club in a big league where Luuk can play regularly and develop as a player."

The Dutch club might be trying to play hardball over the fee (as is their right, of course), but given that de Jong's agent has declared that his client "has taken the decision to move on", you do wonder whether they might come to view dispensing with a disgruntled wantaway player swiftly as the most sensible course of action.

Best better off elsewhere?

With Demba Ba and then Papiss Cisse firing on all cylinders, he became something of a forgotten man, and now it seems as though Leon Best could be plying his trade elsewhere this coming campaign. Blackburn are apparently closing in on a £2.5m deal, but you'd presume that the option of staying in the top flight with either Norwich or former club Southampton would be a more attractive proposition than joining the chicken-in-a-basket-case Lancashire club in the Championship.

Steve Kean - remarkably assured he still has a job - has reportedly also set his sights on Dan Gosling. The midfielder's career on Tyneside has been severely blighted by chronic injury problems and we've never seen the best of the man we poached from under Everton's nose (or even much more than five minutes of him), so I wouldn't be surprised to see him leave - even if, like Best, he's arguably capable of performing respectably for a club in the lower echelons of the Premier League rather than having to step down a division.

O'Best not good enough

That's the message sent out by Celtic manager Neil Lennon's recent comments, in which he confirmed that we were prepared to flog O'Best to the Bhoys on deadline day. A fee had been agreed and the deal was only scuppered by the striker's unwillingness to unsettle his young family.

On the one hand, O'Best's availability for transfer should come as little surprise, given our hefty January investment in Papiss Cisse, who will surely start ahead of him. But on the other, it does seem a bit harsh on a player who has given his all whenever called up on in the Premier League, and scored a tremendous winning goal against QPR just three weeks ago.

With Big Lad too often inconsistent, Peter Lovenkrands too often lightweight and Nile Ranger off the radar, O'Best would appear to be our third-choice forward after Ba and Cisse - both of whom were more than a bit off-colour during the African Cup of Nations. If he thinks he can still comfortably hold down a first-team place, then he's allowed his notorious self-confidence to get the better of him - but it's probably safe to say that he'll make another useful contribution to our unlikely pursuit of European football before the season's out.

Cult hero

(Image courtesy of Gene Selkov)

You've got to hand it to HBA. Not only does he seem well aware of the noble tradition of Newcastle players landing themselves neck-deep in hot water with the law, but he's found a remarkably novel way of doing so. Not for him one of the various driving offences committed by Toon players past and present, or waving around a replica gun like the Lone Ranger, or a good old-fashioned bout of lairy violence a la Rocky or ASBO.

Oh no.

Instead, HBA has been accused of libellous comments made in an interview with French football mag L'Equipe, in which he claimed to have been forced into joining a religious sect by rapper Abd al Malik, who is now suing our forward. The club's had plenty of cult heroes in the past, just not literally...

HBA also told L'Equipe - the organ of choice when French players want to sound off or be candid/indiscreet in their native tongue, it seems - that his issues with authority and attitude problem stemmed from the lack of paternal love he experienced as a child. And what of his current manager - is HBA feeling the Silver Fox's love? "No. But I respect him for that choice." Our number ten is a complex individual and no mistake - no doubt he's putting his gaffer's fabled man-management skills fully to the test.

It turns out that the Frenchman hasn't been the only Toon forward pondering matters paternal in relation to a dislike/distrust of authority figures. In HBA's case, it was the absence of his father's love; in Leon O'Best's case, it was the absence of a father at all. The Nottingham-born hero of Sunday's win over QPR told the BBC's Late Kick-Off that he's since grown up and benefitted enormously from the guidance and support of his mum. Apparently he did drift down the "wrong path" for a while, and many childhood friends with whom he's still in contact are now serving time - not that the two paths are mutually exclusive, of course, as the case of ASBO demonstrates...

Quote of the day

"Every time it's mentioned it baffles me. I've seen what Trapttoni's been saying in the papers about work rate but he only needs to ring up Newcastle and ask for my stats, it's as simple as that.

The Prozone will tell you that I'm doing nearly 10km a day. I don't what it is. Obviously, if he's saying I need to work harder then I need to work harder. He's a man to learn off, he's got the experience and he knows what he wants.

It's the best time of my career so it's not a matter of disappointment. It just made me sit back and think - what's going on here?"

Leon O'Best on once again being omitted from Giovanni Trapattoni's Republic of Ireland squad. Fair comment - he's not the only one who's baffled...

That said, O'Best's going through a bit of a lean spell at the moment - about time he gave Demba Ba some competition in the goalscoring stakes and prodded in another rebound from two yards.

Quote of the day

"Winning football is about 11 players running for 90 minutes, or 94 minutes, with a winning mentality. I cannot have players who just wait for the ball. We need a team, we need work and commitment. That is football. We need this mentality because with our mentality anything is possible. We cannot afford to have players standing there waiting for the ball."

Republic of Ireland manager Giovanni O'Trapattoni explains why Leon O'Best hasn't been rewarded for his early-season form with an international recall.

Clearly the Italian hasn't been watching our games very closely this season - O'Best may be a player of limited abilities, but his selfless running and determination in the games against Villa and Blackburn in particular were exemplary. And that's not to mention his Premier League goalscoring record for us.

In other news, last night's 3-0 win for the Reserves at Bolton was notable for three things: a brace for Sylvain Marveaux, a debut at this level for U18 hotshot JJ Hooper and another decent performance from Dan Gosling, whom new Doncaster manager Dean Saunders is rumoured to be eyeing up as a potential loan signing.

Best's bust

The media continue to link us with prospective replacements for Rocky (ie anyone tall who's ever scored a goal or two) - the latest candidates being Malaga's Jose Salomon Rondon and, much more fancifully, Spurs' Champions League scourge Emmanuel Adebayor - but the news for one of those currently being asked to fill his size nines wasn't good. Leon Best will be up on bricks for the rest of the season as a result of surgery on his ankle injury.

Not so long ago most of us would have scoffed at the very thought of Best being able to cut it in the Premier League, but that hat-trick against West Ham turned a few heads and he's since netted another three times to average more than a goal every other start - not too shabby at all. So his loss - which leaves Nile Ranger and Shefki Kuqi as the less-than-convincing back-up for preferred pairing Big Lad and Peter Lovenkrands - could potentially be damaging.

Clubbers' comedown

So Stephen Ireland and Leon Best have issued an apology for their ill-timed neet oot on the club website. It bears all the hallmarks of having been forced out of them by an angry Alan Pardew, but let's hope Ireland now appreciates the circumstances in which he finds himself and remembers the need to make a good impression rather than just an impression generally...

Club's clubbers caught on camera

So, does Stephen Ireland's neediness stretch to needing the freedom to have a night out on the tiles? An unusual injury cure for Ireland (and Leon Best), to be sure, though not a novel one - Rocky having pioneered it at the start of the year...

Not the actions of a man aware he needs to impress to win a contract - and he'd do well to remember that he's not likely to be welcome back at Villa Park if a deal doesn't materialise...

And then there was one?

So, Leon Best and Nile Ranger have dropped out of the Republic of Ireland and England U20 squads respectively. Please, please, please let the withdrawals be precautionary. In Best's case, however, that seems unlikely - it's being reported that he's suffering from hamstring-hamstrungness.

With doubts hanging over both players' heads, Big Lad sidelined for the next few weeks, the Xisco Kid back in Spain and Rocky busy getting his feet under the table on Merseyside, that leaves us with one striker: Peter Lovenkrands. 4-5-1 formation for Blackburn on Saturday, anyone?

Equally concerning as the striker situation, arguably, is the fact that Cheik Tiote will be pressed into action for the Ivory Coast against African rivals Mali tonight. At least the game's taking place in France so the trip won't be as long and draining as it might have been, but knowing that Saturday's hero, one of our most precious players, will be involved in a meaningless kickabout has me rather nervous. After Saturday's extraordinary events, might his international teammate Emmanuel Eboue be tempted to play him a hospital ball or two?