Toon struggle as reality begins to bite for Benitez
IT IS 10 years this weekend since Kevin Keegan walked out on the nonsense of the Mike Ashley regime and still Newcastle remain trapped in the same cycle of strife and struggle, hope and despair.
There have been 10 managers in that period, including caretakers, and though Rafael Benitez has looked more capable than any of defying the laws of football economics, the table provides a sobering sense of the task in hand. His side are third from bottom with a solitary point. It is the first time since 1987 that Newcastle have lost their opening three home games.
For the 52,000 fans who turned out, the frustration was compounded by a first half in which Newcastle enjoyed an abundance of possession. There was even something resembling sparkle.
Mohamed Diame ran the first half and Jacob Murphy looked most likely to capitalise. His header on 21 minutes forced an instinctive save from Petr Cech.
But the enterprise required some quality to translate into goals. The cold, hard truth is that Benitez’s side lacked it.
When Arsenal emerged from the interval and scored, the home side simply faded away. A foul by Federico Fernandez on the edge of the area on 49 minutes brought a free-kick which Xhaka curled into the top right-hand corner of Martin Dubravka’s goal.
The afternoon was over when the second goal came, nine minutes after the first. An Alexandre Lacazette shot was blocked out to Mesut Ozil, whose shot evaded Dubravka.
Unai Emery, whose post-match discussions yield very little information at all, talked about ‘balance’ and ‘transition’, but his side won in very large part because the obstacle to them playing was removed.
Ozil, playing his 200th game for Arsenal, was moderately effective in the week that Emery had challenged him to provide more. Giving up playing for Germany had created a ‘different’ situation for him, Emery said. But this was by no means a statement of intent from Arsenal, even though they have won back-to-back away wins — something they did not manage at all last season.
Cech’s hapless attempts to play a ball out of defence early in the first half exposed a side and a player still adjusting to the way Emery wants them to play. Cech just does not look like a sweeperkeeper. Emery’s defence went missing in the 90th minute when Ciaran Clark converted a Fernandez cross. But it was too late.
Around 200 people protested before the game at the club shop, having discovered that is run by Ashley’s Sports Direct company. Benitez said of the protests: ‘I’m more concerned about the margin we have against the top sides and losing these games.’
Benitez also said he was ‘not concerned’ about his team’s position. ‘I know my team. I think we can do well to be there, to be close, to be positive,’ he said.
But after a summer in which Ashley has made a £21million profit in the transfer market, it is difficult to see where that ‘difference’ is coming from. Benitez’s first-choice striker, Salomon Rondon, rested after international duty, may not make much difference.
A further nine months here may be the limit of Benitez’s appetite for a task like this. If West Ham’s implosion under Manuel Pellegrini persists, he may well find himself the subject of yet another approach by them even sooner. A choice to make between of the lesser of two evils, if ever there was one.