As far as poor starts to the season go, you can rank Newcastle’s about as high up in the rankings as possible. This is a club with one of the greatest followings in the world, never mind just the Premier League – and yet every week their heroes seem to fail each and every one of the Toon army faithful.
Steve McClaren took over from John Carver in the summer after it failed to work out for the latter, a man who had actually took the team to the brink of relegation to the Championship last season.
McClaren was a strange choice in many football fans’ eyes, as he had seemingly failed to take one of the strongest squads in the Championship last year in Derby County into the Premier League, amongst other managerial failures in his career.
The Rams were in a fantastic position going into the final months of the season, but a torrid end of the campaign saw them blow any chance of automatic promotion, before squandering their place in the play offs too.
Newcastle were bottom of the Premier League until their Wear rivals lost by two goals to nil last weekend, meaning that Newcastle’s 2-1 loss to Watford actually bumped them up one place on goal difference – hardly a cause for celebration, and certainly a worry for both of the north east clubs.
If starting the first six games of the season and only generating two points wasn’t enough of a worry for Newcastle fans, on Wednesday night they were knocked out of the Capital One cup by lower league opposition in Sheffield Wednesday – but if you ask the Toon faithful, they’d probably tell you it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.
After their loss to Wednesday (on a Wednesday!), McClaren said the team were close to a crisis.
“Is the job harder than I thought? Absolutely. Without a doubt. People say it’s a crisis and it’s getting very close to it. We deserve to be criticised.”
Club legend Alan Shearer was noted criticising his former club recently too, as he penned down his thoughts in an article with sports bookmaker Coral. The former Newcastle and England striker writes a regular article with Coral, so it is always worth checking the site for the latest update from Shearer.
“I thought Newcastle’s performance against West Ham was embarrassing. From the first to the last minute of the game, I thought they were poor in every department.
“They had the possession but didn’t do anything at all with it and never looked in danger of scoring.“
