Manic Depression

I only had the misfortune of seeing The Manic Street Preachers once and that was back in their early days on 1^st August 1991 at the original Riverside, which probably made it one of the dates on the Generation Terrorists tour. The venue was only about half full, but with a discernibly positive attitude to the band hanging in the air. This positivity morphed into anticipation when the intro tape kicked in; Allen Ginsberg theatrically declaiming his magnum opus Howl at deafening volume. As the poet’s histrionic performance reached its climax, the band appeared on stage and tore into their earliest musical manifesto, You Love Us. At this point, the electric atmosphere began to dissipate like escaping air from a rapidly deflating whoopee cushion when it became abundantly clear, from about 6 bars in, that we weren’t in the presence of the future of rock and roll, but a tawdry, sub-Lurkers, pub and punk rock tribute act. At the end of the Manics’ 45-minute set, the crowd drifted away, all enthusiasm gone, all sense of occasion spent, leaving a rerun of Howl to blast out across a deserted room.

 

I’d not had cause the reminisce about that eminently forgettable night in over three decades, until I squeezed myself onto a packed, semi-seething, semi-dejected giant Omicron breeding tube from St James to Tynemouth after Newcastle’s loss to Cambridge in the FA Cup. A sold-out crowd of 52,000, admittedly replete with extended family units treating the match like a trip to the pantomime, filling up on half time bottles of pop and oversized grab bags of sweets and toffees, who had enthusiastically lapped up the well designed populist videos of great goals by even greater players past (Shearer v Everton, Bellamy in Rotterdam, Tiote’s Exocet, Cisse at the Bridge, Pat Heard breaking his duck against Ipswich), indulged the latest pointless flag display in the Gallowgate, clapped along to a Blaydon Races remix, before Local Hero had the whole lot of them cheering the team to the rafters. And then, despite an unending procession of chances, some spurned and some saved, for the first hour, Cambridge’s sucker punt (see what I did there?) holed Newcastle below the waterline and the last half hour saw as frustrating a pattern of play as you’ll ever see. Again, and again, unnecessary over-elaboration, suicidally short passes and a lack of inventive thinking or willingness to take some responsibility, saw 30 minutes squandered and any interest in the FA Cup ended at the first hurdle, yet again.

Of course, this was a minor loss in the scheme of things. Even during the good times we’ve exited both cups at the opening stage on home soil and without scoring, so this debacle will be no more than a hill of beans if we put Watford to bed next weekend. But are we able to do that? We’ve won 1 game all season and, even more than the Southampton, Brentford or Norwich home games, we’ve squandered a more than presentable opportunity to get a good, confidence building result under our belt. Now, the main and probably only lesson to be drawn from Saturday’s shot shy shit show is that if you don’t have any strikers, you won’t score any goals. I’m not suggesting Dwight Gayle would have been the answer to our problems against Cambridge, but he may just have finished once of the half a dozen presentable opportunities that came our way in the opening half. His absence from the matchday squad is presumably, like those of comedy keepers Darlow and Woodman, because a loan move could be prejudiced if they were cup tied.

Regardless of that, it is beyond essential that one or preferably two, attacking options are added to the squad before the Watford game. It’s great we’ve signed Trippier, or Kenny Sansom as he was known when he last appeared at SJP, but his arrival is only the start of things. Yet again I’m proved to be correct in castigating, PIF, Staveley and the Rubens for not having the merest hint of a Plan A in place when the takeover went through. Although, rumour has it we now have a Director of Football in place. Formerly employed by West Brom, Reading and Celtic, a certain Nicky Hammond is to be viewed with the suspicion afforded to the louche lounge lizard your widowed aunt picked up at a tea dance. Apparently, Hammond has replaced the even more ethereal figure of one Frank McParland in this role. Perhaps he got the gig as he’s some distant relative of Alcoholic Anth. Who knows? Who cares? Well I will if the best Hammond can bring in is Chris Wood.

Unless we’re happy to start next season in the Championship, things need to improve massively and immediately. It seems as if the penny is starting to drop that Nice Guy Eddie, whose career highlights include relegating Bournemouth (don’t forget that absolute pasting Algarve-Bruce’s side handed out to them at Dean Court in summer 2020) and running away from Burnley with his tail between his legs as the job was too big for him, may not be the master tactician and skilled motivator most of the support have deluded themselves into believing him to be. Howe is completely out of his depth and will take Newcastle down. At that point, El Fraudo will return from his Goodison Park sabbatical and another stagnant era of eye-bleedingly stale football will commence. We want our club back, eh?

There has to be a point when even the most rabid, hard of thinking, Strawberry Corner flag waver accepts that the time to blame all of Newcastle United’s ills on Mike Ashley and Steve Algarve-Bruce has passed. I believe that time is now; the new ownership needs to be held to account for their nervous inertia and repeated series of wrong decisions. With almost every game, it becomes ever more apparent that Nice Guy Eddie is as suited to the job of keeping us up as Ossie Ardiles was thirty years ago. There have been windows of adequacy amidst the gloom, such as the Burnley win. Lascelles and Shelvey were immensely adequate on the day and Wilson scored an absolute world-class striker’s goal. The rest of the team seemed far fitter than under Bruce, running their legs off until the final whistle, and demonstrating a united front in their purpose of grinding out a win.

Yet the truly maddening thing was the inability to maintain this progress. Next up was Leicester, where a penalty so soft it registered 6.5 on the Bristol Stool Chart ushered in a pitiful second half collapse. It was never a 4-0 game, but the flagrant inability of Nice Guy Eddie to shut up shop and accept it wasn’t going to be our day, for the sake of protecting a rapidly declining goal difference that doesn’t even boast the excuse Norwich have of Tim Krul as their last line of defence, was worrying.

From there to Anfield, where Hayden’s daft theatrics cost us the first goal. Shelvey may have scored an absolute rocket, but he undid all his good work with a blind and brainless back pass that gift wrapped their second. I don’t know about the rest of you, but ASM’s am-dram Richard III act did not convince me in the slightest that he was injured. He just doesn’t fancy it when things get too tough, which is why, despite all of his skill and tricks, he’ll never be seen as the equal of Robert or even Ben Arfa. I do think I’m being a mite over critical, even though we were almost blown away in the first half and never looked likely to score in the second, as Dubravka made some near miraculous saves, and continues to be one of our few top-flight performers. That isn’t something you can say of Ryan Fraser, but at least his efforts and modest achievements should keep the clownish Almiron, with his atrocious ball control and aimless passing, well away from the first team.

Where I think the gap between the support’s belief in Eddie Howe’s ability and the reality of the situation became a yawning chasm was the Man City game. Yes I know it’s Man City and that, on their day, they are undoubtedly the finest team in the world, but to drop Schar, who I’m not claiming to be the stamp of Baresi in his prime, in favour of Clark was idiotic in the extreme. This tactical masterstroke unravelled within 5 minutes of kick off, when fatal hesitancy by the Harrovian handed City the opening goal. Calamitous inaction against this lot is not a good idea. Of course, the scandalous decision not to award us a penalty after Fraser was barged to the floor merely denied us the chance of a consolation, but it further illustrated my point about our shocking goal difference. A further 11 conceded and 1 scored in 3 games makes you wonder if the repeated charge against NUFC fans that they are delusional may actually be the case if any of us express any confidence in our relegation battle credentials. All we can hope for is that the postponed games Norwich, Burnley and Watford have in hand are just fixtures they haven’t lost as yet.

And so to the Manchester United game… Having enjoyed splendid entertainment at Hebburn Town 2 Dunston UTS 1, which for £7 must represent the best quality Step 4 football on offer in the whole country, I was delighted with the way the FSA looked after my welfare, when Chief Executive Kevin Miles gave me a lift home. We discussed the forthcoming game and neither of us had any confidence Newcastle would avoid defeat. We did and should really have won as Ralph Records appears to be another in the lengthening line of chronic underachievers who have attempted to replace Ferguson. The worst legacy of this game was the injury to Wilson. He gets too many of these but it did mean, with the COVID cases as well, that the Everton and Southampton games were postponed, leaving a sense of optimism undimmed until the Cambridge game, which is just about where we came in.

As Heraclitus pointed out around 2,500 years ago, everything is constantly changing and nowhere is this more obvious than at Newcastle United, where the only evidence of mankind consistently doing selfless good works is in the superhuman efforts of the West End Food Bank. Everybody else is underperforming and this needs to stop immediately. NUST seem to have accepted the takeover as a fait accompli and have retreated from sight, allowing the new owners the freedom to do more damage to Newcastle United than Mike Ashley did in 14 years. Their website mentions last summer’s elections to their board, but not the results of the raft of resignations by many of the successful candidates, including that of Graeme Bell. I’ve not met the bloke, but he seemed personable and dedicated, though his choice of on-line friends was questionable and may have made his position untenable. If NUST are meek and mute, True Faith are noisy and noisome. Both the on-line and print versions seem to have turned into an imitation of The Mag, with anodyne opinion pieces that ignore the herd of Saudi elephants shitting in the corner of the room, filling their pages. At least they’ve ditched the endless series of match reports that clogged up bandwidth and pages.  Meanwhile the Twitterati continue to lick Saudi hoop and ignore the very real possibility that, as I said it would, this is all going to unravel at breakneck speed and leaving the rotting hulk of Newcastle United to decay until death.

 

We want our club back. At least I do…