A
few years ago, a senior manager at a Further Education College in the North
East described redundancies as “an opportunity to develop new coping
strategies.” Such specious logic could well be embraced by Eddie Howe, whose
Newcastle United side are currently “ticking along” in a manner reminiscent of
the ramshackle outfits turned out by his immediate predecessor, Steve Bruce.
After the Boxing Day debacle against Forest, where an encouraging opening 30
minutes gave way to an hour of shambolic non-football, with only Isak and Miley
emerging with any credit whatsoever, it is difficult to keep anything in
perspective, but the very least you can say about Howe is that he’s as
dignified in defeat as he is gracious in victory. While the support is split
almost directly down the middle between those slavishly loyal, sportswashed
happy clappers who endlessly parrot the “look where we were two years ago” line,
without seeming to recognise where we were this time last year, and the furious
online zealots demanding Howe’s head on a stick, without offering a cogent
strategy for moving the club forward, the only truly nuanced response I’ve come
across was this comment on Facebook, of all places, by my pal Little
Richard on Boxing Day evening -:
Napoleon said that adversity and misfortune bring out the true nature of a general, so Eddie now has an opportunity to demonstrate his qualities. He will have to do this soon, as we go to the dark place and a bad result there will make today feel positively halcyon. I think he’ll do the best job possible under the circumstances and as those circumstances are none of his making, I don’t hold him to blame. He also shows a willingness to accept failings and learn from his past mistakes. I think gives him the sort of resilience necessary for the thankless task of football manager.
For these reasons I’d hang on to Howe for a good while yet, even if results are poor. The current set up is about building success through evidence based practice and not the old, discredited approach of hire and fire, then hire another sucker. Lose Howe and you’ll need to retrain and overhaul the entire squad and coaching personnel, to fit with the new incumbent’s footballing philosophy. As there’s absolutely no need to find a quick fix, I think we should stick with what we have and make it work. Radical thinking for a football fan, I know.
I agree with every word of that, as well as applauding Howe for his honesty and clarity of expression, in accepting that things are just not good enough at the minute. Of course, the elephant in the room is not Amanda Staveley’s smiling countenance through the current adversity or the Ruben Brothers making donations to the West End Foodbank, it is the fact that the Saudi PIF didn’t buy the club with the express intention of qualifying for the Europa Conference League play-offs, at best. As 2023 closes, we are faced with the prospect of Liverpool (A), sunderland (A), Man City (H) and Villa (A) for our January fixtures. Being honest, I can see nothing other than 4 straight defeats from those games. Were that to happen, I still wouldn’t imagine Howe will be bulleted before the season’s end, especially if, as seems to be the case, he is backed in the January window. However, come the end of the campaign, a more ruthless incumbent may well be installed, unless we magic up a Champions League place.
So, how did we get here? My last NUFC blog, https://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.com/2023/11/manpower-shortage.html was filed in the immediate aftermath of the Bournemouth debacle, when we assumed things couldn’t get any worse away from home. How wrong we were, eh? Anyway, the triumphant obliteration of Chelsea that saw us back in competitive action after the last international break was almost overshadowed by hysterical complaints about the soon-to-be formed Fans Committee by the usual suspects. It amuses me that those who’d never done an away game in almost a decade before the takeover, are now endlessly bellyaching about points allocations and reserved tickets for YouTube orators. I wonder if those who’ve never been seen in an away end in the past few decades were some of the ones attacked in some Parisian bar the night before the CL game. Such violence was utterly appalling, but probably not as bad as the refereeing at the arse end of injury time in the game itself. Let’s be clear though; there was no agenda, no corruption and no ulterior motive at play. It was an error, pure and simple; a hideous one that highlights the nonsense of the laws of the game being interpreted differently by the FA and UEFA, but an error, nevertheless. It is a crying shame that after such a heroic performance, we didn’t get the win that Paris St Germain deserved, settling for a point that neither side were entitled to.
The next game saw us bounce back and batter Man Utd, thrashing them 1-0. It was a strange day as the heavy snow put paid to every local game in the afternoon, bar Hexham 2 Newcastle Blue Star Reserves 4, but cleared in time for an 8pm evening kick off. We tore them apart and it could have been far more than the sole Gordon strike that won us the points. In the midweek, the club’s latest leaden-footed attempt at surveying fan opinion saw the limited distribution of a questionnaire discussing the potential of a ground move. Recent performances have put that question back on ice for the foreseeable. More amusing was the furore surrounding the cancellation of rabid transphobe TERF and rampant Hun Linzi’s season ticket at SJP. Her hysteria on Twitter was far more entertaining than the disaster at Goodison Park, where what seemed likely to be a reasonable point from a drab game ended up as being a thoroughly awful 3-0 loss, as we literally fell to bits in the last 12 minutes. The first two goals were Trippier mistakes, which were unheard of before this deplorable capitulation, but have become a regular feature of subsequent performances.
If Everton was bad, Spurs was far worse, as we started off as badly as we’d finished the previous Thursday. Even a decent patch at the start of the second period was of no consolation, as Spurs upped the ante and cruised past us and off into the distance, with the only positive being how good Wilson looked on his return. This good news carried on into Wednesday following’s Milan game in the Champions League. Make no mistake about it; we were heroic from front to back for an hour, with Joelinton’s goal an absolute jewel. A fully fit NUFC first choice XI wins that 2-0, no mistake, but the lead in our legs came back to haunt us as Howe had no choice but to make substitutions that significantly weakened us. They equalised and, I’m certain, we decided to die bravely by going for it in search of a winner. The logic must have been that if we don’t get the Champions’ League, then we don’t want the Europa Cup route. Hence Schar’s charge up field leading to Milan’s incisive break for their winner, which dumped us out of Europe and made Howe’s job a little less secure than it had been before.
Thankfully
Trippier was suspended for the visit of Fulham, which was probably one of the
reasons why we never looked in danger of conceding against a fairly powder puff
opposition, with only Alex Iwobi offering any kind of threat. For us, Bruno,
Miley and Wilson were outstanding. Of course, no sooner do we get Botman and
Burn back than Isak, Gordon, Joelinton and Krafth pick up niggles. However,
after a madly frustrating first half, Bruno really turned on the style, taking
the game to the visitors, who had no answer to our pace and power, allowing us
to dish out a front foot thumping. Miley got his first goal, and I had a superb
view from the Platinum Club in the middle of the Milburn Stand, so all seemed
right with the world again. Sadly, after a thoroughly superb performance
against Chelsea in the League Cup, another horrific Trippier error, gifting a
stoppage time equaliser to the woeful Mudryk, saw us bow out on penalties. Just
a shame that VAR wasn’t in operation for this game, as Chelsea would have been
down to 9 by half time, no questions asked. Trippier’s ridiculous penalty then
caused a load of amateur headshrinkers on Twitter to debate whether his
recent shit performances are because he is mentally ill. Bloody good job they
weren’t watching us when Malcolm Brown was filling the right back role, eh?
From there, we went to Luton, which I managed to completely avoid, taking in the utterly dreadful Northallerton 0 Benfield 0, then there was the Forest fiasco. Even if Pat Howard had been sent off after Wood completed his treble, I doubt anyone who have bothered to go on the pitch. Consequently, things look pretty bad at the minute, as we end the year outside of any European places with half the season gone and realistically looking at another cup exit to a lower division side early in the New Year. As Little Richard alluded to earlier, we really do need to stick with Eddie for the foreseeable, but he needs to up his game as much as the team do, if he’s going to be the one to finally end our trophy drought.
Lovely writing as ever.
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