Disappointing Newcastle United showing no fight to survive

Newcastle players look dejected on the field after losing 6-0 at home to Liverpool

Newcastle United might not be playing in the nPower Championship next season, but on recent showing, they certainly deserve to be.

The Magpies have mustered only 5 points out of their last 8 games, and conceded 16 goals in that barren spell as they limp towards the crucial final stages of the Premier League season. In the 4 games following their Europa League exit, Newcastle have managed only 2 points from a possible 12. In that spell, they conceded a staggering 9 goals at home in 2 games, and showed a hint of what has been apparent to many all season; the North East club has put far more energy into the Europa League than it has the EPL all season long. For that mistake, they could pay the ultimate price.

The statistics of those last 4 games are revealing enough in themselves, but what is perhaps even worse is the manner in which Newcastle approached them.

The 3-0 defeat at home to arch-rivals Sunderland as well as the 6-0 defeat at the hands of Liverpool a week ago were not just showings of poor quality, but more worryingly a complete lack of desire. It is as if the Newcastle players either don’t realise they could be relegated or don’t care. You’d have thought that having already once had the bitter taste of relegation in their mouths, the club would fight tooth and nail to avoid it, especially in front of their home crowd. That is not the case. Recently, they have resembled the wimpy kid in the schoolyard, unwilling to face the fight in front of them and intent on cowering, shutting their eyes and just hoping that it passes them by.

Newcastle are a club with a proud tradition and fiercely passionate fans, and they deserve more from their team than they have got in the last few weeks. While other clubs engaged in the relegation dogfight (Sunderland, Wigan, Norwich, Southampton, Aston Villa) leave nothing on the pitch and fight hard for every ball, Newcastle seem to wander through games without much direction or conviction. The space they allowed Liverpool on the ball at St James’ Park last week was abysmal. Their lack of will to run and close down the space should be embarrassing to any amateur footballer, never mind a professional at the highest level. The 1-1 draw with West Brom showed us that Newcastle lack the killer instinct to finish off a team when they are playing poorly, and served as a reminder of the fact that Newcastle have only won one away game the entire season.

Newcastle are a club with proud and fiercely passionate fans, and they deserve more from their team than they have seen this season

Compare those performances to what their fellow relegation fighters have been doing. Wigan came back from behind twice to prevail 3-2 away at West Brom in last weekend’s most resilient display, while Aston Villa were forced to hold off a late fight back by Norwich to take a 2-1 victory at Carrow Road in a contest that both sides can be proud of. Even Sunderland, who were embarrassed 6-1 by Aston Villa in last week’s Monday night game, managed to fight back for a point against Stoke on Monday night despite going down to ten men after only half an hour. This is the same Sunderland who outmatched Newcastle’s intensity in the Tyne and Wear Derby just a few weeks ago, claiming all 3 points at St James’ Park and sparking an incredible knee slide by manager Paolo Di Canio.

Whilst Toon Head Coach Alan Pardew is not completely to blame for Newcastle’s woes, it’s obvious that he doesn’t have the same enthusiasm that Di Canio has; the kind of charisma that can capture the imagination of a team and provide a spark to a depleted organisation. Everything about Newcastle now seems laboured and awkward, from their formations on the pitch to the rumours of a locker room rift off it. They are showing none of the urgency required to dig your way out of a relegation scrap. All that trickles down from the manager.

Pardew seems to believe, however, that their 0-0 draw with West Ham has somehow proven that his side do in fact have that urgency. He told reporters after the game that he thought his team showed great determination and spirit against a tough opponent.

While the manager may be right to publicly endorse his players as a managerial tactic, his words will hold little merit with everyone else. Anyone who watched the game on Saturday afternoon could clearly see that Newcastle were severely lacking any attacking intensity. One Newcastle fan who attended the game told me via Facebook afterwards “what I saw at Upton Park on Saturday was a team with no spirit and no ideas…That was an abysmal performance.”

So while Pardew can tell anyone who will listen that his side showed a fighting spirit at Upton Park, everyone else knows that that is not the case. Considering the desperate situation they are in, Newcastle’s performance on Saturday was nothing but underwhelming, and it was in keeping with the product they’ve been putting on the field all season long.

Huw Silk, once a regular at St James’ Park but now nothing more than a disenchanted sceptic, echoed the sentiment of many Newcastle fans when I asked him what he felt about their poor showings of late:

“It’s not just recently I have become disenchanted. This whole season has been such a regression since last year – ok, maybe we did better then than we deserved, but a team made up of the players we have should not be languishing so miserably. This season has been an exact replica of 2009 – bottom half all season then going even more off the boil in the final weeks, unable to figure out where the next points will come from until we find ourselves in the mire just as the season finishes.”

Right now, the momentum is running against Newcastle like an 80mph headwind against a propeller plane, just as it did the last time they were dumped from the Premier League. With a win on Tuesday night against Swansea, Wigan can leapfrog Newcastle and put the Magpies in the bottom three for the first time this season. Even if Wigan take nothing from the game at the DW Stadium, they will still be only 3 points behind with a very similar goal difference.

Relegation is once again a very real threat for the Toon, and if they hope to survive it, they are going to have to dramatically improve the effort and intensity that they show on the pitch. At this stage of the season, there are no easy games, and with only 4 points separating 5 teams fighting off that last relegation spot, it’s going to take a huge effort from everyone, both physically and mentally, to survive. On the evidence of the last two months or so, Newcastle just don’t have what it takes.