The Chronicle (South Tyneside and Durham)
United must carry out repairs to stop a season in reverse
CHANGES MUST BE MADE TO TURN FORTUNES AROUND
LET facts be faced however hard that may be for loyal hearts. Let reality rule because to camouflage is to pretend.
The only way to eventual success is to look adversity square in the eye.
This is the Premier League not the FA Cup against Championship challenge.
Newcastle United have made great strides under new guidance but half a dozen giant steps forward have been followed by four backward.
Right now United are on a slide. In the last four matches before the faithful dating back to Christmas, Bournemouth, Luton Town, Manchester City and Nottingham Forest have all arrived and gone away with something tangible. Three very much below average sides and one great one. What a start to 2024 it has been.
Inevitably such home ‘disasters’ meant United would eventually drop like a stone through the upper reaches of the league and so Wolves and West Ham victories in the last week sank us to 10th, literally halfway stranded in no man’s land.
Chelsea, with a game in hand having played in the Carabao Cup final last weekend, lie just two points behind United ready to take them down another peg. The Champions League is little more than a distant memory.
We have said it many times but repair work is well overdue if the league season is to be rescued. It cannot be put off a game longer or it will be definitely too late.
We face a visit from Wolves praying for salvation as we did before Bournemouth and Luton arrived only to provide little solace. This, I might add, is a greater challenge from a better team so let all in-house be warned.
No one can go on thinking that salvation automatically exists round the next corner as if by some divine right. Bad results are down to deserting the high standards which made last season so successful, to forgetting basics and taking aboard excuses.
Injuries? Sure United have suffered but they are part and parcel of football, as Liverpool have embraced and let us not forget that much of the backbone of last season has remained.
The back four which was the meanest in the PL – Trippier, Schar, Botman and Burn – have been playing regularly in tandem, a ‘world class’ Bruno and ‘the glue that holds all together’ Sean Longstaff still reside in midfield, Miggy Almiron and Alexander Isak remain available up top. Yet what has been happening? Newcastle have gone backwards.
On the other hand might it just be that this is exactly where one of the problems lies. Maybe it is because the eight mentioned have been forced to perform time after time that things have dramatically tapered.
Maybe the physicality demanded in an Eddie Howe team cannot be sustained season upon season without regularly shuffling the pack to freshen legs.
Maybe as well things have been heightened by the fact that United are predictable playing a rigid 4-3-3 rarely if ever varying their shape either at kick off or during the 90 minutes.
Changes are inevitably like for like. Howe has to decide exactly what it is that has gone wrong and act accordingly.
We have been clinging to the faint hope that the FA Cup can rescue a crumbling campaign and literally
produce a silver lining but the quarter-final draw was yet another reality check – the fourth successive time United had been given an away tie and against Manchester City, FA Cup holders, Premier League champions, Champions League winners, and World Club champions.
At exactly the same time Wolves were receiving a massive double boost before arriving on Tyneside – they beat Brighton and drew Championship side Coventry at home with a Wembley semi-final awaiting the winners.
United were handed the worst possible pairing and Wolves the best. Typical of the way the tide is flowing at the moment.
While we have been grateful for Geordie Cup victories over Championship sides like Sunderland and Blackburn Rovers, a return to top flight competition threatens to bring with it the realisation that unless lessons have been learned at long last and solutions found nought will change.
Wolverhampton Wanderers is a mouthful to get your tongue round but then what has occurred in their name this season takes a bit of swallowing as well.
There was many a nudge-nudge-wink-wink when Wolves with apparent player problems appointed a manager who had just been binned by Bournemouth.
However Gary O’neil, once a midfielder patrolling on behalf of Middlesbrough, has produced a miracle in the Black Country and as a consequence Wolves travel to St James’ Park this weekend incredibly above Newcastle in the rankings.
Who would have thought it when on the opening day of the season United thumped Aston Villa 5-1 ahead of their long-anticipated return to the Champions League while Wolves began with a 1-0 defeat at Manchester United and a shattering 4-1 at home to Brighton.
Julen Lopetegui had walked out after a pre-season friendly in Dublin because he felt that he had been stripped of key players and didn’t have the tools to avoid a relegation battle. Few disagreed with him.
At 40 years of age O’neil is younger than Howe by some six years but inexperience has hardly held him back.
This may be his first full season in management but his 11 league victories so far is as many as Wolves achieved in the whole of 2022-23 which emphasises a considerable improvement. United meanwhile have dramatically tapered off.
If that nosedive in results and expectation is to be dramatically reversed then the most important person in black-and-white come three o’clock tomorrow will be Lady Luck! We need her intervention.