Newcastle face probe as player hit by bottle
Ashley turns up and boss Benitez makes his point as Newcastle toil
NEWCASTLE face an FA investigation after a Crystal Palace player was hit by a bottle at Selhurst Park yesterday.
And that could spell more trouble for a club still looking for their first win of the season after a sterile 0-0 draw.
In the second half, Palace full-back Aaron Wan-Bissaka was hit by a plastic bottle thrown from the crowd. It was in front of the section for away fans and it was witnessed by Newcastle owner Mike Ashley, who was watching the team for the first time since May last year.
Newcastle manager Rafa Benitez called it the actions of ‘one idiot from among nearly 3,000 fans’.
RAFA BENITEZ knew it all along. And now owner Mike Ashley has seen for himself.
Newcastle need quality — individual brilliance — if they are to be a competitive force in the Premier League.
But star quality does not come cheap and Ashley’s reluctance to dig deep into the coffers at St James’ Park has alienated him from the Geordie fans and left Benitez frustrated.
For the first time since May 2017, Ashley — the subject of a ceaseless tirade of abuse for 90 minutes on a damp and cheerless afternoon in South East London — attended a Newcastle match.
‘He was here, that was positive,’ said Benitez who has been aware for some time that Newcastle need to be shopping at football’s Harrods rather than House of Fraser, the company Ashley has just acquired.
In other words, Ashley could see what I have been saying all along — that survival is one i ssue but success i s quite another.
In politically correct fashion, Benitez welcomed the attendance of the owner who was a constant target for the 2,900 fans who came down from Tyneside.
‘He only wants to support the team,’ he said. ‘ If the owner could be on the pitch and score two goals, that would be better!’
Point made. Very subtly but made all the same. One goal would have been handy yester- day never mind a brace and the likes of Salomon Rondon and Joselu are unlikely t o be Golden Boot contenders.
What Benitez does have is the ability to organise a team to offer stiff resistance.
‘They did that very well,’ said Palace manager Roy Hodgson. ‘ They were hard t o break down.’
Hodgson had looked to the skills of Wilfried Zaha on days like yesterday when a flash of inspiration would unlock Newcastle’s defiant back line.
But a combination of factors conspired to keep Zaha below his normal standards. First there was the plea for protection which in has generated so much furore of late.
Hodgson insisted that Palace are not the kind of club to ask for favours from officials and that was not the motivation.
‘And you don’t want to muzzle people, you don’t want them to say what they feel,’ he said.
Secondly, Zaha suffered a back spasm in the pre-match warm up. He declared himself fit but was far from his usual effervescent self.
That meant t he l i kes of Jamaal Lascelles and Federico Fernandez were not unduly troubled in central defence while DeAndre Yedlin, despite a first-half booking, was able to subdue the Palace talisman.
The result? Stalemate. True, Palace had one or two crosses that flashed across the Newcastle penalty area that lacked only a final, conclusive touch.
And Luka Milivojevic had a free-kick that eluded everybody but rebounded to safety off the post.
But for the most part, Newcastle dealt with any danger to their goal with some comfort. And Benitez was grateful for the support of the foot soldiers of the Toon Army who had travelled to the capital on a miserable Saturday.
As for the verbal abuse directed at Ashley, Benitez produced the kind of body swerve that was missing from the action.
‘I only heard them supporting the team,’ he said. ‘If we are going to be successful, we will need those fans behind us. We had nearly 3,000 here and we have 52,000 at home games. They are helping and pushing the team. It has to be like that.’
To be fair to he refused the statutory Arsene Wenger defence of ‘I didn’t see that’ when asked about the bottle thrown from the section of the stadium which housed the Newcastle fans that hit Palace’s Aaron Wan-Bissaka.
‘One idiot in 3,000,’ he said with a shrug.
Ironically, the most clear cut chance of the match fell to Newcastle after just nine minutes.
James Tomkins made a hash of a clearance, Ayoze Perez was clean through on goal but his effort trickled tamely to Wayne Hennessey.
Golden chance squandered. Even Ashley might have scored that.