Newcastle United have had the third-highest attendance in the Premier League for the past three seasons. All three seasons, the average attendance was a little over 50,000. We finished 16th, 10th and then 15th. And here we are again, currently in 19th place and with an average attendance of 49,325 so far this campaign.
Newcastle supporters are loyal to a fault. We love our club to death. We’ve had highs and we’ve had lows. We get angry, happy, sad, but what worries me is when apathy sets in. It tells you that failure has beaten you. You struggle to muster the strength to even bother. And yet, when the Geordie nation sounds out, they’re ridiculed and belittled by those that do not understand the struggle supporters go through.
The struggle that is supporting a club that, time after time, fails to reach its potential. It actually underachieves on a regular basis. You put in money and effort – it’s a part of a city’s culture, it wreaks havoc with your emotions at times. For a lot of people, it’s also a place they go to work. It’s well beyond “just a game”, it’s a part of people’s lives.
At the end of last season, Mike Ashley promised that he’d ‘bolt the horse to the cart’, and you have to say that, in the main, he’s been true to his word. He’s spent £80m, or the club has, whichever way you view it. However, managing director Lee Charnley has been charged with running Newcastle United, alongside Graham Carr. You can also add McClaren and Bob Moncur, though it’s widely known that Charnley is the man who runs the show.
Has Charnley done his job? Partly. He’s spent £80million, with the help of Graham Carr, on some really good players. But that’s the only thing he’s done well. When it comes to appointing managers, assessing performances and making key decisions he fails miserably. There is a saying:”Failure isn’t fatal, but failing to change might be”.
Charnley persists with the ideology that stability is keeping one man in one place for as long as possible and then desperately hoping that it goes the right way, just because he backs his man. It’s clueless.
McClaren has got selections wrong, tactics wrong and substitutions wrong more times than I can remember. He very recently called a journalist out, and the journalist came back with a ferocious retort. All a telling reflection of the pressure McClaren has now put himself under, because, make no mistake, he is under immense pressure.
He accepted the job, he was given greater say over the club’s transfer targets, he’s had two tremendous windows with significant financial backing and yet he has still failed to deliver on a greater scale than any other manager before him.
There is not an inch of sympathy for McClaren on my behalf, and that goes for the majority of fans too. Who on earth makes talents like Rolando Aarons and Ayoze Perez sit on the bench whilst selecting Yoan Gouffran ahead of them? How is a £250,000 reserve player, who hasn’t made a start all season, supposed to help us avoid relegation and get a result away to Stoke. He hasn’t played well for the best part of two years and should be nowhere near the starting XI.
The worst thing is that we’ve now reached a point where changing manager is a pure gamble. Though I suppose many would take that gamble. Then again, who would come in that could have an impact and command respect and performances?
Ideally, Newcastle United need a man that doesn’t see the managerial role as “a big job” or “a great challenge”. We need a man who understands the supporters, the club’s culture, a man who can have his fingers on the pulse and see what a prospering club can do for the North East.
I ask for a lot, but we’ve had it. It’s not impossible. We’ve had the passion and drive in Keegan, we’ve had the love, warmth and understanding in Sir Bobby.
Now we need a man who can mend the spirit of Newcastle United, we need someone who can manage both supporters and players.
Whatever happens, whether United stay up or go down, another revolution needs to happen, but this time more off the pitch than on it. Charnley must understand that he has failed and that he must leave, and so must McClaren.
I pray they can respect Newcastle United’s supporters enough to see that.