Newcastle 1-3 Bournemouth - NUFC down and out!

I usually write the Index 6 article using six things I have learned from the game. I am sitting here on Sunday morning thinking about what to write. I wanted to do it last night, but I had to give myself some time as I was SO angry and frustrated and confused and despondent, that anything I wrote would have just turned into one long rant. It may well still come across like that, but at least it may be a more calculated rant than it would have been had I just attacked my keyboard in the minutes and hours after that game!

Even today, some 15 hours after one of the worst ‘performances’ (I use that word very loosely) I have ever seen, I am still struggling to find a single thing that I learned from yesterday’s debacle.

Now, when you consider I have had my season ticket since 1978, when we were stranded in mid-table mediocrity, year after year, in the old second division; we were getting gates of 16,000 and we were standing (I actually sat on the barriers as I was eight-years-old) in uncovered paddocks and terraces, and it was wet, windy, and cold most of the time; new signings were the likes of Frank Pingle, Rob McDonald; Wayne Fereday, Kevin Dillon, George Reilly, the list goes on; a good season consisted of getting to our cup final (which meant we had made it to the fifth round and got a plum tie at home to a first division side, which we would go on to lose), so saying that this weekend’s performance was one of the worst performances I have ever seen, it is quite an indictment of the team, our ‘Head Coach’ and the club in general.

So I have decided to do this a little different today, as I realise that I have learned absolutely nothing from the game. Everything that went wrong, has already been seen, so here are six things I know about Newcastle United:

1. Newcastle WILL go down if we do not change our manager NOW!

I wanted to talk here about McClaren’s team selection and tactics for yesterday’s game. The problem is, I honestly don’t know what they were.

His decision on Wednesday to start Yoan Gouffran was head-scratching. His decision to start Emanuel Riviere yesterday was, frankly, insulting.

A game we had to win, and he honestly thought that a player who has scored one solitary goal in a black and white shirt was the man to win it for us? I am sorry, but it smacked of a man who just picked him because he was out of ideas and had basically tried everyone and everything else.

His set-up was bemusing at best, and inept at worst. He is taking the fans for mugs, and I am no mug. I find it contemptuous that this man is still in his job, while we are expected to continue backing his mind-blowing selections and tactics.

The club is dead as long as he remains in charge.

2. Charnley should be sacked if he does not identify that McClaren is the problem and fails to act.

Mike Ashley’s decision, to give a non-footballing man the position that Lee Charnley holds, was wrong. We know that. However, the plain fact of the matter is: You don’t need to be a footballing man to know that this manager, head coach, or whatever title he is given, is clearly out of his depth; has lost the dressing room (regardless of what concocted statements are allegedly written by the players); has no idea how to motivate players; cannot identify the problems; and is incapable pick a team capable of winning games.

He may not have a footballing background, but he is not blind…or deaf. His failure to act, and remove our bumbling man in the dugout, regardless of it being his original appointment, or what sort of pay-outs have to be made to him and his staff, will be simply deplorable.

Fans would have a lot more respect for Charnley if he would just relieve him of his duties, then come out, hold his hands up and say: “I’m sorry. I got it wrong.”

Sadly, I (and from the reaction on social media most other fans) can still see him putting his hands in his pocket, burying his head in the sand and carrying on regardless.

For the club’s sake, I sincerely hope I am wrong.

3. We cannot defend.

Not a lot more to add to the headline here. We all see it week in, week out. McClaren’s failure to demand a defender in the January window was just another reason that he should not be in charge.

He may well have done that. But if he did, and one did not come in anyway, he should have had some scruples and resigned out of principle at not being given the proper tools to work with.

4. We cannot score goals.

Again, not much to add, except that with the players we have, it would help if our manager would pick the right ones at his disposal. Even when he does, his formations are such that we do not play to their strengths.

Take Everton away. He played Aleksander Mitrovic, but no wingers. What’s the point in that? Mitro has no pace, and thrives on muscling defenders out of the way. We can see that, so why can’t McClaren?

Yesterday, on the few occasions in the first half Moussa Sissoko played in a couple of decent crosses, they just sailed over everyone. Had Mitrovic been there he would have reached them. But he wasn’t, because McClaren decided to play the diminutive forward-line of Ayoze Perez and the abysmal Riviere.

The mind boggles.

5. We are ANYTHING BUT Newcastle UNITED.

I don’t care what statements are put out by players. I don’t care about McClaren’s protestations in press conferences that we are all in it together. WHAT RUBBISH!

Those players were clearly not playing for him yesterday. Even the ones that weren’t playing, couldn’t have cared less. To see our ‘captain’ and ‘leader’ sitting in an executive box, legs crossed, messing around on his phone, while the team were capitulating all around the pitch in front of him, says more about the commitment of our players to the black and white shirt, than any of the awful performances on it!

The fans are at loggerheads with the club. The players clearly don’t rate the manager. The manager is fighting with the press. Rumours abound that some of the players are arguing with each other.

This is not a club that is UNITED. In it together? Not a chance. In it for the money…now that’s a different story.

6. McClaren has broken many, if not most, of the fans.

I certainly feel broken as a Newcastle fan. I cannot remember ever being this despondent, disinterested, and angry at the team. I have to try and convince my eight-year-old son to follow in my footsteps and support NUFC. I followed in my dad’s when I was eight, he followed in his.

My son, I hasten to add, told me the other day that he was a Wolves fan (don’t ask why, because I have no idea where it came from)! What can I honestly say to him to convince him to change his allegiance to his local team? The very fact that he would rather follow a team in mid-table mediocrity in the Championship (what would have been the old second division), tells its own story, and says everything you need to know about modern-day Newcastle united. It’s a very sad situation, and one that will take a lot of work to resolve before the next breed of Newcastle fans can grow up and actually believe in their club.

And on that note, I have gone full circle back to the old days when we were old second division mid-table mediocrity, and I was eight – like my Wolves supporting son – as I mentioned in the opening. It is a place I never wanted to revisit, but with this current regime…that is EXACTLY WHERE WE ARE HEADING!