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Opinion

The delusion amongst Newcastle fans has to end

8 years ago
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A bit like Steve McClaren’s nonsense after every match/defeat, it is a similar story amongst Newcastle fans before each game.

In the pubs & clubs before kick-off the same conversations take place, with it being a similar story on Twitter, Facebook, message boards and so on.

Everybody picks their team and the reaction time after time is the belief that surely this team will be good enough blah blah blah…

Most Newcastle fans appear to have a massively distorted appraisal of pretty much every player, their comments/outlook totally at odds with what these players have actually achieved at our club, or indeed elsewhere.

All the positives are taken to the max and the negatives totally faded out, as each supporter looks at the team they have picked and wonders how anything but a Newcastle win is possible.

Ayoze Perez – After he signed his new contract this week, I saw one fan claiming that when the Spaniard eventually leaves it will be to Barcelona or Real Madrid. Honestly. He is a good player and one who could improve more with time but this season he has had more bad games than he has had good.Yes he has skill and a bit of an eye for goal but he is anonymous a lot of the time.

Gini Wijnaldum – Talking of anonymous…a great finisher but what exactly is the point of picking him for away matches? Apart from Arsenal and maybe the first half at Man City, he has been shocking on the road. Maybe with better players around him and a manager who has a clue it might be a different story – but when Newcastle fans pick him in their team to face Everton or whoever in an away game, it is quite literally pointless.

Aleksandar Mitrovic – Four goals all season, need I say more? I’m not writing him off or indeed suggesting he is left out of the team, but you have to be realistic of what he will give us at this present time. If he was lining up for the opposition you wouldn’t exactly be worred would you? Yet so many Newcastle fans appear to envisage him dominating the opposition defence and the goals set to flow at any moment.

Rob Elliot – He has played at a level far in excess of what any of us could have imagined, in fact he has easily been Newcastle’s best player since getting his chance this season. However, he is what he is, a very average keeper playing at his very limits. Fraser Forster, who Newcastle let go for a few million without ever giving him a chance, for example is different class to Rob Elliot – same with likes of the Chelsea, Man City, Spurs and Arsenal keepers. Elliot has made a lot of saves but he’s not exactly mobile is he!!! A lot of goals he looks to have no chance of, including those when the opposition player goes around him, top keepers would do a lot better on a decent percentage of them. However, I have to accept Rob Elliot is now the best that Newcastle have got, which really says it all about Tim Krul who has shown so little since that 2011/12 season.

Moussa Sissoko – Obviously a lot of people criticise him but pre-match that goes out of the window for most, he is capable of playing very well but that happens maybe half a dozen times a season and the rest of the time he drifts in and out of matches.

Fabricio Coloccini – Terrible, both as a captain and as a player, a bit like Krul and others he still lives off that fifth place season. The worst decision ever by Mike Ashley, amongst many others, to give him an extended contract and not get him out of Newcastle in the summer. Turns his back on shots often and gives no leadership. Like Sissoko you get five or six good games a season at best.

Daryl Janmaat – Probably Newcastle’s best player, certainly for consistency. Our biggest attacking threat and supplier of crosses, yet sadly even he is very average when it comes to his main responsibility – defending. A bit like Wijnaldum, maybe with better players around him his weaknesses would be much diminished and you would see far more of his positives – playing alongside the likes of Coloccini must be soul destroying.

Rolando Aarons – Judging by his Twitter account, I think clearly this is one player who has a very high opinion of himself. A 20 year old who has achieved pretty much nothing so far and obviously believing the unjustifed hype that has built up during his never ending absences through injury. When fit neither Pardew or McClaren picked him to start a Premier League match until McClaren’s recent bizarre experiment at Watford with him as a kind of wing-back. He will be another one who ends up wondering where it all went wrong when he is playing for Macclesfield…and yet Newcastle fans still get all excited picking him in their team before matches.

I’m sorry to say, Newcastle have no real superstars, we don’t have the Alan Shearers, Jonathan Woodgates, Les Ferdinands, Shay Givens, Craig Bellamys, David Ginolas, Peter Beardsleys, Rob Lees…

What United do have these days is a few players who can be pretty good on their day but aren’t consistent enough and another four or five who are decent, plus a few more like Elliot who try their very best.

It is a reality check for so many, Newcastle maybe shouldn’t be third bottom but I think bottom six or seven is our level unless something dramatic happens and the right person (a manager!) is brought in to choose which players the club buys.

(To feature like Dale, send in your articles for our website to contribute@themag.co.uk)

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