This is when you know Newcastle United are on the money.
That our football club is heading in the right direction.
Newcastle United guided by the best people and absolutely upsetting the right people.
This maybe reaching its pinnacle (so far…) on Tuesday night and in the aftermath of the match, as Arsenal and the compliant media squealed about how unfair it all was.
Not rolling over
It is interesting to see just how many managers are so quick to say after a game, just how great the opposition have been, what a brilliant job the other team’s manager is doing and so on.
That is, when the manager (who is giving out the gushing praise) has won the match.
I think the word we are looking for is…patronising. Just hammered you and now I’m patting you on the head. We saw it all the time when Steve Bruce was at Newcastle United, clueless tactics and team selection, NUFC folding easily and the opposition boss saying what a great bloke Bruce was after easily beating his Newcastle side.
Arsenal were absolutely flying going into this match, all the talk was of them ending up ten points clear at the top after Tuesday. The Gunners had won all their home Premier League matches this season and had never failed to score in any of their 16 PL games, home and away.
I saw ‘expert’ after ‘expert’ predicting a definite Arsenal win, by at least a couple of goals.
No acceptance at all from the overwhelming majority of pundits. journalists, whoever, that this was surely a case of very likely…The irresistible force meets the immovable object.
Newcastle United concede at least a couple of goals?
Hmmmm, since Boxing Day 2021, Newcastle United have now (after Arsenal) played 42 matches under Eddie Howe and do you know how many times Newcastle have conceded two or more goals?
I think for non-NUFC fans not a single person will be anywhere close. The answer is, four. Home and away against Man City, away at Tottenham (April 2022) and the only other one, in August at Anfield when the referee kept adding on time until Liverpool scored their second (winning) goal.
Just remember the total mess Steve Bruce had the team and especially the defence in!!!
In the second half of last season, Eddie Howe turned that defence around by reinstating Rafa’s outstanding £3.5m buy Fabian Schar, who Bruce thought was inferior to Ciaran Clark and Jamaal Lascelles. Howe with Dubravka (yet another brilliant Rafa signing, costing £4m back in 2018) in goal, then spent £27m to bring in three defenders to complete his new style defence, Trippier (£12m) on the right, Burn (£13m) in the middle with Schar, then Targett (£2m loan and unwanted at Villa) on the left.
Eddie Howe then upgrading once again with bargain signings, England keeper Nick Pope for an unbelievable £10m, plus an equally unbelievable £35m on Sven Botman, a central defender who looks like a world class player in the making (Targett also secured on a permanent £13m transfer).
Don’t forget as well, Newcastle went into Tuesday night’s game with the best defensive record (11 goals in 17 games) in the Premier League and NUFC on the back of five clean sheets in a row (all competitions), which then became six in a row.
Boo hoo, Newcastle United wouldn’t let us score, it’s not fair.
Yes, the squealing from Mikel Arteta and the compliant media was a joy to see / hear.
Newcastle United had rolled over and lost all of their last eleven visits to The Emirates. Not this time though.
Time wasting
It’s not fair, that nasty Newcastle United are time wasting.
Of course, that’s right, Newcastle becoming the first ever team in football history, who then try and minimise the time the superior in form opposition have to try and get the winning goal. Yes, never seen that ever happen before. Well, unless you were at St James’ Park three days earlier when Leeds did it even better, or is that worse???
Anyway, this has happened literally thousands and thousands of times, just inn the 30 year history of the Premier League, never mind previous to that or elsewhere in other leagues.
Seriously, this type of ‘game management’ has been made into an art form by some, Mourinho at Chelsea springing to mind. So often his team taking the lead and then just killing the rest of the game by any means necessary.
It is actually not that long ago when a certain club’s favourite song was ‘one nil to the Arsenal’ due to the fact that time after time they got the lead, then totally killed it, using any tactics necessary, especially time wasting. Plus they also had a pretty good keeper and defence at the time…
In recent years when Man Utd at their weakest point(s), you even saw them, the biggest spenders in the Premier League on wages AND transfer fees, going all out negativity and time wasting from the first minute to try and avoid humiliation at Old Trafford at home to Man City.
Yet Mikel Arteta (and Jurgen Klopp before him, in August), making out that Newcastle United are somehow the original ‘cheats’, the first ones to ever try and see out a positive result by trying to limit the time / chances the opposition have to score.
Following Tuesday night’s game, no surprise to see the (London-centric) media piling in behind Mikel Arteta and Arsenal…
Martyn Ziegler (Chief sports reporter for The Times)
‘The ball was in play for just 51min 23sec for Arsenal v Newcastle, 4min less than Premier League average for season. David Dein wants time-keeping taken away from refs + countdown clocks to stop for major delays.’
Funnily enough, I have never seen national journalists rushing to push these kind of stats this season, when Newcastle have faced the likes of Leeds, Palace and Bournemouth, who all came to St James’ Park this season and dug in for a draw by any means.
What makes the man from The Times’ use of Newcastle United as some kind of extreme example of time wasting and limiting the time the ball was in play, is the fact that there have already been 33 other Premier League matches this season that saw the ball LESS in play that Tuesday night’s match!
Buying players
Yes, Newcastle United are also the first football club in history to ever buy players to improve their team / squad.
At least that is what feels like when you read and hear our enemies (pundits, journalists, rival fans etc) talking about NUFC spending £10m on Nick Pope, or £12m on Kieran Trippier…
Honestly, if this month Newcastle United buy a player for £25m or £30m or so, I can guarantee you that it would attract more negativity, criticism, whatever…than if Chelsea buy this Enzo Fernandez for a new Premier League record £100m+.
Just look at the summer transfer window.
Chelsea set a new record by spending over a quarter of a billion, Man Utd weren’t far behind with £200m+ spending of their own, at least another large handful of PL clubs, including Nottingham Forest, spent more than the £120m or so that Newcastle committed (£59m plus £4m in future add-ons of that probably only spent late on because Callum Wilson had got injured again (in the 3-3 v Man City) and fears he could be in for another disrupted season).
Yet it was still NUFC who were the ones most negatively talked about when it came to ‘splashing the cash’….’with no ceiling’ as Jurgen Klopp might say.
On the subject of transfer spend, Sky Sports yesterday featured the six clubs to spend most on signings since summer 2016.
£1.2bn – Chelsea
£1.1bn – Man Utd
£1bn – Man City
£772m – Arsenal
£735.6m – Liverpool
£716.6m – Everton
Newcastle United way behind all of these, with only £456m spent in the same time period.
The figures were even more stark when broken down for NUFC. From summer 2016 onwards, in the 11 transfer windows when Mike Ashley was still in control, only £273m was spent, an average of less than £25m per window.
No wonder the new Newcastle United owners and Eddie Howe have had to take (relatively) drastic action in the transfer market, especially when inheriting a desperate mid-season relegation struggle when taking over in Autumn 2021.
No need for a trial, as the court of public opinion (well, rival fans, pundits, journalists and…rival maangers!) have found Newcastle United guilty of cheating – Spending money, defending, not rolling over…
