Match Report

Shocking. I’ve spent the last ten hours thinking of how to start a match report on this game. I’ve toyed with looking at the positives – in all honesty we probably didn’t deserve to get beat for one, Parker and Emre played well and erm that’s it. Now onto the negatives and God knows you can take your pick here.

Let’s start with the facts of the game. The first half offered next to nowt, the only incident of note being Bullard, who always comes across as a thoroughly decent lad, ending up with a shocking looking injury that will hopefully heal as soon as possible. In the second we started brightly enough and took the lead after a lovely knock in from Emre, glanced in a remarkably similar fashion to the Wigan game by the superb Parker and to be honest that looked to be it. Unfortunately, Parker went off with ten minutes to go, we lost our only player with any sort of leadership quality and we folded. You’ve seen the goals – shit defending, no backbone, game lost. And so to those negatives…

We mustered to my memory one meaningful chance against a frankly mediocre Fulham side and we scored from it. Our defence is beyond a joke. Unbelievably, we have managed to find a poorer left-back than Babayaro. This feat in itself seemed beyond the realms of possibility and out of position or not out of position, Peter Ramage is nowhere near being a Premiership footballer. Awful distribution, mingin’ positional sense and dreadful awareness of what is going on around him have been all too common with Ramage for a while now. But he tries, eh? Yeah well I’d try if I played for NUFC, you would try if you played for NUFC, it simply isn’t good enough. The case against our buying policy can and will be made more fully another day but if we seriously think that ‘squad’ players like this provide us with adequate cover than frankly we are fucked.

Continuing the theme of our buying policy, it has been written in stone that Duff was a ‘good buy’. I mean he must have been – everyone has said so, he played (regularly) for the Champions last season and there can be no argument in the matter. Well maybe I’m missing something. Granted, he was horribly out of position today and you hope that he is not fully fit and that the best is to come but so far I’m struggling to think of a meaningful contribution from Duff to NUFC. No real decent ball into the box, no skinning of full backs, no real decent effort on goal. Nowt. And to think that probably the brightest talent at this club in the past couple of years at least has been nudged aside to accommodate our latest superstar? Charlie might not have had a great game by any stretch today but I know who I’d rather started on the left any day of the week and he ain’t a duffer.

Martins I’ll try not to dwell on because you hope that he is going to toughen up a bit and isn’t going to be faced with two 6 foot 8 monsters each week but to be kind to the kid/old timer (!) today he looked at best lightweight.

So is it panic time yet? Possibly not but how many points are we expecting from West Ham, Everton and Man United? Not many to be frank and that leaves us with a shit start, an undeservedly vulnerable manager and a Chairman with all the strategic acumen of a freshly laid shite, with a track record of making abysmal decisions (as Green Day would no doubt say) before September ends. Everyone knows there is an air of concern around Newcastle United at the moment and everyone knows that it is far more than a knee jerk reaction to some poor deadline day signings. It comes to something when hardened, traditional fans are praying for an anonymous Jersey based hedge fund to take control of the club but NUFC need a major change and quickly because at present, like it or not we’re rotten and getting worse.

Keep the Faith.

GH