Yes, Newcastle were negative… but our league is NOT embarrassing
THE WAY Newcastle United played against Manchester City is not typical of what we see in the Premier League. If it was, it would not have provoked such debate and comment. It was interesting precisely because it was unusual.
It is wrong to say that Wednesday night’s game reflected badly on the whole of the Premier League or to claim, as Sky pundit Jamie Carragher did, that our domestic competition is ‘embarrassingly’ lop-sided.
‘The Premier League is becoming a bit of a joke league, with the top teams being so far ahead of the ones at the bottom,’ said Carragher.
In France, with Paris Saint- Germain dominating, a problem has developed. Rivals have rested players against the champions. They feel they can’t possibly beat them, so they don’t waste energy trying.
Hopefully that will never happen in England. If it does, the debate swirling around the Newcastle game will be a whisper in the wind by comparison.
Newcastle manager Rafa Benitez does not deserve criticism for being pragmatic and negative against City.
He is proving an important manager for the club and has a responsibility only to them. If Newcastle win a much bigger game against Brighton tomorrow, he will feel vindicated.
But Benitez’s tactics were not common or wholly recognisable not anyway. They were not reflective of a Premier League malaise and that is the point. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with defending, which is what many Premier League clubs set out to do in difficult games.
It is not easy. It is skilful and nd requires good coaching and dedicated players who aree pre-prepared to listen and do things that may not be enjoyable or natural.
Counter-attacking football is a legitimate tactic. It won Brian Clough one of his European Cups against Hamburg in 1980. That night in Madrid, centre forward Garry Birtles was so far from his team-mates it is a surprise Clough did not give him a loudhailer.
So, let’s not be sniffy about this. If a coach instructs his team to trade punches with vastly superior opponents, he is not brave but stupid. Defending and soaking up pressure have been part of our game for years.
But on Wednesday at St James’ Park we saw something different. For well over an hour, Newcastle’s performance was so passive and meek that many in the stadium will never have seen anything like it from their team. Newcastle
barely left their own half, nor tried to. That is not counterattacking football, it is something else entirely.
There is an argument that the debate should really be about City. Maybe this is what the excellence of Pep Guardiola’s team has done to many teams in the Premier League. It has cowed them and bred feelings of inferiority.
An 18- game winning run is special, and if Crystal Palace host them on New Year’s Eve fighting a feeling that the game is lost before it has even begun, then maybe we should not blame them.
In this country, we are excited about the football played by City, Liverpool and Tottenham. It will be interesting to follow their progress in the Champions League and it would be encouraging to see English teams back in the last four of the competition. But that kind of attacking quality will inevitably affect the way teams further down the league play against them.
We cannot have it all ways. If the top teams in the Premier League are going to be so good and so expansive, there will inevitably be a gap to those beneath.
Perhaps our top division would benefit from having two fewer teams in it. The quality of those at the bottom has been far too poor for a long time.
An 18-team league would cut some of the dead wood and reduce the strain on the schedule. Both would have a positive impact on overall quality.
However, many Premier League games retain a healthy element of competition, even when City are involved.
The fact that Huddersfield and Southampton lost to Guardiola’s team only in the last minute, West Ham ran them close at the Etihad Stadium and even dear old Manchester United had a good chance to take a point late in a game City dominated provides evidence that there is more than one way to try to get what you want from a football match.
As far as Newcastle are concerned, it was hard ever to see them getting anything out of Wednesday’s game.
Had City shown their usual ruthlessness in front of goal, they would have been out of sight by half-time. Newcastle were also the home team, remember. That is important.
But the Premier League will be OK for a good while yet. Memories are shorter than ever. It is, after all, only two years since Leicester City won the title.