Bicycle Thieves

Over the past few weeks I’ve been busy pretending to be a writer, penning sombre, pettifogging articles for the likes of Hopeless Football Romantic, The Football Pink, STAND and C-O-N, with another piece for View from the Allotment End still germinating. The thread that these prosaic purples all have in common is the almost complete absence of any Newcastle United content. Indeed, the last time I turned my gaze on events at SJP was Monday 30^th January, when I had this to say http://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.co.uk/2017_01_01_archive.html so it’s about time I got the old hair shirt on, while recognising this piece by Michael Atkinson is the best thing you’ll read about Newcastle anywhere this season; https://medium.com/@ATKmichael/playing-to-the-crowd-ace525ae562#.vs8ww2unl 

Since the start of February, NUFC’s league record is: played 11, won 5, drawn 5 and lost 1; not bad eh? Depends who you are talking to I guess; as ever the Newcastle support is bitterly divided between the unquestioning devotees of Benitez and the jaundiced whingers who make the Arsenal Fans TV celebrities seem like the Dalai Lama. Now, with freebies thin on the ground, I’ve only seen one league game this calendar year. I found myself in a sparsely populated Gallowgate West Upper on a buckshee NUFC Foundation ticket for QPR on February 1^st, where we started off like an express train, lost our way, regained the advantage, missed some sitters and conceded a farcical sucker punch, every bit as comical as Diame’s equaliser at Brighton, to piss two points down the drain deep into stoppage time. Walking out the ground you’d have thought we’d been relegated to the Conference North, such was the ire in the voices of some oafs, including one beaut who claimed that the game had been “worse than anything under MacClaren.” You don’t even need to worry about the sanity of such chuckleheads; they can safely be ignored, though it would be nice if they could be muzzled.  Or buried in shallow graves in the Cheviots.

Subsequent to the QPR game, the magic of television has enabled me to see a further 4 contests. Wolves, Villa, Brighton and Huddersfield; we won them all, the first two scrappily and the latter two with a swagger. Wolves was plain ugly, with Mitrovic (now seemingly out of the first team picture, thankfully) lucky to still be on the pitch when he scored the decisive goal. Villa outplayed us for 40 minutes, then folded like a wonky deckchair after we took the lead, with Lansbury’s own goal a delicious bonus. Brighton was as good as we’ve played all season and it seemed destined to end in failure until Diame’s aforementioned spawny fluke, though Perez’s winner is a great shout for goal of the season. Huddersfield had more of the ball, but we kept them at arm’s length, reminding me of the second half of the Reading home game, when it all started to click and the Royals couldn’t get within 40 yards of our goal. They didn’t in the return game either, but I didn’t get to see that one.

Following the games on March 18^th, the Championship is on a little break until April 1^st. The current situation is this; with 8 games to go, Newcastle United are a point clear of Brighton at the top of the table, with Huddersfield Town a further 6 points back, though the Terriers do have a crucial game in hand against Wolves, which won’t be played until Tuesday April 25^th. By then, Newcastle will have played Wigan, Burton, Leeds and Preston at home, as well as Sheffield Wednesday and Ipswich away. If those 6 games replicate the first meetings between the teams, the Magpies will have accumulated a further 15 points to go with the 78 already in the bag. On paper, the two Yorkshire fixtures appear the most challenging of the next half dozen assignments, but that ignores two major points that deserve serious consideration. Firstly, Newcastle’s home form has been patchy of late. Secondly, it appears that Rafa’s belief in a 4-3-2-1 tactical straitjacket can often appear to be obstinate intransigence.

Before discussing those issues, I need to say that if Newcastle do secure promotion, and I believe they will do, then all I can see for next year is a dreary, attritional battle to avoid the drop, unless £200m is invested on players. I’m not even prepared to contemplate the internal politics that would come into play regarding such injections of hard cash.  Suffice to say, if we’d brought Andros Townsend back in January, we’d be over the line already.

As regards the home atmosphere, I’ve said it many times in the past, but Last Night of the Proms style semaphore displays and organised terrace choirs are just not my thing. I’m sure the Gallowgate Flags organisation and the risibly named Wor Hyem agglomeration are superbly effective at what they do, but I’m far more impressed by the efforts of NUFC Fans United, the club, the rejuvenated NUST board (now denuded of one particularly divisive influence) and the support in general for the incredible work involved in making the NUFC foodbanks initiative, in association with Newcastle West End Foodbank, such a roaring success. Losing to Fulham and drawing with Bristol City fade into insignificance when one considers what is being done to assist the most marginalised members of our society. That’s Geordie hospitality. That’s regional pride. That’s the best of my home city. Of course it’s an utter disgrace and a stain on our society that such organisations are required in 2017, but sometimes actions speak louder than principles.

The question of Rafa’s tactics in home games is coming under greater scrutiny as time goes on. At the end of January, it was my feeling that Benitez wasn’t doing well enough, considering the resources at his disposal. My particular complaint was about the seeming inability of the team to come back from going behind. Since then, I’m far more convinced he’s working for his money; the televised games and trip to Reading we’ve discussed, but in addition there was the strength to hold off a Derby side on a decent run of form, the belief to keep on plugging away at Norwich that garnered a late point and the refusal to lie down against Bristol City; eight more than satisfactory performances in a row. Of course it seems that some of the support will never be happy unless we win every game 10-0, playing a synthesis of Keegan 93-96, tiki taka and Total Voetbal. I blame Arsenal supporters for this, as there are impressionable kids up and down the country, many following my own club, who seem to want to imitate them. What other explanation could there be for a tubby, drunken little pensioner in a Hi-Viz jacket spoiling for a pagger post Bristol City? If you can’t handle not winning, then don’t follow football.

Undeniably, we were played off the pitch by Fulham, but the draw at Birmingham wasn’t a bad result in the context of Huddersfield’s thumping by Bristol City and Leeds doing a number on Brighton. Perhaps sometimes we could do with partnering Murphy and Gayle up front to try and be a bit more direct, but Rafa has never shown any inclination to look at 4-4-2. His methods have got us where we are and I’m sure he’ll see the project through; I just wish he’d react quicker to events, with tactical changes and substitutions in a timely manner.  Ironically the much vaunted Karanka who I’ve suggested could be our boss in the past, has lost his job on Teesside because of intransigence.

Undeniably, the last 2 games have made it a bit of a limp trudge into the stasis of yet another international break, but this could be all for the better; Gayle can work on his sharpness, while Clark and Hayden can get back to full fitness, as we’ll need all the bodies we can muster for the vital last 8 games. Let’s keep the faith and keep the manager; if Rafa is on his bike come season’s end, we may as well shut the club down.