I’ve never
been a gambler. My old fella, who was so tight he could peel oranges in his
pocket with boxing gloves on and wouldn’t spend Christmas if he could help it,
drummed it in to me from an early age that a fool and his money are soon
parted. His puritanical distaste for betting shops came as a result of bitter
personal experience, involving the loss of the princely sum of 7’6d on a nag at
Haydock Park sometime in the mid-1950s. In many ways, it’s good a good thing
the propensity for the odd flutter wasn’t hard wired into my DNA as, notwithstanding
the fact I find the urge to discover which horse is the fastest hideously
uninteresting, I’ve never been able to accurately predict the outcome of any
major football competition or the fortunes of any club therein.
Take for
instance Newcastle United; last summer, following the arrival of Steve McClaren
and a few seemingly reliable, steady signings, I would have told anyone, if
asked, that I had a gut instinct NUFC would be involved in the highest number of
sterile nil-nils imaginable as our destiny seemed to be a berth among the
mediocre and modest, becalmed in about 12th place. My reasoning was
based on McClaren being a cautious, safety-first manager, keen on low-risk
football that emphasised a “what we have, we hold” philosophy. Got that one
wrong didn’t I? Newcastle United’s season resembled nothing so much as a
clown’s car hurtling over a cliff face at breakneck speed.
However,
such an outcome wasn’t immediately obvious. Indeed, when trying to pinpoint the
start of the decline, the performances in the early part of the season actually
produced few calls for regime change. As ever it was the immediate and
unnegotiable cessation of spending long before the end of the August transfer
window, without the club having made any realistic attempts to plug the obvious
gaps in the squad that spurred a sense of unease among the support. Anyone who
knew anything about football could see Newcastle had a decent first XI, if top
heavy in the delusional prima donna department, but little strength in depth
and a totally lopsided squad, which included a surfeit of midfielders, a dearth
of defenders and a farce of a forward line. We knew injuries would cripple us;
and they did. In addition, NUFC had a meek, busted flush of a manager, prepared
to hold his own counsel as he presumably struggled to believe he’d somehow
landed a job in the top flight after failing in most of his jobs over the last
half decade or more.
From a year later’s
perspective, the single, biggest flagship mistake and the herald of impending
disaster was the crass folly of not strengthening the centre half position.
Alarm bells ought to have started ringing when Coloccini, ageing, infirm and under
motivated, was presented with a new deal; apparently it was to reward him for
something or other, but a fat lot of good that decision did us. After half a
season of underwhelming cameos, his last game was a 5-1 battering at Chelsea in
January, before a “minor thigh strain” kept him out for four months. Just the
kind of selfless dedication a club in relegation danger expects from their
captain. Sadly, there was nobody to adequately replace him, as our only real
defensive signing Chancel Mbemba, who had a steady season, got injured, though
big love to the lads who’d arrived from Forest the summer before, Darlow and
Lascelles, the latter stepping up to the plate and showing he not only cared
but he has some presence as a stopper. There is no coincidence in the fact that
the window of adequacy Benitez opened in the last few games came with Mbemba
and Lascelles in defence.
As for the
other signings, Wijnaldum came in like a lion and went out like a louse,
offering precisely nothing in away games, while Mitrovic lived up to his
reputation as the Serbian Billy Whitehurst, combining an atrocious lack of
composure in the box with a pathological need to act the hard lad; somebody
really ought to have told him eyeballing refs, while collecting red cards and
suspensions provides infinitely less for the team than goals scored. Both
Thauvin and Toney did nowt and went out on loan, while January arrivals Saivet
and Doumbia played about 15 minutes between them. Andros Townsend was an
unqualified success, but he’s already gone to Crystal Palace and Pards of all
teams, seeking to get back in the England squad. Christ they need him. Finally,
there’s the enigmatic Jonjo Shelvey; a world beater on his debut against West
Ham, but almost invisible thereafter, before being rightly dropped from the
team. Scarcely credibly, Newcastle United were Europe’s biggest spenders in the
January transfer window. Predictably, they will begin 2016/2017 with none of
those signings anywhere near the first team.
Shelvey’s
nemesis wasn’t the cowardly, timorous and utterly inept McClaren, who was finally
shown the door after a laughably bad 3-1 home loss to Bournemouth in early
March that faithfully recreated the Ossie Ardiles era for those too young to
have wept through it a quarter of a century previously. Shelvey was declared
surplus to requirements by Rafa Benitez; a man with a managerial CV that puts
every other former incumbent of the SJP hot seat to shame, Bobby Robson
included. Quite frankly it astonishes me still that Rafa Benitez not only
arrived to attempt a Red Adair style rescue operation on a season that had
crashed and burned like a flaming chip pan drizzled in tap water, but
subsequentl accepted the role of
Newcastle United manager for another 3 years. Without wishing to play the
clichéd media construct of the deluded Geordie, I maintain that, despite
relegation, I’ve never felt more optimistic about the long term prospects on
Barrack Road for years.
Of course,
what Benitez didn’t arrive soon enough to achieve was keep the team up. In
retrospect, McClaren ought never to have been appointed in the first place. The
first logical sacking point was after a pitiful 5-1 trouncing at Selhurst Park
in late November. Lee Charnley, no doubt fearful of Ashley’s response to
dispensing with the services of a man they’d spent months courting,
prevaricated and the team deservedly beat both Liverpool and Spurs in the next
two games, handing a stay of execution to McClaren. The axe loomed in
mid-February with the aforementioned Chelsea debacle, especially as that game
was followed by a blank fortnight (NUFC don’t do the FA Cup), giving a new
manager time to assess the situation and bed in some tactical modifications.
This being Newcastle, nothing happened and the team returned, bronzed by
Andalusian early spring sunshine, to lose scruffily at Stoke and ineptly
against Bournemouth. Things had to change and they did, though the Premiership
Lifeboat sailed without them.
That Rafa
Benitez failed to keep Newcastle up is no stain on his record at all; it is
testament to the repeated folly of an almost decade-long wrongheaded and
foolhardy recruitment policy that sought only to buy cheap, young continental
talented prospects, hoping to sell them for top dollar after a couple of years’
service. While that may be the case with Moussa Sissoko, whose 2016 European
Championships campaign was one long show reel for potential suitors, the litany
of hideous failures: Gouffran, Marveaux, Riviere, Cabella, Riviere and so on,
should tell you all you need to know about why Newcastle United are growing
accustomed to life in the second tier. Bad signings and bad management resulted
in the aforementioned hopelessly unbalanced squad, which lacked the personnel,
motivation and tenacity to acquire enough points to stay up. Under McClaren,
Newcastle acquired 0.9 points per game, while under Benitez that increased to
1.3, with the caveat that the last 6 games of the season saw the side go
unbeaten and harvest 12 points. While it is impossible to predict what could
have happened if Benitez had arrived sooner, especially considering he was at
the Bernabeu until mid-January, even a couple more games (Stoke and Bournemouth
for instance) with him at the helm may well have been enough to rescue the
sinking ship. Then again, the away losses to Norwich, where three points were
on a plate only for an injury time collapse to yield a defeat, and Southampton,
where the calamitous Steven Taylor gave a defensive masterclass not previously
seen outside the Tyneside Sunday League Division 5, showed that this club was
destined for demotion.
Despite
Rafa’s best efforts, this was to be our fate. Much as it pains me to say it,
congratulations go to Sunderland; successive home wins over Chelsea and Everton
in the last week of the season sealed Newcastle’s fate. Sometimes you just have
to hold your hands up and say well played, especially Jermaine Defoe whose
goals were a crucial factor. Interestingly, the overwhelming majority of Newcastle
fans accepted relegation with equanimity and good grace, long before Benitez
agreed to return, precisely because it was deserved. Of course there were a few
hotheads on social media and local radio, demanding Lee Charnley retire to the
boardroom with a loaded revolver, who were intent on creating some kind of
media shitstorm on the final day of the season, a dead rubber at home to Spurs.
Leading up
to that game, I’d envisaged St James Park would have seen 8,000 empty seats,
3,000 away fans rubbing our noses in it, 40k long-suffering club loyalists
suffering in silence and about 500 drunken, angry middle-aged men in chunky
Italian knitwear, replete with impotent rage, making fools of themselves by
gesticulating endlessly at the Directors’ Box. In the end, the reality was far
different; the team, seemingly released from the shackles of inertia and fear
that had gripped them for so long, tore into a woeful Spurs side and ripped
them apart 5-1, accompanied by an unceasing and deafening show of support for
Rafa Benitez, whose name was sung all game. Admittedly there were the
predictable handful of malcontents seething their way back down Pink Lane at
full time, who seemed to find a victory more infuriating than a loss, as it
“showed what they could have done if they’d wanted to,” but they were a tiny
minority. I left the ground at full time with a feeling this could be a real
turning point in our club’s history.
Now I don’t
believe any of the Toon Army mythology; fans of every club are equally
passionate and negative by turn. What I do feel is that the positivity
expressed that day helped to persuade Benitez there was a project he could buy
into on Tyneside. I’m delighted he has stayed and I’m equally delighted he has full,
overall control of all football matters. As I speak, the pace of signings seems
to continue unabated; 5 out the door and 5 in, as well as a few youngsters to
bolster the Under 21 side, which for too long has been woefully neglected. Both
Dwight Gayle and Matt Ritchie are proven at Championship level. I don’t know
anything about Matz Sels or Jesus Gamez, but it suggests the big-earners are for the off. I’d expect Sissoko, Wijnaldum, Krul and possibly Tiote
to leave as well. What I am pleased about when discussing new arrivals, is how
quickly they’ve been signed and how keen they are to join us. Without seeking
to be presumptuous, I can see us hopefully making the play-offs.
Politically,
we are living in terrifying times; for once, football is a relatively calm
counterbalance to the unending constitutional crisis of summer 2016. As far as
Newcastle United are concerned, I am happy to live in interesting times. You
see it is my firm contention that the Championship is the place to be for 2016/2017.
Never mind the media hype and hysteria over Mourinho versus Guardiola, or
frothing speculation about Conte’s prospects at Chelsea, the division below is
the place to be. Can Villa regroup? Will Norwich still play football the right
way? What will become of Derby County and Nottingham Forest? Has Alan Stubbs,
fresh from triumph at Hibs, chosen wisely when moving to Rotherham? Indeed,
with Barnsley, Huddersfield, Leeds and Sheff Wed also in the Championship, is
it being sponsored by the Yorkshire Tourist board? With Friday night and
Saturday tea time football, I’m actively looking forward to what’s in store, especially
Burton Albion; the home of Bass, the world’s greatest beer, playing in the
world’s most intriguing division. I’ll drink to that!!
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