Newcastle United, a little perspective and the road to redemption. Over 48 hours after that horror show derby, emotions are rightly still ru...

Newcastle United, a little perspective and the road to redemption.

Over 48 hours after that horror show derby, emotions are rightly still running high after the worst performance of the Eddie Howe era at Newcastle.

Despite what the man himself has said, it was the worst performance turned in by a United eleven during his tenure, and to say otherwise must be a case of publicly protecting his players and putting the onus and pressure on himself, as we have seen countless managers do before.

Questions will be asked and even a cursory glance at any football media, from national to local to fan, suggests that many feel answers are a long way off.

With a mounting defensive injury crisis things could get worse before they get better, but it is also important to attach a little bit of perspective to the position we currently find ourselves in, no matter how unacceptable Sunday’s display was.

The context

There’s context to our underperformance this season, despite how white-hot the glare is from this defeat.

We can all take a step back and admit the summer was a nightmare, perhaps the squad isn’t as strong as we thought, key injuries have hampered our ability to rotate the squad (Tino, Hall, Botman, Wissa etc.), and trying to integrate a new striker who is diametrically opposed to the last one we had (who only signed on transfer deadline day too) without anytime to train has clearly been hugely difficult.

But it is fixable, and Eddie must start using the squad, must go back to playing with the intense press we used to because this new style isn’t working. We have plenty of depth in the key positions you need to press intensely (the wingers, the midfielders and now the striker) and whilst it killed us the last time we were in the Champions League, we didn’t have a squad like we do now.

Additionally, I feel that now we finally have an executive structure in place, they need time to be able to reshape the club and squad, and the manager should be able to treat this season as a transition season, he’s earnt that in my opinion as we’ve achieved so much since he’s been here. Longevity tends to bring success in football, and I still believe in Eddie Howe no matter how much this result hurts.

Move forward, but don’t forget

A waif of a performance, such as yesterday’s, was unacceptable and will leave an indelible mark on Eddie’s reign, but back in 2010/11 after their own derby horror show in the 5-1 defeat to us, Sunderland went on to win four, draw three, and lost just one of their next eight games. We must do something similar.

Thankfully, we have a League Cup QF against Fulham tomorrow and then a huge game at home to Chelsea next weekend to try to move past this game.

Whilst we won’t forget the hurt of Sunday and must ‘put it right’ when they come to St James’ Park in March, we must try to use this as fuel to finally kick on in this consistently inconsistent season.

Beat them both and maybe we can start to move on, but we also need to see some tangible proof that long standing issues are starting to get fixed too.

HWTL. Keep the faith.