It has not been a great start to the Newcastle United season.
On the one hand, United have navigated two rounds of the Carabao Cup and are currently still only five points off 4th despite languishing in 11th.
On the other hand, Newcastle have lost three of their last four games, appear to be unable to score, devoid of ideas and creativity, have a midfield that doesn’t function and is constantly walked through and are only four points off our friendly neighbours at the very bottom of the table.
It’s still early days with only seven Premier League games played. I’m going to go all Steve McClaren here and say I’ll judge Jaissle after 10 games.
He’s only just come into the job, he’s had a bundle of injuries and is working with a load of new, mainly inexperienced signings. Our next three league games are Crystal Palace away, Everton at home and Fulham away.
Win a couple of those and we’ll be looking up the table again. Get a point or less, there’s every chance we’re in the relegation zone at the end of that sequence.
If Everton dump us out of the Carabao Cup, with our game at the Hill Dickinson sandwiched in this run, morale of the fans and the squad will be incredibly low.
The next run of fixtures after that are Arsenal at home, Brighton away, Man Utd at home and Sunderland at home. That is not a run of Premier League fixtures you want to be heading into whilst sat in the bottom three.
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What’s gone wrong? Well loads, clearly. But for me, there are three Newcastle United transfers that have hugely impacted our potential this season. Two agreed deals that changed their minds and one that should’ve never been allowed to happen.
Victor Munoz – deal agreed, fanbase excited. Allegedly, we’d been negotiating a price under his buy out clause. We managed to agree a fee and then Liverpool came in, paid the clause and wrapped up the deal within no time. We quickly pivoted and snapped up Bazoumana Toure instead.
From what I have seen of both players, Liverpool got a considerably better deal. In the here and now at least. It’s early days and Toure is three years younger than the lad we missed out on. But he’s lightweight and seems erratic. Whilst he has grabbed a couple of goals, I haven’t been impressed with his overall performances so far whereas what I’ve seen of Munoz, he looks a proper player. Quick, strong and technically able. He would have comfortably been a regular starter for us had we managed to seal his signing. Of course, it was him that earned the penalty against us, so we may have won that opener against Liverpool had he not been amongst their ranks.
Johan Manzambi – another one where we’d agreed everything. Manzambi asked for some time before signing the deal. That time, it appears, was spent speaking to Aston Villa who quickly unveiled him as their new acquisition. The Athletic have speculated that Manzambi was the club’s and Howe’s top target and that losing out on him was the final straw that saw Eddie Howe decide he couldn’t continue. Manzambi is quickly looking like one of the signings of the season. He can play anywhere across the midfield and has the skill and energy to dominate a game, as he did for large periods against us. When we lost out on him, we instead signed Aladji Bamba who has since only been trusted with 27 minutes of football. With teams regularly moseying through our midfield, you have to wonder how the powerful stopper we signed isn’t getting a look in. Manzambi predictably popped up with the winner in our most recent fixture. That’s two of our near signings playing a significant part in taking points from us.
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Bruno Guimaraes – this is the transfer that should have never been allowed to happen. I understand that he wanted to leave. The board allegedly said they would have resisted all efforts from Arsenal (or anybody else) to sign him had he been committed to staying. It was also made a bit easier for everyone with a new manager coming in as the blame wouldn’t be attached to Matthias Jaissle for Bruno departing. I personally think that Bruno expressing his desire to leave was the moment that sealed Howe’s decision. How could Howe be expected to rebuild the team without his talisman? He’d lost Gordon, Tonali and Trippier already. A huge overhaul was required but it would be a whole lot harder with the absence of a man that we rarely won a game without during Howe’s tenure.
I wrote an article at the start of the summer, long before Bruno’s head was turned, asking if we could afford to lose him for nothing. My argument in that piece was that I’d rather have Bruno Guimaraes for the remaining years of his contract and see him leave for nothing, than accept £80m for him in the summer.
The rationale was simple. Bruno was everything to us. He set the tempo, he led with passion, he had the ability to retain possession and find a killer pass. He had game winning interventions. A match that really stands out in my mind was one against Fulham last season. We were 1-1 and Bruno was single handedly trying to drag us to the three points. He missed a couple of good opportunities, you could see the rage and frustration emanating from him. And then Osula came on, broke away and forced the keeper into a save. Bruno came surging onto the loose ball and slotted it home to win the game and all that emotion roared free of him. I could see how much joy it gave him to earn that win for his team.
Seeing him netting winning goals for Arsenal is so hard. Watching him kiss that badge and cupping his ears just doesn’t look right. He should still be at this club, wearing the armband and pulling this team together.
Bruno said that he wanted to move to Arsenal but wouldn’t do anything to tarnish his standing with Newcastle fans. I think we should have tested that. In truth, he’s already tarnished his reputation with many just by leaving. For me, I believe he deserves our respect and appreciation. He gave us four and half wonderful years, led us to our first trophy in generations and truly lived and breathed Newcastle United in his time here. He’ll never feel that same level of love at Arsenal and for all the trophies he may win, I think he’s sacrificed something a lot more special.
Mike Ashley is a bloke I will despise for the rest of my days. I still refuse to shop in Sports Direct. He sold all our best players again and again but he always did it on his terms. When Arsenal came calling for Cabaye, and our French midfielder went on a brief strike, Ashley didn’t sell as the Gunners hadn’t met his asking price. I’d like to see a little bit of that from our current management.
If Bruno didn’t want to tarnish his reputation, I think the board should have appreciated how important he’s been to us in recent seasons and told him we’ve let too many key players go and he had to stay. He could have been offered a pay rise with a couple of years extension on his contract and if he’d turned that down the board should have just said, fine but you’re staying this season and then we’ll assess this situation next year. Sure, his value may have halved but would you rather have Bruno leading the team out or a spare £35 million or so to chuck at another untested player who may or may not be a success? At that point Bruno may have acted out and then he would have tarnished his reputation with most of us and rightly so. Or he hopefully would have knuckled down and helped this team. We’ve set such a dangerous precedent now. We’re getting decent transfer fees for our players but we’re falling into a habit of saying players can leave the moment they suggest they’d like to.
I believe with Bruno and Manzambi in our midfield and Munoz on one of the wings, we’d be significantly better off points-wise. Jaissle (or Howe maybe if these things had been different) would still have an enormous job to do but I think having those three players would have made it a little easier.
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When it comes to Jaissle, there is a lot of pressure on him, but my opinion is that we need to stick with him a bit longer. He’s a young manager coming into an extremely challenging environment. I appreciate he’s been inflexible in his approach so far and I don’t think he’s getting the best out of certain personnel. But he needs time to work with the squad before we can fully judge him.
Plenty of managers have bad runs and turn things around. Look at Hurzeler just last season. His Brighton went on a run of only one win in ten games and his position became unstable. Now this season his team are third in the Premier League, have scored the most goals and conceded the joint least. Arteta’s Arsenal went through a horrible run in all competitions last season. It started with a loss to Man City in the Carabao Cup final. Starting with that game they only one won of six in all competitions including losing to Championship Southampton in the FA Cup and Premier League defeats to Man City and Bournemouth. It was two wins in eight (the second win coming courtesy of us) and their season appeared to be going off the rails. But they didn’t lose any of their final seven games, drawing once and winning six times to see them clinch the title and get to the Champions League final, which they of course lost on penalties.
It took Iraola 10 games to get his first Premier League win with Bournemouth. They drew three and lost six of those first nine. He was a new manager to the league and he went from that auspicious start to helping the Cherries reach their record Premier League points tally. A record he broke the following season and again in his final season before leaving for Liverpool. Imagine if their board had given up after nine matches. Would Bournemouth be experiencing European adventures currently?
The football isn’t good at the moment, the results and obvious frailties are alarming, but I don’t think this manager can be fairly assessed yet. The club paid out close to £10 million for his services. They clearly have a lot of belief in him. He’s done a lot in his previous two roles. Let’s try and get behind the team for at least the next four games and then see where we’re at.