A lot of us will have felt exactly the same yesterday. We’ll have spent the whole day nervous, dreading 8pm rolling around and wishing that we could just avoid it and tell whoever we’d passed the remote control to put a film on. Sadly though, the aforementioned dread will have been punctuated far too regularly by the hope that has you asking, ‘What if’? because that hope is very much all we’ve had for years. And sadly, the majority of us will have sat through every last second of yet another dreadful performance, wishing we hadn’t have bothered..
It should be abundantly clear to anyone with eyes that it’s just not working at Newcastle United. Steve Bruce is failing. And I think I’ve said this before in a previous blog, but we knew that this would happen.
Last night was nothing remarkable. We’ve looked appalingly doomed for a long, long time now. There’s little in the way of ideas and imagination, there’s no heart, no desire, no fight. People might tell you that nobody gets relegated in January, but as far as I can see, we’re down.
We’re now midway through yet another morning after the night before and nothing has happened. No one at the club has taken what would surely be the right action. Steve Bruce remains in a job having overseen 10 games without a win and far too many hours without a goal being scored. He’s still gainfully employed, having failed to inspire any kind of performance from his team for months. Is there another club where this would happen?
So where do we stand? Well, while the pundits point to a seven point gap between us and the bottom three, we have a club that resembles a liner that’s lost all power in the middle of the ocean. And someone’s begun to put holes in the hull. And someone else has removed the rudder. The crew can’t be arsed and are busying themselves sitting on deck gazing out to sea while the captain stands on the bridge telling an empty room that everything’s alright.
Our manager – and I’m praying I’ll have to edit this as news breaks that he’s been sacked as I’m typing, but I don’t believe in God or Lee Charnley – has become a paranoid shell of a man. In recent weeks he’s criticised the fans for their ‘histrionics’, he’s desperately chopped and changed personnel, discovered players that he’d previously ignored and then dumped them within a game (Longstaff, Dummett), had a snide dig at a previous manager (“the mighty Rafa”) and amazingly labelled a performance that he presided over as manager as “absolute shite”. His mismanagement is absolutely astonishing. To put it in context, in recent years we’ve had Pardew headbutting an opposition player, as well as blaming the grass and ‘science’, Carver saying a player got sent of deliberately and Joe Kinnear acting like a homeless drunk in press conferences, yet calling his own players “shite” has to top them all.
Last night though, we reached some notable new lows. The performance on the pitch was dreadful, again. Bruce is picking talented players, but his coaching seems to have rendered many of them as completely ineffective. The £40m striker who he has repeatedly failed to get a tune out of was left on the bench all night. Possibly rightly so as well, but…£40 million and if we’re being informed correctly, rejected by our previous manager as clearly not worth the money! He picked a target man for the second game running and, for the second game running, subbed him just as he brought on two wingers. He picked Jeff Hendrick. He picked Jonjo Shelvey. He put them together in the centre of our midfield, while playing arguably our most effective central midfielder in central defence. And at the end of the game, not only did he tell the media that he was encouraged by the performance, he also said (and forgive me if these aren’t his exact words, but I wrote them down as he said them and still can’t believe them) “Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve got enough (talented players) to attack.” This after 18 months in the job.
The popular view is that he’s ‘lost the dressing room’ and we can’t really know the truth here, as we don’t have access to said dressing room. But how can this not be true? He is openly blaming the players, while occasionally slipping in the fact that he takes responsibility. All the evidence that is needed is surely on the pitch. The lack of desire is alarming. You don’t need to head to social media to view that clip from Leicester away from a couple of seasons ago to see that this is a shell of the team we once had. This is a manager with blood on his hands.
Let’s look at a couple of case studies as evidence, if you will. Firstly, Jamal Lewis. Before he signed for Newcastle and Bruce, he was heralded as an exciting, attacking wing-back, albeit as part of a Norwich side that got relegated. But he was good enough for Liverpool to take an genuine interest and look at signing him. Now, he is a player that I don’t like watching. I find it genuinely quite a painful experience. Here is a young player who had the footballing world at his feet not that long ago. And yet now, he’s a player who looks terrified of the ball. In an age of attacking wing-backs, I watch him move forward and know that he won’t attempt to beat the man and get to the byline. Instead, he will check back, look behind imploringly and then lay the ball off to a safer option. Often this is the beginning of a short chain of events that I like to refer to as ‘passing back to the keeper’ or turning attack into defence. While defending he is regularly caught ball-watching, possibly as a consequence of the kind of eroded confidence that just wants anyone else to deal with the ball. I won’t blame him and I won’t criticise him, even though I’m one of those Newcastle fans with unrealistic expectations. But I will wonder what another manager might have made of him.
Then we have Callum Wilson, our number 9 in all but number. Wilson is a player who should be at the peak of his powers; he certainly arrived in this state, in my opinion. Sharp, energetic, wily, quick; everything we wanted in a centre forward at a club where we worship centre forwards. Fast forward five months or so and he’s another who looks a shadow of the footballer he once was. The service he desires is frustratingly unforthcoming, but this is not the end of his story. For me, the change in Wilson goes beyond that. Remember the smile, the wink, the salute? Remember the guile that had him bullying centre halves? All gone. Playing football looks like a job to him nowadays; a chore. Sadly, he looks a spent force. And again, I’m not blaming him. I rate him as a player and was thrilled when he signed. But last night, while Villa players smiled, encouraged each other and generally pinged the ball about without a care in the world, Wilson looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. And he wasn’t alone by a long way. That’s the fault of one man and his staff.
The final word on Steve Bruce and Newcastle United must go, bizarelly to the two men on pundit duties last night. This is simply because, in terms of the strange and wonderful world of Newcastle United, they made some of the strangest comments I’ve heard, post match. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Jamie Redknapp and Darren Bent. Firstly, Redknapp blamed the state of the club on kids in Newcastle. Apparently it’s their fault that the team are so awful because they’re not good enough to play in our academy. Lost yet? Me too. But Jamie actually asked – and admittedly I’m paraphrasing here – “Why aren’t they playing football in the streets?” The incredible assumption seems to be that we should be producing first team ready superstar footballers, year in year out in order to allow us to win a game of football every now and again. He referenced names like Beardsley, Waddle and Gascoigne (two of whom didn’t come through the academy) and claimed that we don’t produce the likes of these players anymore. But who does Jamie, who does?
With his frankly weird claim, Redknapp not only referenced players from decades ago, but also ignored players who have come through the academy to take their place in the first team at the club. Without resorting to Google, I can remember the likes of Dummet, Taylor, Carroll, Clark, Watson, Hughes, Ameobi, Howey, both Longstaffs and Caldwell. Now, I understand that they are by no means world beaters, but they are proof that we can and so produce players. I also understand Redknapp’s frustration at having to sit through what he sat through, but what else can he reach for in order to avoid blaming Steve Bruce? Picking on school kids was a new and incredible low.
Darren Bent meanwhile, brilliantly blamed our strikers, who he said “look like they’ve never played together before” and asked “why aren’t they working on it in training?” I would imagine they are, Darren. And whether they are or they aren’t, whose fault would you say that could be? I’ll give you a clue, looks like an over-baked potato, belongs in the 1990s and his name rhymes with please resign and get out of our club. OK, it doesn’t but you can guess it from the other clues, surely?
We play Leeds on Tuesday night. I live in Leeds. My wife and son both support Leeds, as do friends and colleagues. I work in a school with pupils who are Leeds fans. I’ve never been so grateful for a pandemic and school closures.
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