I know most Newcastle United fans are getting pretty fed up with the glacial pace of progress at the club, compared to what most of us expected to happen following the takeover.
Recently, I’ve noticed a lot micky taking from supporters of rival clubs relishing that we are being bullied by the ‘big six’, and also our fans complaining that we can never prevent this bullying from the half dozen.
I was reminded the other day of a painful time that help me put the current summer into perspective and gave me some comfort, so I thought I’d share and hopefully laugh about the bad old days with some fellow Mags.
In the summer of 2019, we were bullied by the giant club Leicester City (I mean no offence to Leicester City, some great fans and clearly deserve better than league one).
They came along and bullied us to sign our best player at the time, Ayoze Perez (pictured at the top playing for Spain). A thoroughly likeable player and very skilful, for a short period of time he formed a formidable strike force with Almiron and Rondon.
That same summer we parted ways with a well respected manager who had a Champions League winning medal among other impressive achievements on his CV, Rafa Benitez.
Rafa Benitez had inspired a promotion and on a shoestring budget formed a team to fight and survive in the Premier League. But then for some reason we replaced him with the worst manager I’ve ever seen manage any Premier League club ever, even now I still break into hives remembering his pathetic excuses and pitiful attempts at coaching a team, Mr Steve Bruce.
That summer saw us bullied by rival premier league clubs for our transfer targets too, but those clubs were Watford, Wolves and West Ham.
So while I am gutted that Bruno Guimaraes could leave us and frustrated that we still don’t have an announcement about the training ground or stadium from the Newcastle United owners. I do find a little comfort that there are fewer and fewer clubs that can think about bullying or even competing with us for our players and attracting new ones.
It sure does hurt when it happens of course but thank god there’s very few clubs in England that can do so now. It will really hurt if Guimaraes leaves but the club and team will still be in far better shape than that horrendous summer of 2019.
The last thought I had was this.
If I went back to 2019 to chat with a Leicester fan and let them know that in the seven years to come one of our clubs would have added a trophy and played a couple of seasons in the Champions League, while the other has slipped down to League One, I’m pretty sure they’d predict it the wrong way around.