You’d imagine that Newcastle United can guarantee English Premier League survival in their last three remaining league games. They have a decent run-in after all and one win should be enough to secure yet another year in the top flight.

But then again they’ve also just lost eight games straight and have only won twice since Alan Pardew departed for Crystal Palace at the start of the year.

Not only are the ‘Toon’ continually losing but they are also falling apart from the inside.

Interim manager John Carver is totally out of his depth. He may be a Geordie fan but he can’t handle the pressure of the managerial job nor get the players to respond to his ways/demands.

Every week brings new stories of discontent.

Players falling out with each other, Carver fighting with fans/players and the boss openly critical of his charges in the press. At the moment St James Park is toxic place to be.

Obviously it all stems from the top.

Owner Mike Ashley is more interested in profit rather than ambition. That alienates the fans, who have become disillusioned with their club.

In March the Tyneside club announced major profits of £18.7m for the 2013-14 season but alas that just compounds the problems for Ashley as the fans don’t see major investment in the team.

Arrogance is also a label that is quickly associated with the Newcastle board. The regime just enhanced that by failing to hire a manager after Pardew walked away for lowly Crystal Palace. But now look, after just a few months, Pardew’s Palace are assured of Premier League safety while Newcastle Utd are in sever decline and lie just two points off the relegation zone.

By installing Carver instead of an experience number one, the Newcastle regime showed yet again no ambition and thought they’d just cruise to a mid-table finish.

But the fact is that John Carver isn’t up to the task and has completely lost the plot. The team seem to have lost confidence in him. For him to suggest that his defender Mike Williamson got himself deliberately sent-off in the Leicester game could be seen as treason in the Toon dressing room. A manager should never publicly throw a player under the bus, it causes loss in trust. It’s also the act of a desperate man!

A few moths ago Carver slaughtered Phil Neville after the former Everton and Man Utd defender said…

“It looks to me like Newcastle players are on their holidays – they have got their flip-flops on.”

But who can really argue with Neville’s assessment?

John Carver is fast becoming 2015’s Steve Kean.

Newcastle United should never have promoted him to that role and certainly shouldn’t have kept him there when things turned sour so quickly! They needed an experience boss who would command instant respect in the dressing room and someone the players knew would stick around.

The Geordie fans certainly deserve more from their teams owner, the manager and the team.

They turn up in their thousands each week and hope for change. They want to see an exciting brand of football and a club that want to do its up most to challenge for trophies.

But football fans don’t always gain what they deserve; just ask the fans of Blackpool and Rangers! Really more should be done at a governing level to protect football clubs and make them more community based but that’s a story for another blog.

Newcastle United found out back in 2009 that they were not too big to go down. They might just escape the trapdoor this season but in the summer Mike Ashley needs to at last show ambition and bring in some better talent and a manager capable of turning things around.

I’m unsure Steve McLaren is that man but I know for certainty that John Carver is certainly not that man!

Unfortunately for the fans survival will not only guarantee Premier League football for another year, it will also mean that Mike Ashley will stay on and continue to have a stranglehold at the club.

Posted on May 4th, 2015 by scott
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