The excuses of injuries, fatigue, suspensions, the schedule, the time our flight takes off are not actually as strong as people believed. They never have been.
This crap performance yesterday wasn’t down to any of those things. Our away form all season has mainly been due to these bizarre tactics we’ve put in place away from home. It first appeared at AC Milan and I wonder if the fact Howe thinks it ‘worked’ (depending on whether you view clinging on for 90 minutes for a draw is a good result) has been the reason he has persisted with it.
The reality is, it hasn’t worked, ever. We rode our luck in Milan and in other variations of it at Liverpool, Dortmund, PSG, Tottenham, Everton, Bournemouth have all shown it’s a disaster waiting to happen.
You only need to look at the games we’ve been successful in away from home like Villa where we took the game to them to realise even more what a crap plan it is.
Yes, we’ve had injuries and several other issues but we didn’t in Milan. This approach has been designed for us from the beginning.
Today we had what? Tonali, Big Joe & Pope missing out of the first 11 (assuming the former two start ahead of Little Joe). Are we so depleted we had to play the whole first 45 minutes on our goal line?
We’ve had much worse starting 11s against much better Arsenal 11s in this fixture before (with much worse managers too) without resorting to that and it was criminal to set up in the way we did.
Howe was absolutely sensational last season and gave me some of my best memories as a Newcastle fan, last season his plan worked to some extent, although towards the end teams worked out how to play against us and we started to struggle.
Refusing to change formation, refusing to change tactics, refusing to address the gigantic gap between defence and midfield, refusing to take Burn out the 11 until today, refusing to play Hall, refusing to bring others on to rest players towards the end of games have all played a significant factor in terms of how this season have panned out. That said a lot of ‘elite’ managers are stubborn.
People continue to say “but what else can he do”, all of the above is the answer, because time and time again this season, what he has done hasn’t worked so he should maybe consider something else.
PSG for example, hoofing balls up to Isak for the last 45 minutes when he could barely walk, I don’t care if we had Riviere on the bench, bring him on for the last 10-15 minutes as he’ll at least be able to run and potentially keep hold of the ball.
The only thing that I can’t work out, is if he’s as stubborn as above, why have we had a total U-turn this season with tactics from last? I can only assume he did this to try and conserve energy with the extra games.
We’re a dream to play against. The opposing manager and teams know exactly who will be playing and how we’ll set up.
The best situation is Howe reacts and changes, because I’d love for him to progress as we do, as he’s earned it. But sadly, this has striking similarities as to why he got relegated with Bournemouth, he was too stubborn to change. Not that we’ll get relegated, but we’ll be inconsistent and finish 8-12th every year under him imo. I’d love to be wrong though.
We’ll not improve this season by sacking Howe at this stage, he also has credit in the bank, but no idea if I’d look to replace him this summer or let him have one final crack at the whip with a blank sheet next year. We’re all in on the FA Cup this season and he needs to get that right.
