Now that the dust has settled on the Sunderland derby debacle, I feel it’s time to take stock with a sober look; there’s never a dull moment with Newcastle United, right?
Questioning the manager’s position is a farce, but saying everything is fine is like poking a telescope and saying, “I don’t see any ships.”
Our form before Sunday was decent.
Newcastle United have performed well in all competitions, but this has masked a lot of problems, conceding late goals AND our away form has been a major problem all season, despite our relatively good position overall.
Looking at the Premier League table may not be a great read, but we are not within a stone’s throw of European places, an end-of-season achievement if this is successful.
The pessimist in me has asked me to shake my head and reject such an outcome, which is unrealistic given our current situation. Time will tell, but I seem to remember that we weren’t very smart on this point last season either.
Focusing on the derby as a standalone match: did Sunderland deserve the win? Not really. It remained 0-0 all day, unless a huge bit of luck/unhappiness (delete as appropriate) intervened. Unfortunately for us, the latter came true. It’s the relative lack of response from all of us that sticks in our throats.
The mackems are brave. They are deservedly where they are in the table and are an asset to promoted sides who are usually struggling. They certainly proved me wrong with my prediction for the season.
I can’t (and won’t) speak for other fans, but looking at the bigger picture is ALWAYS key for me. Most managers lose derby matches sometimes. It’s not something I worry about too much, to be honest. Personally, I was calm before the match and relatively calm afterwards. My biggest annoyance was NOT that we had just lost to “that lot down the road”, some fans may not like me saying this, but I was more concerned about the points than the opposition.
Let me make a comparison.
As an outsider, does anyone remember Sir Alex Ferguson fussing over the defeat to Manchester City during the red half of Manchester dominance in the 1990s and early 2000s?
As far as I know from Manchester United/Alex Ferguson the biggest annoyance was the points lost and not the opposition. Alex Ferguson had his eyes on the prize. I seem to remember him saying that his mission was to target Liverpool’s title count as manager of Manchester United. NOTHING else mattered. The strange derby defeat will have rankled the fiery Scot simply because it was a loss of points against a side they would have had to beat to achieve the bigger plan.
A similar approach should be taken for our current situation. We are much bigger than Sunderland. Their fans obviously disagree, but I don’t care.
It would be unrealistic and absurd to suggest we’re going for league titles in the near future, but again, the bigger picture is what’s front and center in my thoughts. Going away many times in the last moments of a match is of much greater importance than losing a derby match due to an unfortunate own goal.
I hold the mackems at about the same level and level as Everton and the league table proves this comparison. We beat one of them away from home with a brilliant performance, we lost to the other with a tasteless display without any merit. “Intensity is our identity” has been replaced by “Inconsistency is our reality.”
Positivity?
We are in good shape in the Champions League, we are in the quarter-finals of the League Cup and we can still make good progress in the Premier League in the coming months. Admittedly we have been poor overall in the league, while our local rivals have had a good season so far, just beating us at their place, but still after such a performance they are only four points ahead of us. Strangely enough, I see that as a positive.
We can highlight a muddled pre-season, a mutinous striking striker confusing things, a lack of appointees in the boardroom, the manager being recalled from holiday to take over other people’s jobs, the current overload of the fixture list and the inevitable injury list as major factors in our relative ‘struggle’ so far. None of this is Eddie Howe’s fault.
Do I criticize the manager’s team selections and substitutions? Of course I do. No manager has escaped this in the time I have supported this club, and Eddie Howe is no different. Personally, I think he made the wrong team selection on Sunday, but in retrospect that’s not great. The problem with that was that I (and many others) questioned it BEFORE kick-off.
The biggest negative I see is that we are stuck in the middle of the table and want to start our season in the third week of December. That’s honestly ridiculous.
Late goals conceded, mediocre performances and derbie losses won’t matter if we stay focused on the bigger picture and turn around this season, no matter what time it is.
Results can mask poor performances, but poor performances eventually catch up with you and the displays we saw, even when results were achieved, were not at a level that was good enough for Newcastle United.
Management and playing staff both need to look at themselves and admit that they can do so much better than what has been shown so far this season.
The redemption starts on Wednesday evening against Fulham.
#Newcastle #United #replaces #Intensity #identity #Inconsistency #reality