Newcastle United; quite good, most of the time...
When I last turned my thoughts to the fortunes of Newcastle United during the previous international break (https://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.com/2024/10/bad-blood.html), the team lay 8th in the league and I had this to say about the month in store: We need 6 points minimum and a cup victory to be achieving anything close to a reasonable set of results. And so it came to pass that as we enter the November international break, Newcastle stand in 8th place in the table, having accrued 6 points and a League Cup victory since we were last here. The end of this blog? Not quite.
As ever, the devil was in the detail of the events I’m about to discuss. With 4 of the 5 games being shown live on television, it was par for the course that I only got to see one of them. However, by reading social media (hashtag #NUFC on Twitter) and absorbing the sagacious opinions of True Faith, I know exactly what I should think which, you’ll not be surprised to know, is often the diametrical opposite of what those with the loudest voices, biggest egos and stupidest opinions have to say. All in all, it remains a solid, indisputable fact that Eddie Howe is the best English coach around, even if Graham Potter’s reputation grows with every minute he spends away from the training pitch, and there is no doubt in my mind that to dispense with Howe, regardless of circumstance (I’m not holding out much hope for the January window now the PIF have lost interest in Newcastle) before the end of the season, would be an act of crass folly. Mind, a loss at home to Bournemouth in the League Cup will result in the cyber pitchfork and on-line flaming cross brigade virtually creating havoc at the bottom of Barrack Road.
Things got a little bit feisty in cyberland after the month began with a profligate loss to Brighton, where our inability to put the ball in the net was seen as evidence of Isak’s lack of interest, Gordon’s refusal to commit to the club, Howe’s substandard tactics and Osula being worse than Rob MacDonald in Bobby Shinton’s shorts. That’s what I gleaned from on-line comments anyway, as I didn’t see a second of the game, mainly because Ben and I were quality testing Cantillon beer in Brussels and enjoying RUSC 0 KAA Gent 0 straight afterwards. Despite our Airbnb having a clear stream of BBC1, we chose not to watch Match of the Day and so it was a week later, with the first part of our double header against Chelsea when reality hit. I mean, it should have done but having been to Montrose 0 Cove Rangers 2 the day before, I owed Shelley some quality time. Instead of seething on a comfortable sofa, I allowed myself to be dragged around Byker Retail Park, as she looked for Christmas presents. I think I made the right choice and for the right reasons, which is a bit of a first for me.
Obviously, I saw the goals on my phone within 30 seconds of them being scored and could read, with mounting disbelief, the apparently undeniable truth that Isak has been a disgrace all season. Indeed, blame for the defeat was to be shared equally between Isak, for his lack of commitment and Howe, who has apparently lost all his powers of motivation, not to mention any sense of tactical acumen. Well, that take looks good on the back of the Arsenal and Forest results, but no matter. Sadly, and I hate agreeing with Jamie Carragher about anything, NUFC’s support is so volatile that nothing less than a 180 degree turnaround in performances and fortunes would have been enough to silence, albeit temporarily, the hot-headed jumpy jacks whose phone is a kind of 4G enabled therapy toy, where their vacuous words gain unmerited traction when amplified by the thoughts of similar twisty faced manchildren who can’t accept that your football team sometimes has to lose.
Sometimes you have to give your team a miss; sometimes, this is because you’ve got tickets to the ballet. That’s exactly what happened for the Chelsea League Cup game. Shelley and I were watching Swan Lake by the English National Ballet at the Odeon Silverlink. I’d never seen a ballet before, and it was beautiful and beguiling. I was so totally engaged in it that I didn’t even check my phone until the interval. We were 2-0 to the good, so I stuck the trusty Blackberry (seriously) back in my skyrocket until the curtain fell to tumultuous applause. So caught up in discussing and dissecting the fate of Prince Siegfried and his amour fou with Odille / Odette were we that I didn’t even look for highlights on the telly. Good win though and special thanks to Enzo Maresca for putting out a side that almost guaranteed our passage to the last 8. Being fair, you can only beat what is in front of you and, from the brief highlights I saw, it could have been a hatful.
That was never going to be the case against Arsenal. In fact, once we’d got ahead, one goal was comfortable enough, until Rice missed that chance in injury time, and we all exhaled in collective relief. I think what really stuck in Paellardyce’s craw was the fact he actually had nothing to complain about. Newcastle played better, especially the previously derided Gordon and Isak, as tactically, courtesy of the efforts of the supposedly incompetent Howe, we wiped the floor with them. The Gunners didn’t lay a glove on us all afternoon and that’s why they won’t be Champions, because their tendency to twist and whine when things won’t go their way is as much of an Achilles Heel as their contemptible cowardice under pressure of the latter Wenger years. Mind it was unfortunate that results elsewhere saw us tumble from 8th at full time to 11th at the end of the weekend’s fixtures. No doubt some on-line nutters were seeing mathematical realities as indication of Howe’s incompetence.
I wouldn’t like to speculate what their thoughts were at half time at the City Ground. I tell you what I thought about; our trip to Boundary Park almost exactly 31 years ago to the day. That Monday night fixture was supposedly the start of Sky referring to Keegan’s team as The Entertainers, and rightly so. What is often overlooked is that we went in at the break trailing, before absolutely blowing Oldham out the water in the second period, way back when. The same thing happened here. Truly, we should not have been losing at the interval, but no matter, I wasn’t worried in the slightest. Let’s be honest, if Bruno’s effort had gone in, Christmas would have come early. As it was, Joelinton’s winner was a pretty decent substitute highlight. I thought the full backs were excellent, BDB put a proper shift in, and we suffocated them in the middle of the park. Barnes showed exactly why Sels was a textbook Benitez signing, with an embarrassing concession at his near post. Worse of all was, as my mate Tom calls him, James Fraud Prowse. The footballing equivalent of The Scotch Play, his is a morality tale of the dangers of venal ambition. Rather like the Titanic, he ought never have left Southampton.
So, and there’s no point in whining about this because everyone thinks the same, just as we’re running into a bit of form, there’s another bloody pointless international break to ruin the momentum. In fact, our next game isn’t until November 25th when West Ham visit. In a packed schedule, we’ve got Palace (A), Liverpool (H), Brentford (A), Leicester (H), Brentford League Cup (H) and Ipswich (A) before Christmas. I’ll be looking for 10 points and a cup win, before some tough tests against Villa (H), Man Utd (A) and Spurs (A) over the Festive Period.
