No one should be surprised with the Newcastle United v Manchester United 4-1 result yesterday. When we have the best players fit and available to play the managers preferred way, we are a decent team (not great, but you can see what we are trying to do). However, every time we need to rotate or change up the the line up we tend to be awful.
This is due to our squad being a mismatch of many different players who have been bought to play various different styles. While others have been asked to play a different way to their natural style that they have lost all sense of form and confidence. This isn’t the managers fault, this is the legacy of over a decade of mismanagement from the top down.
I’ve seen a few posts starting to question the manager, but the reality is, we have reached a point where we need to stop replacing the manager and replace the players. This will be difficult given our financial position and will probably require us to buy younger players with potential rather than ready made players in their peak years. Which in turn will mean making our way back to the top will take 2 or 3 years longer as we wait for these players to develop into the top players they could become.
If we changed the manager, would that make either Onana or Bayindir into a good reliable keeper? No it wouldn’t, so we would still have a keeper who is giving away at least one goal every game. Which in turn forces our forwards to score at least twice in every game to have a chance of winning the match. Would changing managers make Hojlund or Zirkzee into prolific goalscorers? Again probably not, meaning that we would still struggle to score enough goals to win games.
When we look at yesterday’s game in isolation, the result shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. We had an unsettled keeper (possibly making his EPL debut?) behind a very makeshift defence.
We had Dalot at RWB (who is in poor form, although improving since he moved back to the right).
Mazraoui at CB (Who has been good there, but has spent his entire career as a RB so is bound to make the odd mistake in a new position).
Lindelof at CB (he has never been good enough in the EPL).
Yoro at CB (highly talented and promising player, but still a teenager in his first season in the EPL).
And Amass at LWB (making his first start in senior football).
Literally we had two RBs, a CB who has never been good enough and two teenagers playing in front of an unsettled keeper away to a team that if they win their game in hand will move up to third in the league and have already won a cup this season.
It’s clear where the managers priorities lie this season and it is in the Europa league, not the EPL. Even if we won all our remaining games in the league, it’s unlikely that we would finish in the top half of the table, let alone a European place in any of their competitions. From the clubs perspective finishing a few places higher is worth a few million, which is peanuts in the grand scheme of things, yet winning 4 more games in the Europa league would get us a UEFA Champions League (UCL) place worth at least 50m to the club next season.
That makes it very clear why the manager rotated the squad around so much to try and make sure his best players are available for the vital game against Lyon next week. I’m not being over dramatic when I say our season hangs on the result of that game. If we win and go through to the semi-final then our season continues, if we go out to Lyon our season is over, as well as our chances of signing some top players this summer as we won’t have the finances or the pulling power without UCL football.
I mean we are interested in signing Liam Delap and are supposedly in competition with Chelsea to sign him. Apparently playing European football next season is an important factor for the player. Therefore, not winning the Europa league might be the difference between being able to sign Delap or not. Which is madness given he’s a very talented young player, but is not a top player yet by any means. If not being in Europe next season is going to put off players of the current level of Delap then who on earth will we sign if we aren’t in Europe next season?
Realistically, we need 2 points from 6 games to guarantee we won’t be relegated. (To be relegated now we would need to lose all 6 remaining games while Ipswich win all 6 games for them to finish 1 point ahead of us). With the threat of relegation all but gone, the reality is the difference in finishing 17th or 12th is very little in terms of finances for our club. We are only fighting to try and save some face in the league, but again finishing 12th is hardly going to save our blushes. All our eggs have to be in the Europa league basket now, and success or failure in that competition will determine how successful our season has been.
Written by Shappy April 14 2025 13:30:57
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