After the depression of Thursday night and all but
confirming our relegation, a trip to the North East to play the second best
team in the country, who we’ve already lost three times to this season, was
probably not on the wish list of anyone. Let alone going there needing to win. Newcastle‘s last two performances have been a
6-1 home win against Tottenham and a 4-1 away win against Everton and here we
come. Usually, you would back a team that had just come off a massively
disappointing result to put up some sort of better showing in a game like this
I wouldn’t back our manager and players to do anything right now. Of course,
this season we have usually done better in, what on paper look like, the more
difficult games but there seems to be finally a realisation at the club that we
are in the shit now, so will we fight or will we give up.
Before the Bournemouth game I thought that if we win that, we could come up
here and maybe grind out a point which shows that even last week I was still
deluding myself slightly that we had some sort of functioning football team to
support. We haven’t.
I’ve seen it written this week that Eddie Howe would have our squad in mid
table if he was manager and I think there is a lot of truth in that. Even Eddie
failed in the end at Bournemouth however but for years he kept them punching
above their weight and making them better than the sum of the parts. He is certainly doing that in Newcastle at
the moment with the quality players that they have brought in like Alexander Isak
and Bruno Guimaraes raising the level of the previously average players around them.
The likes of Miguel Almiron, Callum Wilson, Jacob Murphy, Sean Longstaff and Joelinton
are all unrecognisable from the players they were pre-take over.
Yes, the Saudi takeover is undeniably dodgy and extremely questionable at least
but in some ways, I find it quite amusing that most of the complaints have come
from clubs whose seat at the top table in the Super League bracket is now under
threat. Everyone bar Manchester City is looking over the shoulder at what
Newcastle are doing and it’s when you compare them to the likes of Chelsea, who
have of course spent much more money than Newcastle have, that you realise the
impressive job that has been done up there.
Hopefully we put in a bit of a performance today and a bit of pride to be
shown. Today’s assignment better suits Ruben and his negative mindset but it’s
tombola time again when we learn the line up with Lyanco, Djenepo, Stuart
Armstrong, ABK and Sulemana all starting.
I have no idea who is going where or what the formation is. Is Djenepo at left wing back? Is Lyanco at right back or in a three at the
back?
Saints make a decent start, popping the ball around with Stuart Armstrong
powering forward and via Sulemana and a dodgy touch by Djenepo, KWP shows good
intent to arrive at the edge of the box to have a go with his right foot at the
near post but Pope keeps it out reasonably easily.
The next effort is also down the left-hand side with Armstrong picking up
the ball and with no real options, tryies to blast it through Pope from a narrow angle but he is not going to be beaten from there.
The first alarm came soon after as Murphy slid a pass in between Bednarek
and Lyanco to send Gordon away but the ex-Everton show pony can only hit the
side netting.
We’re doing ok but we need a bit of luck when Gordon’s cross is accidentally
headed out to the edge of the area by Isak and falls perfectly for Bruno
Guimaraes to volley but he lashes it well wide.
More Newcastle pressure as Isak in midfield, plays the ball in between Bednarek
and Lyanco for Gordon to run onto and he draws Alex McCarthy before sliding it
past him, off the outside of the post and out. If you could pick one Newcastle
player to be running through on goal it would be Gordon and we got away with
one there
With Newcastle not getting it all their own way and getting frustrated, it’s
all too much for the twat Bruno Guimaraes who trashes through Romeo Lavia right
in front of Anthony Taylor who decides that it’s not a yellow card. Alright
then. Bruno makes the most of his reprieve by then trashing straight through
Stuart Armstrong and unbelievably, Taylor doesn’t book him again. Players have
been sent off for two yellows for those two tackles. Fucking ridiculous.
Bruno’s day gets worse however when Burn played the ball into midfield to Bruno
who was closed down by Lavia who got a foot in. Bruno is a course appealing to
the referee after this perfectly fair tackle but meanwhile, Charly Alcaraz picks
up the ball and drives at the Newcastle defence before feeding Sulemana out on
the right. Sulemana’s cross to the edge of the 6 yard box is met by Stuart
Armstrong who darts in front of Trippier to apply the finishing touch. Fucking
hell, we are winning.
Nice Goal - When Will You Be Substituted?
There is little time to respond for Newcastle before half-time and we go in a goal to the good. I’m just feeling that the chances of us defending for 45 minutes against Newcastle and not being totally bollocksed by Selles having the ability to make five substitutions, is minimal. Eddie Howe has made a sub and brought on Callum Wilson for Anthony Gordon.
At the start of the second half it becomes apparent that we are not gonna push forward at all and it’s all gonna be one way traffic towards our goal. Trippier whips in a free-kick from the left hand side which is met at the back post by Botman who is virtually on top of McCarthy but the ball hits Macca before Wilson goes for the rebound but a combination of Macca and Lyanco manage to get it past the post.
It’s a matter of time though and Isak gets down the left-hand side with Lyanco too far infield and Sulemana not getting close enough to him and his cross is met by Wilson who cannot miss from about 8 yards out. 1-1…. And now, ladies and gentleman, we will elect to collapse.
Selles then takes out the shotgun and shoots us three times in the bollocks. When you bring on Adam Armstrong, Elyounoussi and Maitland-Niles on in one go, you are undeniably weakening three elevenths of your team. Sulemana, Stuart Armstrong and Lyanco being the players replaced.
The substitutions do predictably absolutely nothing to stem the tide. Wilson has the ball in the net a few minutes later as an Isak cross and Almiron flick find him in front of McCarthy but after a VAR check, it’s given as offside.
No matter though because from the next corner a few minutes later, Trippier’s inswinger is flicked on by Schar is deflected into his own net by Theo Walcott. Fucks sake. You would think it’s game over at this point but the good news is that we have Adam Armstrong fresh and ready to go grab an equalizer.
Even with Che Adams now on for Charly Alcaraz, we do fuck all as Pope’s long bomb forward is not is not dealt with by Maitland-Niles, which enables Wilson to walk around the goalkeeper and put it into the net.
The final 10 minutes are just a procession towards our goal with Wilson managing to hit the bar twice with one shot and Bednarek underlining the excellent game that he has had, pulling out a series of body-on-the-line blocks to stop Newcastle running away with it.
And it’s over without any further damage. I’m not exaggerating when I say that Newcastle should probably have scored about seven in the second half.
We actually managed to string together 45 decent minutes in the first-half and you could argue that we deserved to be in front bearing in mind Newcastle had not had one shot on target. The closest they got was Anthony Gordon hitting the post. Our goal was the product of a great tackle by Lavia, on the shithouse Bruno Guimaraes, a driving run forward by Alcaraz, picking out the right pass to Sulemana and some lovely movement in the middle by Stuart Armstrong. In the second half we did absolutely fuck all in attack and couldn’t string two passes together. It was absolutely shite and the inevitable happened and when Newcastle got one they were only ever going to score again. We weren’t going to score because Selles had taken off all the forward players with any ability and replaced them with the training cones.
I said at half-time that we were going to have to survive all the Newcastle could throw at us plus Ruben Selles’ substitutions and the Polo-neck with the Reverse Midas touch turned everything to shit with his most spectacular substitution yet. Bringing on Adam Armstrong, Elyounoussi and Maitland-Niles means you are bringing on three slices of shite and within four minutes the ball had been in our net three times, with two of those goals actually counting. Of course, the players who had provided all our attacking impetus in the first half, namely Djenepo, Stuart Armstrong, Sulemana and Alcaraz were all substituted by then.
If anyone hadn’t already thought that Selles isn’t up to the job then they must surely see it now. Utter fraud. Yes, Newcastle were good but we were pathetic in the second half. It was exactly the same against Arsenal a week ago and Selles tried the same tactics again with the same result. Basically if you haven’t worked out by now that our defence is not good enough to stand up to extreme pressure, then you are never going to know. We have to attack a bit and keep the ball a bit just to take the pressure off them.
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Dragan Wonders Why We Employ These Idiots
As I said after the Bournemouth game, get rid of him now because there’s absolutely no point in him being here, having failed as badly as he has. We are now on our longest run without a win of the season which is a pretty spectacular effort bearing in mind we’ve sacked the last two managers after better runs than that. Nathan Jones must be sat there with his pay out, hanging out the pockets of a very expensive Stone Island jacket, pissing himself laughing. Ruben wouldn’t wear Stone Island of course – not suave enough for him. Ruben might have a nice suit on but there’s nothing underneath, certainly not a football manager – Emperors New Clothes.
Sulemana, Armstrong and Alcaraz were three players who combined for the goal and played well in the first half and we could’ve done with them on the pitch once we went behind... but not to be, thanks to the Spanish Nathan Jones. Defensively there were two really good performances by Jan Bednarek and ABK and Alex McCarthy in goal did ok and didn’t have a chance with any of the Newcastle goals. Lyanco struggled in the first 20 minutes against Anthony Gordon but then he shut him out for the rest of the first half but he kept drifting into the middle into the area where are you would normally play as a right-sided centre back in a three, and that meant we got absolutely killed down that wing in the second half. Rather than correctly Lyanco’s positioning, Selles brought on Maitland-Niles at right back and he immediately gave away the third goal because he’s shit.
And so another game goes by and now we have just four left and mathematically we still have a chance, however with Leicester playing Everton tomorrow, a Leicester win would mean we were eight points adrift. It’s all largely relevant anyway because we can’t win a game. Selles has not won in his last nine games, remember. Our next attempt is against Nottingham Forest away who are one of the five unimaginably shite teams featuring in the bottom quarter of the Premier League. I expect we’ll go all out to win – my arse.
Up the fucking Saints.
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