Newcastle United have now lost their last four games, scoring only one goal in that stretch. sbobet777 They’ve also won only one of their last seven. They’ve conceded seven goals in the last two games. In the normal (read: ridiculous) world of football, that would be cause for 64-point headlines reading SACK THE MANAGER, or at least CRISIS.
But this is Newcastle, where they’re a lot more reasonable than people give them credit for. The headline in the Evening Chronicle read ‘Awful United look as if they’re facing a long, hard winter’. Another read ‘Yes, NUFC are facing a relegation fight – but so are 12 others’. A third: ‘United no longer resemble a Rafa Benitez side.’
And that, of course, is the key. Rafa Benitez is the manager of Newcastle United, and he projects control and calm. In the post-match interview on Saturday he was obviously quite unhappy, but said merely that it’s never easy coming up from the Championship, the goal is to get 20 points in the first half of the season, every game in the Premier League is difficult, and the players have to work hard. Yes, it was manager-speak of a sort, but you felt you were actually hearing him say what he thought. No blame, no anger – just back to work.
To this observer, Newcastle are nowhere near crisis. They’re a promoted side which famously got very little transfer business done in the summer. They belong in the bottom half of the table. After losing their first two, they hit a .... streak, and they’re naturally coming back to the pack now.
I’d say they have three problems: one small, one big, one somewhere in the middle. The small one is those seven goals in two games. Very un-Rafa-like, you’d say. But his Real Madrid gave up seven in two against Sevilla and Barcelona, and his Napoli side did the same against Juventus and Lazio. It happens. Benitez is too consistent a manager for that run to continue for long. sbobet777
