I really hate the way Newcastle United can make me feel at times

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The Mag

·21 September 2024

I really hate the way Newcastle United can make me feel at times

Newcastle United, you really know how to hit me where it hurts.

Honestly, I should know by now.

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I should learn my lesson.

I really hate the way that Newcastle United can make me feel at times.

This isn’t about losing to Fulham, well that is part of it, but not really what I am talking about.

If I felt like I do tonight every time we get beat, then I think I would have found something else to occupy me a long long time ago, when not doing work and family stuff.

It just wouldn’t be worth it.

I can take losing, I don’t like it of course, but I can take it.

It is when you think you have kind of got it worked out and then it all goes wrong. That’s what I am talking about here.

When I saw the team just over an hour before kick-off, Eddie Howe making four changes, I looked at that team and thought here we go, this is pretty much what any fan would have picked, especially the front six.

The only complication on that was what looked an embarrassment of riches, that Sandro Tonali couldn’t be fitted in as well to make seven in midfield and up front.

Instead it was the six of Bruno, Joelinton, Willock, Barnes, Gordon and Isak.

No doubt many of you will say Tonali should have started and I agree, Eddie Howe clearly protecting the Italian and looking after his longer-term interests by not throwing him back in properly yet, but Sandro Tonali must have suffered just as much as the rest of us, watching that today, before he got on for the final stages of the match.

The thing is though, even if you thought Tonali should have started, I think 99.99% of you would 100% have been excited to see what those six in midfield and attack could deliver.

A bit of promise lasting the first 180 seconds or so, that was it.

On paper we look at those six Newcastle United players and surely all think, who can they fail to cause Fulham all sorts of problems.

Yet it was worse than woeful in the 45 minutes plus a minute added, that they were all on the pitch together.

I still can’t comprehend how bad it was going forward, or rather NOT going forward. Nor indeed (not) protecting the NUFC defence in that first half. Given the choice, none of us would have swapped any of our six in midfield and attack for any of Fulham’s. Yet the home side ran riot.

It is no comfort but I assume Eddie Howe must be thinking the same.

Plus, he doesn’t select these players on a whim, he has worked with them all week and chosen what he thinks is for the best.

Yet it turns out like that.

Who would be a football manager?

Who would be a football fan…?

This isn’t leading up to me then saying that is it, I am giving up on Newcastle United.

Far from it.

It is simply a case of Newcastle United, please don’t warp my brain like this, where I am unable to believe what I am watching, where it just doesn’t make any sense.

I am now left wondering as well whether things would have turned out ok today if Jacob Murphy and Sean Longstaff hadn’t been dropped to make way for our far more favoured players.

Now my head is really starting to hurt wondering if that would have been the case, something none of us will ever know, it will always remain hypothetical when it comes to this particular match, this particular day…

Fulham 3 Newcastle 1 – Saturday 21 September 3pm

Goals:

Newcastle United:

Barnes 46

Fulham:

Jimenez 5, Smith-Rowe 22, Nelson 90+2

(Half-time stats in brackets)

Possession was Newcastle 61% (60%) Fulham 39% (40%)

Total shots were Newcastle 15 (4) Fulham 22 (13)

Shots on target were Newcastle 4 (1) Fulham 11 (7)

Corners were Newcastle 0 (0) Fulham 6 (3)

Touches in the box Newcastle 22 (10) Fulham 37 (20)