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Opinion

Bad Romance

8 years ago
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Yes I know the article title is the same as the famed song by pop mentalist Lady Gaga, but doesn’t it perfectly sum up the way many Newcastle fans feel about their relationship with the club?

Despite the false dawns, the lies, the sale of our best players, the underwhelming signings and, most importantly, the unfeasibly bad football which has been witnessed for most of the last ten years, we still can’t disconnect from the entity which is Newcastle United.

Newcastle fans know the club is rotten, we know the owner varies his emotional output to the club from excited by the money it generates, to actively trying to upset his paying customers (see dismantled singing section and renaming St James Park as prime examples). We understand that we have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever actually threatening a trophy, never mind a league title, and we accept that.

We are all blissfully aware that any player with a semblance of ability and application will be shipped out at a profit to the highest bidder and replaced with a cheaper player “of potential”, but still we can’t break those chains.

As an aside, watching the last two defeats, it has become apparent that we are a bog average workmanlike side with little to no creativity. Yes both matches could easily have gone in our favour, but they didn’t because we do not, as the owner stated, make our own luck.

Instead we rely on giving the opposition the ball and hoping that they commit enough players forward, secure in the knowledge we are devoid of attacking threat, that we can fluke a goal on the break. Sometimes it works but more often than not we get beaten. This is not entertaining, it’s frustrating and turgid at best.

Not only is there no excitement in watching Newcastle United, I would also argue that much of the excitement has actually left the Premier League. It seems to be every season now that I find myself discussing with friends how this is “the worst season of PL football that I can remember”, and it just keeps on getting worse. Nobody seems to play to win, most seem satisfied with playing not to lose, such is the importance of the financial rewards and the depth to which TV contract money has damaged the national game, but I digress…

My family are from Newcastle, I am not, I have spent the majority of my life outside of the city which makes me perhaps more able to take a step back, or less of a fan in the eyes of some. Nevertheless, even with my disdain for the owner and those complicit in his demolition of the club, I still cannot turn my back.

I write pieces here because I still care, because like so many more we want the club to be as great as we know it can be and we want that feeling in our lives, despite all sanity telling us to turn off the support of our relationship with the club.

This is not right, it’s not healthy and we do deserve better.

Without a change of ownership, or a bang on the head for Ashley, we won’t get it though, and still 50,000 suitors will turn up for their date with what they know could be a stunner. They will stand there in their best (Wonga) shirt, holding a bunch of flowers (a pie), hoping to be on a promise, but instead will go home alone and bitterly disappointed as they get shot down once again.

This relationship isn’t working and it isn’t you, it is most definitely them.

(To contribute like Notts Toon, send in your original articles for our website to contribute@themag.co.uk and share them with the world)

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