MOLES ✔ GOALS ✘
Bruce’s leaky team fire blanks as relegation now firmly on horizon
THERE are more moles than goals for Steve Bruce right n o w. Newcastle may have held on for a point but they failed to make one after a week in which Bruce’s physical showdown with winger Matt Ritchie made headlines.
In fact, Bruce’s charge across the training pitch and subsequent barge remains their most dynamic act of the past seven days.
The details of that confrontation, revealed by Sportsmail and in which Ritchie called Bruce a ‘ coward’, were certainly more entertaining than the performance that followed.
Bruce has vowed to catch those he believes guilty of ‘treason’ in leaking the tale. He should dedicate more time to working out how to win football matches. Given the Newcastle boss was missing his preferred frontline, he said he was ‘really, really pleased’ with this draw. But they were up against a team with a defence as leaky as their own dressing room. West Brom have a home goal difference of minus 24 and have won two from 17 at the Hawthorns.
So no, this was not a good result. Not when Fulham then go to Liverpool and emerge as 1-0 victors, leaving Newcastle one point above the relegation zone. That is the difference — Fulham went to the champions and tried to win, Newcastle went to the team in 19th and were happy with a draw.
Bruce also claimed Newcastle had won two of their last six matches, using it as a reason to be positive. It is actually one win from their last six, and two from their previous 18. It is little wonder supporters want him gone when what he says off the pitch is as muddled as what his team produces on it.
So amid the dressing-room split, were those Bruce picked fighting for their manager here? They did not surrender to defeat, as they did against Sheffield United, another opponent set for the Championship. But Bruce was pushing it when he lauded their ‘togetherness, attitude and desire’ in seeing home the point. Surely that is a given for any group of well-paid professionals?
It begs the question: if they can’t beat West Brom, will Newcastle get the points needed to stay in the Premier League?
Bruce was determined not to get beaten. You understand why, of course. After a week of turbulence, to finish it by crashing to defeat against West Brom would have been a disaster. So it is, in one sense, disaster averted. At least for now. The bigger picture is that, on a weekend when Newcastle should have opened a six-point gap over Fulham, it has shrunk to one.
But will they change manager, as several players wish? Absolutely not. Newcastle’s hierarchy want to close their eyes and wake up in the Premier League next season. There is every chance this turns into a nightmare.
Bruce said: ‘It was vitally important we didn’t get beat. Our problems have been evident over the last five or six days, and with injuries, so we always knew it would be difficult. But it wasn’t a classic.’
He was right on that front. It was the sort of game where you might ask your bookmaker for a price on both teams to lose. It would be unfair to say it had the look of a Championship fixture. Unfair on Championship sides, that is.
West Brom were just about the better team in terms of attacking territory and intent, but that matters not when your finishing sends the stewards on a retrieval mission.
Sam Allardyce said: ‘We need to be more clinical if we’re going to start winning games. The big disappointment is that we didn’t finish Newcastle off.’
Two early breaks of promise exposed the lack of conviction in both sides. Newcastle’s Joelinton looked like an Olympic sprinter as he burned by his man but failed to convert to a footballer when a pass was needed to find the unmarked Ryan Fraser, who would have had a tap-in.
Arsenal loanee Ainsley Maitland-Niles was guilty of similar at the other end as West Brom’s overload was rendered useless by the midfielder’s pass straight to a defender.
All of that served to intensify the feeling that one goal would be enough to win it and West Brom could have been ahead before the break. First Matheus Pereira used his shin instead of his foot to shoot on goal and Martin Dubravka saved with grateful ease, before Mbaye Diagne skied from close range. Jonjo Shelvey was then denied by home goalkeeper Sam Johnstone and Dubravka flipped Diagne’s header around the post.
But the best chance came the way of West Brom’s Matt Phillips after half-time, only for the winger to blaze over from six yards. At least the shocking quality of this match keeps Newcastle out of the headlines.
Bruce, however, needs to find goals and not moles before Friday’s visit of Aston Villa.
WEST BROM (4-1-4-1): Johnstone 6.5; Furlong 6.5, O’Shea 6, Bartley 6, Townsend 6.5; Yokuslu 6.5; Pereira 6, Maitland-Niles 6, GALLAGHER 7, Phillips 6 (Grant 84); Diagne 5.5 (Robson-Kanu 84).
Subs not used: Ajayi, Robinson, Livermore, Sawyers, Peltier, Snodgrass, Button.
Manager: Sam Allardyce 6.
NEWCASTLE (4-3-1-2): Dubravka 6; Krafth 5, Lascelles 6, Clark 6.5, Dummett 6; Hendrick 5.5 (Gayle 57, 5), Shelvey 6, Hayden 5.5; Willock 6; Fraser 5.5 (Carroll 90), Joelinton 6. Subs not
used: Ritchie, Lewis, Fernandez, Manquillo, Murphy, Darlow, S Longstaff. Manager: Steve Bruce 5. Referee: Martin Atkinson 7.