A new season, a new challenge, new opportunities.
These days, going into a new season, Newcastle United fans have reasons to be optimistic. This wasn’t always the case in the past, but lets not dwell on that – hopefully those days have been put behind us and we can look forward to a bright future.
We have a strong squad and some class individual players. Isak, Bruno, Flash Gordon, Joelinton, Pope spring readily to mind. Perhaps the old nickname of “The Entertainers” should be resurrected in recognition of the feedback from fans of other clubs that they’ve looked out for “the Toon on the telly” in the past few seasons as they found us good to watch?
It’s a new season tinged with sadness as we’ve lost our icon, Queen Amanda – who was the person who made all of this possible, pestering Mike Ashley for 3 years to sell the club, refusing to give up and bringing together the powerful consortium who are now our owners. She will never be forgotten by the grateful geordie fans.
I’m pretty optimistic going into this season and I have a specific reason for that. Anyone who’s had the misfortune to read my rubbish last year will know that I thought we went into the Champions League too early. I know not everyone agrees but my view at the time was that we didn’t have the squad to cope with it – either in numbers or in quality. And when the extra games took their toll in terms of injuries and tiredness, we began to lose ground in mounting a domestic campaign for a return to the top four. At times, we were down to the bare bones and it didn’t work. Eddie and the boys struggled manfully on, but players already carrying injuries and basically knackered were having to turn out for every game as there was no alternative.
This season, the lack of european games will be a massive bonus. The teams we will hopefully be in competition with for a top four place will be involved in europe, playing at least two games a week, whilst we will just have our league and domestic cup games – hopefully with a strong squad, being fresh as daisies and picking up less injuries as a result. Good stuff!
One thing is very clear. If we don’t qualify for the Champions League this season, we will be in serious difficulty trying to hold onto our better players in next year’s summer transfer window.
At the time of writing this the summer transfer window is still open and we still need to import some quality at centre-half and on the right wing. We are reportedly trying to buy Marc Guehi from Crystal Palace but can’t pay their £65M asking price for the England defender. The very fact that “the richest club in the world” can’t pick up a player for what to them should just be loose change tells us a lot about the strangle hold the “Sky Big Six” have on the Premier League through their financial “PSR” rules that choke competition. Something has to change – and soon.
Top four is a must this season, and I’m sure Eddie and his coaches are well aware of that. Some silverware would be nice too, actually going to Wembley and winning for a change would be good!
Rant over! Lets hope United have a great season and it’s just one big joyride for us, the fans!
Author: Marcelimpo
