Poor Steve McClaren, he’s finally won a game as Newcastle boss only for the manner of victory, a huge 6-2 drubbing of Norwich City, to overfeed the St James’s Park faithful and make them expect another huge win next time out against rivals Sunderland. Like a dog getting used to the posh dog food, they will no longer accept anything less.
Or so they say.
The reality is that Newcastle fans aren’t that bad. The rhetoric is that they expect big things, they won’t be happy until their team wins the league or qualifies for the Champions League. But the truth is that generations upon generations of Newcastle fans have never seen their team lift a trophy – other than the Championship trophy, an Intertoto Cup trophy or a meaningless trinket from a pre-season competition bought from the local engravers to make the winners feel good about themselves and create a pretend trophy presentation to keep the fans happy.
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Yet Magpies fans have been happy in the past. They’ve been excited and positive, optimistic even. And that’s because they don’t expect trophies – though actually getting close to winning one would be nice – they just expect a bit of hard work and effort.
The two get mixed up a bit, though. The demand for effort looks like the demand for success because when you have a team like Newcastle’s, when the team gives its all, it succeeds.
It’s the same at any other big club. Because they have a big stadium, a big city who love the club and a passionate support, you can usually attract good players. This summer, Newcastle signed Aleksandar Mitrovic and broke their transfer record to sign Georginio Wijnaldum. Clearly these players are good players, and at least the fans have seen some sort of improvement effort-wise this season than they have done last season.
That hasn’t been enough to lift the form of last season off the bottom floor just yet, but it has been enough to make sure that Steve McClaren’s name hasn’t been mentioned in the sacking race just yet. Despite other managers already leaving, Newcastle were the bottom club for quite a few weeks prior to their win on Sunday, but McClaren was always going to be given the time to turn it around.
His arrival at the club wasn’t heralded as such, but the arrival at Newcastle of a coach whose stock in English football was so low that it resembled the Chinese stock market. But there was an acceptance that he is a good coach, and possibly a safe pair of hands who can save the club from the awful form that nearly relegated them last time around.
The problem is that he seems to have had more problems to fix than previously thought. Some might say that it points to what a good job Alan Pardew did at Newcastle, but really his acceptance of mediocrity led to a mentality of disinterest amongst the players.
That’s both the problem that McClaren is tasked with fixing and the reason why the fans have been angry for so long. It’s not that they want success and trophies, it’s that they want their team to look interested.
McClaren won’t be able to fix this overnight, as he’s showing, but if he’s able to fix it by Christmas, Newcastle might be able to have a decent season. Climbing out of a relegation battle, rising to the safety of mid-table, they might be able to target a cup run by January time, and the positive nature of the team’s performances might actually lead to some good cheer around Newcastle.
Last weekend’s result may have gone some way to restoring interest, both among the players and among the fans, and another win – even just a scrappy 1-0 – should be enough to lift spirits even further. But when you’ve only won twice in 20 games it’ll take more than a win over the local rivals to instil euphoria. Only effort and hard work can do that.
It’s not really too much to ask, is it?
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