The 25 shits of Christmas - days 11, 12, 13 and 14…

Another bumper edition of turtal turkeys, starting with Robbo’s favourite, Paul Cannell.

More famous for his name sounding more like an expletive than any sort of ability, Cannell, from North Shields, suffered from being Supermac’s replacement of sorts, and although had a fairly decent scoring record, he will be remembered predominantly as shite. So shite, in fact, that someone has edited his Wikipedia entry, claiming he was educated at the “University of Life” and is now a quiz host. Textbook.

Day twelve (and I know we’re getting ridiculously behind here), is Swedish fop Andreas Andersson.

A beacon of quality shite in a team of shite, Andreas Andersson came from AC Milan (yeah, wtf?) and joined us in 1998 for roughly £3.5m. Wore the number 40 shirt for some unknown reason, and scored just 4 goals in 30+ games before sloping off back to Sweden. Utter, utter, as they say, horseshite.

Day thirteen is everyones favourite under-achiever, Jon-Dahl Tomasson.

Jon-Dahl signed for us in 1997 from SC Heerenveen, and had an excellent start in pre-season, scoring five times in five games. Sadly, the terrible injury to Alan Shearer meant that Tomasson was moved from his usual attacking midfielder role to that of out-and-out striker, and he suffered badly for it, scoring just three times. Went on to make a good career for himself at Feyenoord, Milan and Villareal, so maybe it was the old Newcastle curse which did for the Dane.

Finally, bringing us back up-to-date, is day fourteen, and Silvio Maric.

Maric was signed for a fee of £3.5m from Dinamo Zagreb after impressing Toon officials in our match against them in the Champions League qualifier. Sadly his only impact was teeing up Big Al for that goal against Spurs in the FA Cup Semi Final at Old Trafford. Completely inept in the middle or out wide, Maric looked completely out of his depth and was finally loaned out to Porto before being kicked out back to Zagreb. Toss.