Newcastle's new director of football calls star midfielder Cabaye 'kebab'

Talk about a bad start at your new job. Joe Kinnear, whose reign at Newcastle United in 2008-09 resulted in relegation for the Magpies, has now returned to the club as their new Director of Football. He will apparently oversee transfers and how to make the team better, and is seen as a direct threat to the managerial powers of Alan Pardew, who has held on to the job despite overseeing a bad 2012-13 season. According to reports in the English media, Kinnear embarrassed himself by mispronouncing the names of several key Newcastle players. He called star midfielder Yohan Cabaye ‘kebab’, striker Shola Ameobi ‘Amanobi’, Jonas Gutierrez as ‘Gaultierez’ and tricky winger Hatem Ben Arfa as ‘Ben Afrie’ and ‘Ben Afra’. [caption id=“attachment_884653” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Joe Kinnear at St James’ park. Getty Images[/caption] Not only that, he also called managing director Derek Lambias as ‘Lambezee’. In his previous stint at St.James’, he had called Charles N’Zogbia ‘Insomnia’ — N’Zogbia then left a few weeks later for Wigan Athletic, where he became a fine player. Shocking, in the least! Click here to listen to the audio interview. But these are not the only gaffes Kinnear has made since arriving at Newcastle. The former Wimbledon and Nepal manager (yes, that’s true) also claimed that he is the one who signed goalkeeper Tim Krul. Krul actually made his debut in 2006 and Kinnear was Newcastle manager in 2008-09. Kinnear’s appointment has been met with a lot of criticism. To this, he had to say: “Look at my record. These people ask what have I done. Where have these people been - on another planet? I’ve played in five Cup Finals and won the lot. I played more than 400 games for Tottenham Hotspur.” Actually, he has played 258 times for Spurs, not 400 times. He also said that he had won the LMA Manager of the Year three times — but sadly for him, he has just won it once, way back in 1994. It was clear via Twitter reactions that the Newcastle fans were embarrassed by Kinnear’s behaviour. He also said that he had been to the top of Mt. Everest and had attendances of 80,000 people at the stadium when Nepal played international matches. In fact, the stadium there, according to people living in Nepal, can hold only 25,000 people.