Joukkueen peliesityksiä kuvaa kyllä hyvin tämä topikki. Kyllä taas eilen suoraan sanottuna vitutti katsoa Newcastlen peliä. Joulun nurkilla meno oli hiukan aktiivisempaa, ja itseenikin hiipi pieni toivon kipinä, että josko Bruce olisikin onnistunut luomaan nahkansa uudelleen. Vielä mitä. Viimeiset pari peliä on ollut taas sitä alkukaudesta tuttua koko Valioliigan mielikuvituksetonta paskaa. Kaikki huipentui kyllä eiliseen, joka oli kyllä yksi oman "kannattajaurani" heikoimpia esityksiä. Ihan sama perseilikö Ryan Fraser vai ei, peli ei siihen kaatunut.
The Athleticissa oli tänään erinomainen kolumni Newcastlen tilasta, suosittelen sen lukemista myös tämän topikin Steve Brucea puolustaville henkilöille. Todella hyvä huomio on tuo, että vihdoin tulokset alkavat olla pelin mukaisia. Tosiaan samaa paskaahan se on ollut koko kauden (pl. pieni jakso joulukuun tienoilla), mutta jotenkin ihmeellisesti, lähinnä Darlow'n huikeiden otteiden ansiosta, pisteitä on tullut. Nyt sekin hana näyttää menneen kiinni.
Newcastle United have to wake up. This simply cannot go on. Serious questions have to be asked and they have to be asked now.
Mike Ashley’s ownership is faceless, silent and, perhaps most exasperating of all, has so often been wilfully ignorant of overwhelming fan opinion. But in this of all seasons, it is time they listen.
That supporter verdict right now feels like it is bordering upon universal when it comes to Steve Bruce.
The embarrassing League Cup exit to a semi-reserve Championship team last month was one thing but, for those who were still wavering, this pathetic surrender to a winless, bottom-of-the-table Sheffield United side crystallised previous suspicions that they believed a fresh face was necessary.
It was not so much that Newcastle lost at Bramall Lane — although that was dispiriting enough. It was the manner of the reversal.
Bruce named a side set-up to avoid defeat — featuring a back five and three midfielders — to face a team who had not won in the league since July, who had failed to keep a clean sheet all season, and who had collected just two points from 17 top-flight matches. Newcastle lost 1-0 and the scoreline actually flattered them. Abysmal does not even begin to cover it.
The performance was abject, but so many of them have been. What is different now is that results are finally echoing displays. This was Newcastle’s eighth game in all competitions without a victory and they have scored just once in six games; they have regressed very much to the mean when it comes to their persistent lowly statistics. And, while they are still eight points above the relegation zone, that is only because the bottom three sides — two of whom they have failed to beat in the past month — have been so woeful.
That is why there is now widespread support for Bruce to be replaced.
“We are going down if he isn’t sacked and sacked quickly,” Alex Hurst, former chair of the Newcastle United Supporters Trust (NUST), tweeted. Meanwhile, nufc.com, the highly-respected and widely-read website, ended their match report: “We don’t know whether the team bus stopped off at the chip shop in Wetherby en route back to Tyneside, but if they did then hopefully it was the last supper for the bloke at the front. And we don’t mean the driver.”
It remains difficult to gauge exactly how widespread this feeling is given that fans are locked out of St James’ Park, the usual courtroom for judgment. But it cannot be dismissed as merely the view of the “vocal minority” anymore.
Across social media, message boards and WhatsApp groups, the conviction is apparent: the head coach has to go before it is too late.
“Look, you’re asking the wrong person about that,” Bruce replied when asked about supporters calling for him to be sacked and whether he had considered his position. “I’ll never, ever walk away from a challenge and I’ve been in it long enough to have that respect.
“But I understand that, especially watching the first half, we weren’t good enough and, at the end of the day I take the responsibility for that because I pick the team. In hindsight, it’s a wonderful thing, but then again, we’ve been trying something different.”
His answer will do little, if anything, to pacify supporter anger. But it may, at the very least, force some introspection in the Newcastle boardroom.
To be clear, this is not a column demanding that Bruce be dismissed. Rather, it is a call to the Newcastle hierarchy that they at the very least have a serious conversation about this subject. That they genuinely consider that perhaps they got this wrong, just as they got it wrong previously when they appointed Joe Kinnear (twice); when they stubbornly stuck with John Carver in order to eventually land Steve McClaren and then, once they did, that they obstinately refused to accept they had made a damaging error in McClaren until it was too late.
Perhaps they will come to an alternative conclusion and determine that Bruce is still the man for the job. But the concern is that they are not even entertaining the notion that he might not have been in the first place.
Lee Charnley, the managing director, has never courted publicity and appears to have cast a cloak of invisibility over himself. He does not speak to the press, nor brief, so we can only surmise, using alarming examples of the club’s past, as to what exactly it is that he is doing right now. The assumption? That he is dithering, delaying the decision-making until the situation is beyond salvation.
As damaging as his hesitation was in 2016 when McClaren was belatedly sacked and Rafa Benitez brought in too late, it would be even more harmful to defer a decision this time around.
For Ashley’s sake, for Newcastle’s sake and, most importantly, for the supporters’ sake, this year it has to be different.
After all, relegation will not only cripple Newcastle economically at a moment when their finances are already severely depleted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it may also prevent the prospective takeover from finally taking place. Arbitration, as both Newcastle and the Premier League have confirmed, awaits, and both the prospective buyers and Ashley remain hopeful that this can eventually allow for the £305 million deal to be concluded.
Should Newcastle find themselves in the Championship come June, then Ashley cannot hope to recoup anything close to that figure, nor can there be any guarantees the Amanda Staveley-fronted consortium would still want to buy the club and attempt to realise their St James’ Park vision, either.
Ironically, Bruce was appointed for the very reason that he was deemed to be, according to a source, a “safe pair of hands”; someone who would keep Newcastle in the Premier League while Ashley attempted to offload the club. Last month, Bruce even belatedly admitted that it has been his “remit” all along, even if he aspired to “top-10 finishes”.
That is also why this most baffling of clubs actually acted pretty sensibly last summer, signing proven Premier League players in Callum Wilson, Ryan Fraser et al to ensure that survival would be secured comfortably. It was a diversion from all that had come before under Ashley but it was, as Bruce himself insisted, about “avoiding risk” at a potentially pivotal time in the club’s history. Those players were signed at Bruce’s behest, but they have not delivered and nor has the head coach.
Some may argue, with justification, that supporters should be careful what they wish for, while many fans may rightly argue that this administration cannot be trusted to pick an appropriate successor, were they indeed to replace Bruce.
But sometimes a freshness is needed regardless. The negative momentum has built rapidly at Newcastle in recent weeks and it shows no sign of abating. A new face may be able to arrest the slide, if it is indeed time for Bruce to go, but that will ultimately be a decision Ashley defers to Charnley, and nobody knows what the MD is really thinking.
This club have been here before under Ashley, so many times. The hierarchy think they know best, they belligerently ignore the evidence in front of their eyes, and they do not act swiftly enough to correct their mistakes.
Their complacent commitment to mediocrity eventually brings one thing, time and again: relegation. They have taken the club down twice and supporters understandably fear they are heading that way again.
Serious questions have to be asked — and they have to be asked now.
