Man City 6-1 Newcastle - The 'Index 6'

Hopefully a day will come when I can write one of these articles and it will be full of positive, good points… but until then, here are six things we learned from our humiliating collapse at the Etihad Stadium:

1. We have to be more ruthless when we are on top in a game

What makes the debacle of Saturday’s second-half even more head-scratching is the fact that we made the hosts look remarkably ordinary for 90 percent of the first half. Granted they were missing a few players, but with the squillions of pounds that they have bought their players (and titles) with, and the hundreds of millions of pounds that they spent again this summer, thanks to UEFA thinking it was a good idea to relax their financial fair-play rules (but that’s another argument for another day), they still have a wealth of talent to call upon when their injury ‘crisis’ hits. All the more reason to praise Newcastle’s opening 40 minutes performance.

However, as anyone who watches football will tell you, you have to make the most of your chances when you are on top, because if you don’t, there is a likelihood it will come back to bite you.

Never has there been a greater example of this than Saturday at the Etihad. Newcastle could – and should – have been three goals to the good, and until we learn to be more cut-throat in times of ascendancy during games, we will be constantly throwing games away from good positions.

2. Steve McClaren should be receiving a few knocks on his office door this week.

McClaren’s decision to start the hapless Yoan Gouffran as a holding midfielder against Manchester City was perplexing to almost every pundit, commentator, journalist and fan alike. In fact it was mind-boggling to virtually everyone except our management team. It was probably even a shock to the Frenchman himself.

He has struggled for a season and a half to play his preferred position(s), but to deploy him in such a key role in a huge game that was always likely to see us on the back foot for much of the game, seems to have been made more on his number being drawn from a hat logic than a footballing one.

I understand that Cheick Tiote has been out for a while, and thus not 100 percent match fit, but surely to get 60 minutes out of a naturally defensive-minded midfielder, and then see where the game is at when the time comes to make a change, would be more sensible, and preferable.

Granted Newcastle played well…in fact better than that… for 40 minutes, but even then, Gouffran was a passenger for much of it. The times he was involved, he continued to display the same flaws in his game that plagued him previously – his inability to get involved (he made 24 passes compared to Vurnon Anita’s 43; and half the number of tackles made by Anita) – and when he did get involved, it was the ball deflecting off him for Aguero’s equaliser.

I hope that the one lesson that McClaren has learned from his failed experiment is to use horses for courses in future. Tinker when you’re three or four goals up in a game, but not to use square pegs in round holes from the start.

3. Any delusions of grandeur that Ashley, Charnley and McClaren had about a top eight finish are a distant memory.

All the talk of a top eight finish seem to be pipe dreams now. With the position we currently find ourselves in, anywhere in the top 17 will do. Maybe the hierarchy should re-evaluate their targets too.

We should forget all about the top half of the table and concentrate on getting ourselves out of the bottom three. Take each game as it comes and look again at where we are by Christmas.

After the upcoming international break, we have a run of games that all look ‘winnable’ on paper. The problem Newcastle have now, is that, due to the position we have put ourselves in now, confidence is low. As well as that, there is now a lot more pressure on the ‘winnable’ games than there was when the fixtures came out in July. Taking these extenuating circumstances into account, then suddenly these games look a lot tougher.

The players and coaching staff – Steve Black in particular – need to group together and dissect both team and individual performances so far. They need to show some spirit, and prove to the fans that the Club, and what happens to it, means something to them. It may just be a source of income to them, but it is the life and soul of every single one of us that spend our own hard-earned wages to go and watch them!

4. Ten games in and we are no better than previous years.

“Judge me, and the team, after ten games” stressed McClaren at the start of the season. Well, eight league games, and two League Cup games later, and I can’t say that things are very much, if any, better than last season.

I will be the first to admit that we have had the trickiest start of probably any team in the Premier League, and I will also agree that in a couple of games we have shown signs that things could get better, but we did similar things, at times, last season, such as the Chelsea victory at home and the winning run of five games that, ultimately, saved our skin last term.

We played well defensively at Old Trafford, and a lot of that credit, in my opinion, is down to Daryl Jaanmat and Chancel Mbemba. Jaanmat shows that he is a top class player, and I still think that he should be our captain. Mbemba looks to be the pick of the new crop for me, with his performances living up to the reputation he arrived with. Yes, they have both made a couple of errors – Jaanmat getting sent off and Mbemba being at fault for the Manchester City opening goal yesterday are the most noteable – but it is to be expected when you are relying on two player to carry the whole defence week in week out.

Our failure to find the net regularly; our lack of discipline on the field; our inability to cross a ball; our failure to be able to defend set pieces; the disinterested demeanour from some of our players; and our familiar talent of being able to crash out of a cup competition to lower league opposition, are all traits that we need to rid ourselves of before any significant progress can be made. Compound these faults with our common problem of injuries, and the number of recurring injuries we have, and we have another recipe for a season of disaster and flirtation with Championship.

We need the manager to put things right, and show us these coaching skills that we keep hearing about to good effect, or it may soon be too late.

5. Newcastle are the perfect opponent for players or teams that have been out of form

It never seems to fail. If a player hasn’t been finding the net for weeks, or a team hasn’t been able to score goals, or a goalkeeper or team has not kept a clean sheet for X amount of hours of football, then as soon as they play Newcastle, all their wrongs will be righted.

Sergio Aguero yesterday is a prime example. You just knew, after the run he has been on, that he would manage to find the net against us. Mind you, I didn’t think he’d find it five times, but still, the principle is the same.

I often wonder why that is, but just usually put it down to typical Newcastle United bad luck.

Maybe we should line Gouffran, Sissoko, Colback and Coloccini up against us, then they might play their way back into form.

6. Big, rich players at big, rich clubs truly are the epitome of spoilt brats.

Manchester City do have some world class players. In fact, for that spell at the start of the second half, I think they would have scored two or three goals against almost any team in the world. But what they also have, are world class whingers, whiners, and serial complainers.

When things weren’t going their way in the first half, the behaviour of some of their players towards the referee was disgraceful. They moaned about every challenge, every 50-50 and every decision given against them. The way Joe Hart raced from his goal following an Anita foul, a full 70 yards away, to scream and gesticulate in the referees face (a referee that was only a few yards away from the incident) was appalling.

Whether he was captain or not, it is not acceptable for someone to remonstrate with an official in such away and escape punishment – especially when it involves an incident that he could not possibly have seen properly due to the distance he was from it. Of course, lest we forget, this is the same ‘honest’ Joe hart that remonstrated with the officials so much at St James’ Park about being ‘unsighted’ by Tiote’s goal against him, that the referee and his assistant actually decided to disallow it.

I know it happens at every football club, but it seems that players and managers at the top clubs seem to think that there should be separate rules for their players because they cost more. What a load of Tosh!

Sometimes I think I’d rather see my team struggling, and winning nothing than be a supporter of a club like Manchester City… but on the other hand… maybe I’d cope!