NUFC: Bugger-All Money

How are things in black and white then? 36 points on the board as February ends, right enough – a decent place to be. Personally I would want 43 for safekeeping, remembering what happened not so long ago to West Ham... But the main point is that this Newcastle team have shown plenty spirit in adversity. It’s not been a bad season yet, on balance, and that is quite something, given the sum of what’s been inflicted on supporters, again as before and always, by its repulsive present ownership.
Andy Carroll is gone and I must live with that, as must all black-and-white-eyed supporters, including those who actually believe that a shred of the £35 million we got for Carroll will be re-invested in the team. For the prosecution, though, I call Kevin Keegan, who talked to Gabby Logan at the BBC for a spot transmitted tonight and who cited his own thoughts when recently he heard Alan Pardew telling the press about his hopes for what he’d do with the Carroll money: “Alan – you ain’t gonna get any of that...”

NUFC: Incapacity = No Benefit

Ever since he took charge, and especially so as hope has dwindled, Alan Shearer has talked a first-rate game about what his team needed to do, indeed ought to do, to save themselves. And if only his starting XI could have performed in anything like the same spirit then Newcastle would have pulled themselves out of the hole they're in prior to today's final horror-show. Alas, it remains the case that Newcastle are one of the three worst teams in the top division over this season, and so deserve to go down however it plays out over 'Super Sunday'.
Bagging the extraordinary luck of a combination of results sufficient to squeak past Hull or Sunderland - both of whom beat NUFC on their own turf, and whom NUFC failed to beat at SJP - is in itself a fairly rancid karmic outcome, however avidly all Mags would seize upon it. But in any case NUFC go into this game without their two best, most consistent players, Beye and Bassong; with two strikers fettled and a third playing on one leg; and without a shred of pace or creativity in midfield. They go to 5th-placed Villa, a quality side, well-managed, keen to finish on a high. And you reckon NUFC are going to play their hearts out, defend like giants, nab one on the break and generally exhibit all the attributes missing ever since Keegan walked early last September? Gerraway, man. Sorrowfully I have to say I can't see how it's conceivable to imagine them doing anything of the sort.
So the crisis continues, rather than starting today, and only enormous structural remedies can begin to address it as of this summer. The ever-staunch NUFC.com have offered the following advice to fans as and when the axe has finally fallen this evening:
"Please do yourself and your club a favour and make sure the Sky cameras don't catch you snivelling into your scarf or blubbering into your best mate's shoulder. Show some dignity and don't bring this club into disrepute. We suggest you turn your back and make a hasty retreat for the exits. Once outside, walk straight past reporters and cameras in the streets and maintain your silence until you are well away from prying lenses."
Sounds like the sort of thing Shearer would say, if he accepted we were as far gone as everybody else believes. Not daft, though, our Alan. I trust he'll have his own dignified face prepared.
Howay the Lads! No shame in the Second Division, man, we've seen it all before, and the only way out of it is to play better.

"Saving a Relegated Newcastle" - Gabrielle Marcotti

"Would it really be such a tragedy for Newcastle fans if the club went down? I don't think so, not if you believe that the club can only go forward once Mike Ashley sells the club..."

Shearer, if you're planning on staying on then you might want to give this man Marcotti a job, or at least try to keep him close by and friendly, because he knows football and he seems, strangely, indeed miraculously, to care a bit about the fate of Newcastle United - enough to have written out and costed a careful plan for the management of the squad after relegation. I don't think I quibble with any of it, bar the absence of a mention for Ranger and LuaLua as striking options next season. Good man, Gabrielle. This in the Times too, where some toe-rag who's supposedly a 'multi-award-winning' sportswriter pens a semi-regular Saturday morning bit willing Newcastle to lose and so 'slither' further into the relegation maw...

Shearer: Work in Progress...?

I yield to no-one (well, one or two...) in my admiration for Alan Shearer, and so mates of mine were knocked back a bit on April Fool's Day of 2005 when I queried Al's decision to reverse his planned retirement and so play on another season for NUFC: this in the belief that the club was 'going places' under Graeme Souness and that he had a bit more to give to the effort. 'Were he a horse', I actually opined in one rash moment at the time, 'he'd have been shot by now'... As it happened, he shouldered on under Souness, suffering strangely-fated defeats in an FA Cup semi and a UEFA last eight. Then, with Owen crocked as usual for most of 2005-06, he often played as our main striker in his supposed twilight season, a much-dulled threat overall, though overhauling the Milburn scoring record and chipping in some vital goals to get what was now Glenn Roeder's team into an Intertoto-qualifying 7th place.

So, what does the jury make of Al's most recent hopeful/faithful punt on behalf of the Toon, made, like the last one, on All Fool's Day? It seems to me, as it did decisively about 6 weeks ago, that we're going down, and we deserve to, because we're largely rubbish and barely half of a proper team. Still, the Portsmouth draw, a massive but not unexpected anti-climax, immediately had fans yet more cynical than me getting out their calculators again and redefining what might be sufficient. Shearer declared that it might yet be 'a good point', which tells you everything about his current responsibility for dressing-room morale.

Morale, plus discipline and 'heart', are the things that he has surely brought into the set-up. The team's few good players - Beye, Bassong - have said as much. But the sheer headless awfulness of the first hour at Tottenham, and the hopeless nervy 'finishing' versus Pompey, are death-knell sounds to me. They look like a side who'd need to be doomed before they could start to play again. Defeat against Liverpool this Sunday will certainly take them to that very brink. If they won their last three, which might be the least they can do, then they could at least 'deserve' to stay up.

But really, see, I'm thinking now about Nile Ranger and Andy Carroll trying to score the team out of the second division. I'm one of those dreaming of a cleansing of the Augean stables, if the club doesn't go into administration first. Will Shearer be around for any of this?

Alan Shearer: Banzai!

Opposing fans rather than Mags got to me first with the great and terrible news of late Tuesday, so I'm still wiping the spit off my face, figuratively speaking. It's a good job Shearer has broad shoulders and a stern face in adversity, as he'll need to summon both these qualities as and when we're relegated. But, fair's fair, it will now officially be recorded in the Book of Time that whenever Newcastle called then Alan Shearer always answered. If I were him, I'd have had the missus say I was out creosoting the fence and couldn't come to the phone, like. But that's why he's the fella who scored about 500 goals in his career, and I'm the fella who stood by, usually intoxicated, and watched him score most of them... Good luck then, Al. Or should I say, 'Banzai!'?

Hull 1 Newcastle 1: Time for a long lie-down

So much for that effing Crunch-Cup-Tie. Hard to see what the NUFC players or flailing interim management thought they were doing to positively take away three points from a full-blown six-pointer. So, one it was, then – inadequate, like everything about the Toon this season barring the support; and so three weeks tomorrow the team go to Stoke for the next bloody crunch-cup-tie/six-pointer, by which time I can’t believe we’ll be sitting anywhere other than second-bottom of the league. The side that runs out against Arsenal at SJP tomorrow will be picked from a near-as-damn-it full-strength squad. And still, there’s no hope. True Faith says it all: ‘So far this season this squad have failed to beat any of the following teams (opportunities in brackets): Hull (4 times), West Ham (twice), Blackburn (twice), Everton (twice), Man City (twice), mackems (twice) and Wigan (twice). The others are still to be determined. Is this really the kind of team that deserves to stay up? If this was the mackems or the smoggies we’d be p*ssing ourselves laughing.’

Bolton 1 Newcastle 0: Are those bells I hear tolling?

Earlier in this awful season Shola Ameobi narrowly missed his chance to play in the old Division 2, for, I think, Ipswich. But, again if I recall right, he failed the medical. No worries, though - Newcastle kept him and also rewarded him with a new contract, clearly keen that he continue to lope on, giving Toon fans a few more years of unfulfilled 'promise', the occasional goal, but very consistent displays of a temperament suggesting that he thinks himself a bit too good for the hectic heat of a contest, and boring stuff like tackling and tracking back.

Anyhow, the raveous maws of Division 2 are yawning wide for Shola once more, just as the bell tolls for NUFC, after today's latest dismal defeat in a season of dismal defeats. I hear the fans booed Mark Viduka's appearance as substitute for Martins, not just at seeing Oba disappear down the tunnel but also because Shola remained on the park. Shola may puzzle over all this, just as he might wonder why he's the only Toon player in living memory not to be newly idolised after scoring a seemingly crucial goal against Sunderland (the reason, I reckon, being that no-one really feels the point won by that equalising penalty at SJP is going to end up amounting to a hill of beans.)

So is this the promised end? 11 games remain. Nobody reckons we'll get any points home to Man U, Chelsea and Arsenal, or at Liverpool or Villa. That leaves the visits to SJP of Fulham, Boro and Pompey, and the trips to Stoke, Hull and Spurs. Six cup ties, eh? (Shame we were garbage in the cups this year too.) Probably at least 12 more points needed - maybe a couple less but you wouldn't count on it. It's bad. But then you have to say that if there aren't 3 or 4 wins left in this team from those fixtures, then Division 2 is indeed their rightful home.

WBA 2 Newcastle 3: Late Breaking News - P. Lovenkrands also Geordie...

I lived through a predictable range of emotions on Saturday afternoon, with the radio on and off while I was 'working'. It has been known for Newcastle to race into early leads, just as they find it easy to lose them, but a 3-1 first-half advantage, with a goal for new boy Lovenkrands and a couple of assists from new lad Ryan Taylor, was obviously a big boon. By the middle of the second half, and Albion's inevitable halving of the deficit leading to sphincter-tightening Final Stages, a lot had become clearer about the earlier skirmishes - namely that WBA were managing to defend even worse than us, and that our counterattacking game was not at its sharpest given the frontline resources at Chris Hughton's disposal.

Still, this is what the Toon will need to do more of if they're to survive - win games away from home against sides who are not significantly better than us, or else hardly much worse.

In general when seeking football wisdom, I only read NUFC blogs and fansites, of course - no other clubs' banter or bile concerns me. But I did stumble across a funny Baggies blog after the game, the author of which claimed to have been on the same post-match 'plane home' as Damian Duff. According to said author, Duff's considered view was that West Brom were 'sh*te', but when asked Duffer couldn't venture a specific opinion on the opposition player deployed to mark him that afternoon, because he'd never noticed the guy... Ought to be true, even if by any chance it's not.