We’re under no illusion – the aim is top-flight survival
NEWCASTLE ARE MOST POPULAR BET IN THE COUNTRY TO GET RELEGATED
THE angst which followed Newcastle United’s chaotic and deeply concerning first half against Brighton is at least four months in the making.
It was a 0-0 which felt like a defeat, such was the air of confusion for long periods of the match.
After the talk of pushing for the Cups and trying to move Newcastle on from last season, no-one is now under any illusions about what success is going to look like this season: top-flight survival.
Newcastle are now the most popular bet in the country to get relegated, their odds having shortened to 11/10 with most bookmakers.
Even Watford’s 8-0 shellacking at Manchester City did not inspire less confidence in their survival instincts than United’s insipid St James’ Park showing against the Seagulls.
On Saturday much of the talk was about Bruce’s ability to hatch a plan fit for the Premier League but really it is the club strategy which appears as flimsy as Newcastle’s first-half plot to put their foot on Brighton’s collective throats.
Bruce had to throw a week’s work out in 25 minutes at St James’ Park but there can be no diverging from the path Lee Charnley set Newcastle on in the middle of United’s summer of discontent.
In August he wrote United “must be brave and not just take the safe option” but the reality ist this, like every season Newcastle have spent in the Premier League since 2014, will be spent clawing their way to 40 points as quickly as possible. Judgement day will arrive in May not September but it would be remiss to ignore the clear signs of struggle.
This team have not kicked on from a Spurs win which would have transformed the energy around the club in previous years. Instead it has felt like a mirage among the more predictable struggle.
Newcastle are naturally missing the cohesion, power, workrate and ingenuity that Salomon Rondon and Ayoze Perez brought to their attack.
Yet privately the coaching staff also muse hey are missing the influence of Mohamed Diame, allowed to leave because the club’s policy is not to hand out long contract extensions to players in their 30s.
Diame left and so too did a player of presence who would have been handy as United were overrun in the engine room.
If it was not Diame, Newcastle should have at least replaced him with someone who could offer a similar option.
As it is, they left that call too late and opted to rely on what they have - but Jonjo Shelvey’s contribution on Saturday hinted why further midfield punch was needed.
Those recruitment calls made in summer’s desperate months were definitely brave but in six games so far, bold does not equate to brilliant and it is possible to drive a horse and cart through some of the logic which underpinned Newcastle’s transfer thinking.
Did Bruce get what he wanted?
The quiet distancing of so many supporters from their club is a desperate development
He signed off the two biggest deals – for Joelinton and Allan Saint-Maximin – but that is very different to driving them.
Instead, it appears as if all United’s major recruitment calls were in the workings for months before he arrived.
Who made the call, for example, that Joelinton was a £40million player? Having baulked at signing Rondon because he would offer little long-term benefit, someone must have felt the Brazilian had the potential to appreciate in value over his six year contract.
As talented as he looks, that is a huge call for a club who operate in such strict financial parameters – and so far he looks a slightly uneasy fit.
Sympathy will be in short supply given how enthusiastically the head coach endorsed the efforts in the transfer window but it has always felt fundamentally flawed to appoint a coach and not make him the loudest voice in the recruitment calls. Perhaps concerns like that – and taking the squad so late in a pre-season devised by someone else – was the reason why others turned down the role. Or maybe they saw the danger of what is now unfolding, the slow erosion of the public appetite for a club which has confounded its supporters too many turns. The quiet distancing of so many supporters from their club is a desperate development but not one that was not signposted to the hierarchy. That it is coming from fans who don’t take to social media to bloviate and were not inspired by groups whose wellmeaning but strategically flawed calls to action should be most worrying to Newcastle. These are the people they had hoped to convince of a new direction. Instead, many are drifting away.
Only Mike Ashley setting a realistic price on Newcastle and agreeing a sale would bring them back.
That is in Ashley’s gift, of course. He towers over this mess but after his excitable intervention in July, he has not been at a match.
A man who does not understand football, as one of his former managers Alan Pardew said, again seemed incapable of joining the dots on what was really happening.
A generous interpretation is a team in transition. Many supporters would argue there is a gloomier prognosis awaiting.