Newcastle, and much-criticised gaffer Alan Pardew, have rallied with four straight wins after a dire start to the season. But the issues here stretch far beyond uncertainty around the manager.

Overview

But Newcastle remains a traditional English football club, based in its original stadium in the heart of its city with a raucous, fierce support base. History — no League Cup wins, no FA Cup since 1955, no league championship since 1927 — shows that this has never been a place for mass trophy accumulation. But when you see the teams that have lifted the two domestic cups in this country in the last 15 years, you can’t help but think that Newcastle should have had their hands on a pot or two.

Many, many times I’ve written articles for LFW and A Kick Up The R’s questioning what exactly the point of the modern day Premier League is for 15 of the teams in it who exist solely to stay in the division, and have no interest in winning trophies because prolonged cup runs allegedly threaten that. Newcastle, with the size of their stadium, support, and finances are one of the few clubs that could make an occasional shove towards the top four and the Champions League money that comes with it to level the playing field — and defenders of chairman Mike Ashley and his manager Alan Pardew will say that three seasons ago they nearly did just that only to come up just short in fifth.

But if you needed further proof of Ashley’s intentions for Newcastle, you only need look at his recent investment and steadily increasing boardroom influence north of the border at Rangers — another club with colossal, shirt-buying support that sticks around spending regardless of how the team is doing on the pitch. He’s here for the captive audience and their debit cards, not because he wants to chuck a load of money around and win trophies. The simple fact is with Newcastle and Rangers you don't need to win football games and football trophies - 50,000 still turn up and buy the shirts regardless. So you go in, you slash costs, you water the whole club down more than church hall orange squash to a point where it survives and doesn't cost you anything, and then you rake it in because the fans turn up anyway. They yell at you, but why would you care?

Ashley built up a Sports Direct empire, shoving rivals aside and buying distressed assets. He’s a businessman. One who has rarely put a foot wrong in his career so far. One who is totally sure of himself and his opinions and is yet to really be proved wrong in anything he's done. After initially starting out as a replica-shirt wearing, beer swilling, man-of-the-people-type figure on Tyneside, he withdrew from the supporters, and the local press, amidst criticism of the way Kevin Keegan came and went for a second time. Now the supporters’ voice goes unheard, and mass protests against manager Alan Pardew, backed by a surprisingly professional Sack Pardew website, are ignored. He doesn’t give interviews. Journalists try, once a year, to ambush him with questions at the Sports Direct annual report to shareholders — mostly without success.

Ashley built Sports Direct up from the ground to a £2.2bn float in 2008. He’s destroyed JJB and bought out other rivals. He paid £134m for Newcastle and will profit if and when he sells it. Little wonder he cares little for what the people of Newcastle or the hacks at The Mirror or the Newcastle Echo thinks of him. He’s doing just fine for himself thanks, pull the ladder up. The only weapon the Newcastle fans hold — don’t attend the games, don’t buy the merchandise — goes unused because they want to watch their team play, even though they know what the club is really existing for these days.


Prior to a recent run of four straight victories, Newcastle had won only four league games since the turn of the year. But that came after Pardew had lost Cabaye at the very end of the January transfer window with no obvious replacement. The fans are unforgiving of a manager whose smugness knows no bounds — four wins on the spin and suddenly the population of London is treated to a two page interview with the Newcastle boss in the Evening Standard this week — but to Ashley he’s doing the job he’s employed to do: buy low, sell high, maintain Premier League status. Great long winning runs, trophies, Champions League pushes are all mere bonus and pipe dream. Buy low, sell high, maintain Premier League status, try not to head-butt too many passing Hull players. Pardew is midway through an unprecedented eight year contract and he never fails to look thrilled to death about it.



Given that Ashley has previously foisted Dennis Wise and Joe Kinnear (twice) on Newcastle United, perhaps the fans may be better with the devil they know than whichever other bum chum Ashley might inflict on them if Pardew did leave. But then that’s rather like saying that just because a couple of other similar sized clubs with similar histories have gone down the tubes lately that Newcastle fans should count their blessings that their famous old institution has zero ambition above selling replica shirts, pay-day loans, and promoting a cheap high street sports store.

Scout Report

The clip that gets replayed from that match is of Alan Pardew coming to the touchline pulling exaggerated, cartoon-like smiley faces at Remy Cabella, who he felt had dropped his shoulders and lost heart in his work. What the manager should have been doing was getting some physical presence in his attack for Cabella to play off.

Now, Newcastle are on a four game winning run. In the first seven matches they averaged 53% possession, and in the four wins they’ve held just shy of 40%, so the new plan is clear: Newcastle are sitting deeper, sacrificing possession in favour of defensive shape, and using the little fancy attackers they have to break on teams at speed. When the ball is lost the attackers press and harry opponents, often conceding fouls, allowing the team to regain shape and get everybody behind the ball. The work ethic is in stark contrast to a dire display and 1-0 loss at Stoke where, frankly, it looked like only a couple of the visiting players could be arsed, but they’re also clearly more comfortable in this plan.

I watched this new plan closely at West Brom in the final game before the international break — a 2-0 away win. On this occasion they played in a 4-2-3-1 set up with Ayoze Perez (three in three) an unlikely success as a lone striker and, most crucially, Moussa Sissoko in the ‘ten’ role behind him. The leggy Frenchman adds a physical presence and driving force to the attack that simply wasn’t there in the Villa game and lays a platform for Perez and the two men either side of him — Cabella and Sammy Ameobi on this occasion — to play.

Behind those four, Jack Colback impressed running box to box with Mehdi Abeid detailed to remain sitting in front of the back four at all times. Colback was excellent.

Add in a threat from right back Darryl Janmaart from right back, who flew up the touchline and posed a goal threat at every possible opportunity and will need watching on Saturday, and Newcastle actually looked half decent. Janmaart is aided by Cabella in front of him — the little French midfielder coming inside as Newcasle attack, dragging a full back with him and opening space up for Janmaart to accelerate into. If QPR can shut those two out of the game down the Rangers left they have a great chance here.

There’s no Fabricio Coloccini for this game, and in actual fact that may be a bit of a shame because at The Hawthorns he was consistently far too close to big centre forward Victor Anichebe, consequently allowing the striker to pin him, hold the ball up, roll him, and pretty much boss the situation. All QPR’s recent improvements have come from a recall for Bobby Zamora and a more direct approach and Newcastle seemed weak to that last time out. Still, Mike Williamson coming into the defence certainly isn’t bad news for any Premier League team about to face Newcastle.


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londonscottish added 08:05 - Nov 21 Interesting analysis of Ashley's business model, thanks.
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timcocking added 09:37 - Nov 21 'all little, tippy tappy, foreign players, convinced that theirs is the right way to play no matter how many times English football tw@tted them in the face and told them it’s not.' lmfao
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Kaos_Agent added 18:31 - Nov 21 Thanks Clive. I reckon we'd settle for "Buy low, sell high, maintain Premier League status, try not to head-butt too many passing Hull players." Rated against these criteria I make us currently 1 for 4: No, No, Maybe, Yes
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TacticalR added 23:58 - Nov 21 Newcastle really do seem to be the epitome of mid-table Premiership angst, but Mike 'zero hours' Ashley is certainly not going to let sentiment about a football club get in the way of making hard cash. I see the fans have launched a partnership with local credit unions to try to squeeze out Wonga.
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