Photo: Waving Goodbye to Newcastle United

Full time at Villa Park yesterday, and a Villa fan waves goodbye to his Newcastle counterparts. The two probably won’t be meeting again for a while.

Painful stuff for Newcastle fans, who have my sympathies.

You could argue that the Toon were relegated because of Mark Viduka’s disallowed goal vs Fulham, or Damien Duff’s bad bad luck (Gareth Barry’s shot deflected off him for the only goal of the game). But ultimately I agree with Alan Shearer’s assessment:

The simple fact is that over the 38 games, we’ve not been good enough. You can look at myself, you can look at Joe, you can look at Kevin, you can look at Chris, you can look at Mike Ashley. Whoever you want. The simple fact is that as a football club, this season hasn’t been good enough. And last season, and the season before that. You can go back over a number of years. Big mistakes have been made and we’re now getting punished for that.

Seems like a lot of Newcastle’s problems were caused by unrealistic expectations. The harder they tried to be up there with the Big Four, the further they fell. Things like sacking Sam Allardyce earlier this last season because the club were “under-achieving” in 11th place. I’m sure NUFC would take that position now.

Sacking Bobby Robson (who had the club in the Champions League) and bringing in Graeme Souness? Paying Michael Owen silly money despite his long long list of injuries, just to have a big name player on the books? Dennis Wise?!?

Maybe – as Rob argues here – going down is the best thing for everyone at Newcastle because the “new manager can build the side that they want to build, instead of being lumbered with what’s left.” The slip into the Championship is a great opportunity to shed some expensive baggage (Owen, Coloccini et al), steady the ship and finally put together a team the fans can be proud of. The names won’t be as big, but that might not be a bad thing.

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Category: English Premier League