We can still win ‘a lot of games’ – Saint-Maximin
COTTAGERS MAY BE CLOSING IN, BUT WE CAN STILL WIN ‘A LOT OF GAMES’, INSISTS MAGPIES ACE SAINT-MAXIMIN
HAVING disastrously lost 12 out of 16 games you are then thrown to the Wolves. Thanks a bunch!
Yet if Steve Bruce is to avoid professional suicide, if Mike Ashley is to keep his financial crutch while waiting to unload a club he has never loved, and if Graeme Jones’ influence is to have a positive end, then Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday night must be the start of a Newcastle revival.
An 11-point lead over Fulham has been whittled down to just three to produce much alarm on the Tyne and growing optimism on the Thames.
However, the good news is that two relegation places are already booked – West Bromwich and Sheffield United are dead, having too much leeway to make up.
It’s a straight fight to the death to avoid the last place on the trip to oblivion.
Many major decisions have to be taken right now. First and foremost, who stands in for the injured Callum Wilson, two performers having failed their auditions?
However, there is a further growing debate – Karl Darlow or Martin Dubravka as the last line of defence. The Aunt Sally behind a porous back four.
Bruce and his think tank have the final say – dare they get it wrong? – but the public are weighing in with their tuppence-worth amid much heated debate.
Me? There is no one capable of replacing Wilson. That problem ought to have been addressed during the last two transfer windows but criminally was not.
As for goalkeeper, if pushed I would have to go with Dubravka, much as my sympathy goes out to Darlow for his magnificent performances since replacing last season’s Player of the Year.
I went on public record backing Dubravka through a podcast before the Manchester United match when Karl was badly beaten at his near post on their first goal.
Up front it is a matter of selecting the best of a bad bunch, at the other end of the pitch picking between two courageous figures.
Elsewhere Geordies are perplexed at how the likes of Joelinton, Emil Krafth, Jeff Hendrick and Jonjo Shelvey get picked so regularly while Dwight Gayle cannot get starts and Matty Longstaff and Matt Ritchie are equally snubbed when their attitude is so infectious and United lack leaders.
Maybe there are personality clashes behind the scenes but it is a dangerous game to play.
Shelvey is yesterday’s man, Joelinton is nobody’s man. Really the fact that one often skippers the side when Jamaal Lascelles is out and the other is the club’s record buy beggars belief.
Ryan Fraser has also been a huge disappointment so far having arrived with a big reputation from Bournemouth where a couple of seasons back he and Wilson were the blue-chip players of a more than decent side.
Fraser has failed to be available
for too many matches and his body language, like that of Gayle recently, is greatly negative. Maybe Gayle has little wish to be here after being repeatedly ignored and his contract virtually up, but Fraser is a different proposition.
He owes the club, the fans and himself.
Opportunities are running out like sand in an egg timer for Big Joe, Andy Carroll, Jacob Murphy and Gayle.
It’s now or never for the three strikers with Wilson looking on from the sidelines though I hold out little long-term hope for any of them. Murphy, desperately looking for a new contract, is currently parked in a culde-sac. He has United’s best two outfield players Miggy Almiron and Allan Saint-Maximin blocking his way. His survival hopes depend on the performances of those two flyers.
Maybe there are personality clashes behind the scenes but it is a dangerous game to play
So what have we in front of us? Wolves who have regained some form without blowing sides away, West Brom who are adrift in a dinghy though not leaking goals quite like they did before Big Sam plugged the holes, Aston Villa currently without their talisman skipper Jack Grealish, and Brighton who are perched just one point above Newcastle.
There has been much bluster,
much nonsense spouted, much light-heartedness and even flippant response to growing fear among supporters. It has irritated and outraged those who can see a third relegation looming ever closer.
What Newcastle now urgently require are victories, and a few of them. This is really the drip, drip, drip of water torture and must be alleviated before it is too late.