Before last week’s point at home to West Brom, Newcastle looked in big trouble. Unsure of where the next point was going to come from, every game looked to be fraught with danger, and every game looked like bringing them a game closer to relegation.
It’s a club with real problems, and you can see the depth of feeling around the club – the fans, the players, the coaching staff – most are passionate about the club and frustration at the position they find themselves in is inevitable.
And now, with two games of the season left to play, Newcastle are close to survival. They’re two points clear of Hull with two games to play, and Hull have two horrible games left to play – Tottenham and Manchester United. Meanwhile Newcastle have games against West Ham and QPR to negotiate. Two teams with nothing to play for.
So Newcastle look fairly safe. But they only look safe almost by default. They look safe because Hull look doomed.
Last week, it was probably expected that Hull would beat Burnley at home, and a win for them would have put Newcastle into the relegation zone – they would have been in huge trouble.
But you have to give some credit to the team – they came back from a goal down to get something out of a game against West Brom. They showed at least some heart, some character and some pride in the shirt they were playing in and managed to get what could turn out to be a vital point. It might just be the point that keeps them in the league this season.
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Sometimes the best thing that can happen is disaster. Not all-out catastrophe, but disaster that could have been much worse.
It’s the principle of once bitten twice shy. If something bad happens, you can learn from it and stop it from happening again. The problem is that you have to survive the misfortune in the first place.
For Newcastle, their terrible form of late should send warning bells ringing for next season. They need to learn from their mistakes and stop it from happening again.
First-off they need to stay up. But beyond that, let’s hope that Mike Ashley wakes up and realises that the club deserves better. They need a manager that plays football in the right way and tries to win trophies. Put simply, Newcastle need a manager who will get the team to mirror the passion from the stands. John Carver said that if the players were as passionate as he was, there’d be no problem. In a way he’s right, passion is what’s needed. But what he and the ownership need to realise is that the manager is the man who gets the team to play – it’s the manager who transfers that passion to the players. And in this respect Carver has failed.
No one is hopeful that the next manager into Newcastle will be anything other than a puppet for Ashley and his business. But what I do hope is that Ashley heeds the warning from this season.
In football, business and pleasure should go hand in hand. The best-run clubs should be the most successful. If Ashley wanted to treat Newcastle like a business, then he’d want it to be successful. A Newcastle with a strong squad, huge stadium and a passionate fanbase should be a force in Europe, never mind England. Surely that would grow his businesses better than a club that he keeps locked in the mid table year after year?
This season should be the near-miss disaster that sparks Ashley into action. Action to bring in a good manager and convince him that the ownership will back him to play good football and win trophies.
But somehow I fear that 17th place on goal difference is the only objective that the owner will ever want for his club. If Newcastle stay up, it’ll be because Hull are worse. If that’s fine for Ashley then not only is he a terrible owner, but he’s missing a business trick too.
Surely this is the season to spark a change? If you can’t appeal to his sense of passion for the club, his sense of pride at being the owner, his sense of nobility to do the right thing, then you should at least be able to appeal to his wallet – make Newcastle strong again and he’ll make more money than he does right now.
And if that won’t work, then nothing will.
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