As a Newcastle United fan, do you agree?
Has the past week been the worst one you have ever experienced as supporter of our club.
Is it indeed worse than any Toon fans experienced, ever, late 1800s onwards?
An article on The Mag earlier on Thursday got me thinking about all of this.
Somebody (Colin Watson Jnr ‘I decided to wait until my anger subsided…’ article) declaring in the aftermath of the Barcelona and Sunderland matches: ‘What we have witnessed is undoubtedly the worst week in Newcastle United’s history.’
Everybody has their own opinion, everybody reacts in their own way, everybody feels how they do.
How did I feel though, where did this miserable week rank amongst many miserable weeks I have experienced down the years, thanks to Newcastle United?
Having had a good think, this most recent week of NUFC misery doesn’t come close to getting top billing.
For starters, once Mike Ashley forced Kevin Keegan out in September 2008, every week throughout the next 13+ years was worse than the one we have just experienced as Newcastle United fans.
We found out that supporting Newcastle United was pointless, that we had been sentenced to what appeared to be the rest of our lives, as fans of a club that had only one aim, which was to help make Mike Ashley and his retail empire as much money as possible, at the expense of our club showing any ambition. The mission statement was to just scrape by, spending as little money as possible, employing embarrassing stooge after embarrassing stooge. The only exceptions to this were when Mike Ashley got scared and employed Rafa Benitez when the Spaniard offered his services, plus when accidentally employing the excellent Chris Hughton.
Our club was just an empty shell, staffed by a skeleton crew and whether you still went to matches or boycotted at some point, you knew we were just existing.
Things were so bad, I in the end started to want Newcastle United to lose matches, in the belief that the only way Mike Ashley would ever sell, would be if the club/team truly crashed and burned. Where Newcastle United was losing Ashley money, rather than helping him to progress from a billionaire to a multi-billionaire. Eventually, Ashley sold because enough fans did stay away, once he was forced to give 10,000+ free season tickets away, he was clearly going to have to sell the club, there was no going back.
Even ignoring the Mike Ashley era, what about other miserable weeks simply in terms of results?
Well, I think safe to say I have experienced far far worse weeks than this last one.
For starters, it is a bit of head spinner to believe that losing in a Champions League last 16 match, ranks as part of the the worst of the worst! We all know that after having competed fully for three-quarters of the tie, that the last quarter got completely away from Newcastle United, that though is always possible when you go behind to a team like Barcelona in a cup match, then have to chase the game. No shame for me that with their world class players they then picked us apart. Barcelona have the second highest turnover in world football. I went to Southend on New Year’s Day 1992 (and an early kick-off!!) to see United hammered 4-0 by a club who are now non-league!!
As for losing to the Mackems, it is never good.
Was this the very worst against them?
Not for me. My very first derby was losing 4-1 at home and Gary Rowell getting a hat-trick. The very worst one though was losing at home in the second leg of the play-off at St James’ Park when the result effectively decided whether Sunderland or Newcastle would be promoted. Losing 2-0 that night was so many levels worse than this past Sunday AND Newcastle hadn’t had to play Barcelona away on the Wednesday….
I think for the Newcastle United fans who want to see everything as the worst ever, they will deny it, but even if it is subconsciously, their thinking is that we are the richest club in the world, that we are now a huge successful club on same level playing field as the usual suspects, that our natural place is now always top six and competing for trophies.
They don’t accept that Eddie Howe has achieved everything against overwhelming odds and then he has been confronted by near impossible obstacles this season.
As for those who want to see that everything is rubbish, that Eddie Howe and his players have let us down all through this season, it is interesting to look at even just these last three weeks.
Yes, we had these defeats to Barcelona and Sunderland.
At the same time though, in these last three weeks Newcastle also beat Man U despite playing with 10 men most of the match, won away at Chelsea, plus were a better team than Barcelona at St James’ Park and deserved to win.
Criticise Newcastle United and Eddie Howe for their failings BUT you also have to acknowledge when they have played well.