When Percy Main Amateurs crashed 5-1 at home to Blyth Town
on Saturday 13th April 2013, I thought my weekend couldn’t get any
worse; how wrong I was. Having passed on my season ticket to my son, I wasn’t
present at St. James’ Park to see the Mackems’ biggest win over us since 24th
February 1979, which was so long ago; it was back in the days before Margaret
Thatcher became Prime Minister. Just like the post-match pagger on 14th
April, there was a huge kick off that day as well, in the shape of the infamous
Battle of Bath Lane. I wasn’t involved; being a Felling lad, I headed grumpily
down to Worswick Street for my bus and promptly fainted for the one and only
time in my life on the 60 somewhere on Split Crow Road. It turned out I had
contracted glandular fever, which pretty much incapacitated me for the rest of
that term (I was 14 at the time) and meant I missed our 5-3 thumping of
Charlton the week after; unfortunately, despite a bit of a sore throat from
screaming in frustration at the radio as I alphabetised 250 non-league football
programmes in Percy Main’s clubhouse as an attempted distraction, I have no
medical condition to insulate me from the harm this latest game has done to my
wellbeing. Instead, I took my frustration out on my bike, by spending the
aftermath of the game cycling aimlessly around the coast, trying to get a sense
of perspective on the car crash week that seemed to have put the tin hat on a
car crash season.
By the time I’d arrived back in Tynemouth around 5, things
were falling in to place in my mind; even if the very drunk, very angry, well
dressed middle aged people who were congregating outside the bars on Front
Street were struggling to process the enormity of what had just occurred, if
the large amount of pissed balding, blokes in tight fitting grey shirts or
yellow polos, shouting profanities in to mobiles was anything to go by.
Basically, losing to the Mackems was both a humiliation and an embarrassment,
both on and off the pitch; the sobering facts are they were better in every
position, wanted the win far more and scored three blinding strikes, while our
team offered nothing other than Cisse’s endeavour and off the pitch, our lot
handled defeat in a manner similar to the way a poorly toddler with colic
handles insomnia. My mantra has always been: gracious in victory, dignified in
defeat; there wasn’t much sign of the latter when some brainless, replica
shirted prick, who’ll probably never blow less than a half century of candles
out on his birthday cake again, thought the best way to respond to defeat to
one’s local rivals is to punch a horse. Conduct like that is just not on; if
you can’t cope with defeat, then don’t follow football. In the 40 years I’ve
been going to Newcastle United, the only thing we’ve won, bar the Second
Division title twice, is the Inter Toto Cup in 2007. Even then, that was because
Auxerre beat Livorno and nothing directly to do with our efforts!! However, I
have never sought take my frustrations at our ineptitude out on a blameless
equine.
I just want this dreadful season over with. While, at the
time of writing, we still have 5 games to go, I don’t think we’ll get
relegated, as I’m utterly convinced we’ll do enough to stay up; our players may
have been abject against the Mackems, but they still have undeniable talent,
even if it is not being harnessed properly. I must confess though Benfica broke
my heart more than the Mackems game. Against the talented Portuguese, Pardew,
for once and I’ll return to this later on, got his tactics absolutely spot on
in that game; we soaked up the pressure in the first half and when it looked as
if there was still some hope for us, we went for it in the second half and
effectively cranked up the pressure. Cisse’s goal gave us the belief that we
could pull this off and if Ben Arfa’s shot had been a foot lower, we could well
have done. Then we would have had Fenerbahce in the semi-finals and either
Chelsea or Basle in the final; frankly, we’ve blown our best chance in years to
actually win something. Santon’s back pass and Taylor’s idiotic hand-ball sent
us out in the final analysis. However, the mainly positive vibe after our
Europa League exit was that this campaign had been a great adventure and it
demonstrated we could effectively build up a head of steam to go for a cup
competition. Consequently, if Pardew wishes to remain in post and any level of positive
approval from the support, we need to make a serious, concerted bid to win the
League Cup next year. The fact is, as soon as we qualified for the Europa
League last season, I told anyone who would listen that we’d just effectively
resigned from the domestic cups for this season and condemned ourselves to a
lousy league campaign; those chickens have come home to roost, as they did for
Fulham two years ago and Stoke last year, because the sheer number of games in
the Europa League shows participation in it to be a double-edged sword.
Of course, the Europa League is only part of the reason why
we’ve underachieved in the league; a shameful lack of investment last summer is
the main cause for the fact we are still at the business end of the table in
mid-April, closely followed by a quite horrific and scarcely credible series of
major, high profile injuries. Put it this way, our first choice XI and a
full-strength substitutes bench should be enough to have us somewhere between
sixth and eighth. I’m assuming our
current best team, if everyone was fit, would be: Krul, Debuchy, Santon, Yanga-Mbiwa,
Coloccini, Tiote, Cabaye, Sissoko, Ben Arfa, Gouffran, Cisse with a bench of:
Elliott, Anita, S Taylor, R Taylor, Marveaux, S Ameobi and presumably Obertan.
Admittedly, we’re desperately short of another striker, possibly two, but that
is a pretty decent line-up and it should be far higher in the table than it is.
Consider this though; of the 18 players mentioned, 11 of them have been injured
at some point, 7 of them from the starting XI. Consider also; 4 of them arrived
in January. Consider finally; 9 of the starting XI “played” against the Mackems
and 12 of the whole 18 made it on to the pitch. This has led me to the
uncomfortable conclusion that Pardew is skating on thinner and thinner ice as
the unconvincing performances in the league begin to stack up. He may not lose
his job if things don’t rapidly improve, but he will undoubtedly lose the
respect of almost every fan.
The most damning description of the manager I’ve heard was
by my mate Gary, who described Pardew as “basically Glenn Roeder with better
aftershave and more nightclub confidence.” While I don’t think Pardew is a
charlatan, a clown, as bad a boss as Souness or any number of the abusive
comments hurled in his direction on countless occasions this season, I do think
he has been found to be wanting in many respects, not least in his inability to
make a convincing case that he’s his own man and not just a stooge for the
owners. Worse than this, he has been tactically appalling in too many games
this season to allow things to continue in this fashion much longer. It is a
complete indictment of him that, at the time of writing, he has managed a
solitary away win in the whole of this season; that is simply unacceptable
however you dress it up.
Newcastle United have a very talented squad of players, but
it seems to be that these lions are led by donkeys; neither Carver nor stone
convince me that they have the necessary wherewithal to be coaches at a top
club. Are they, along with Steven Taylor, simply token Geordies, used as
publicity fodder to make bland pronouncements in the local press that, as fans,
they are “hurting” just as much as the rest of us after another dismal defeat?
Pardew and his staff need to take a long, hard look at themselves this coming
close season and return in August with a brand new A Game and also a Plan B,
because neither of those things have been anywhere near SJP in 2012/2013.
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