Russ Gray's Blog

Yesterday was D-Day for Newcastle United, and after a woeful performance at Villa it’s an irrational fan indeed who still thinks they don’t deserve it. The overpaid passionless imports wearing the barcode shirts yesterday looked like they couldn’t give a fig, even though they only needed a single goal and had plenty of time to get it. It was a disgrace, frankly.

It’s not just yesterday, though. As Shearer admitted in the post-match interviews, this is the culmination of several years of mismanagement, arrogance, infighting, and utterly inept transfer market activity.

I have to confess I’ve been hoping for this – I’ve even made a tidy little profit from continually backing Toon to get relegated since about late-March, shortly before Shearer took over. Newcastle have made a habit of splashing the cash around like it’s going out of style, chewing up and spitting out a series of managers without giving them a decent chance, and all the while claiming they are a big club and deserve to be challenging the big 4.

Sorry, it doesn’t work that way, and now they’re going to have to pay. Relegation from the Premiership is devastating – all of a sudden that huge wage bill is unsustainable, you can’t attract players, the TV money dwindles, and every other team in the division is keen to take shots at the fallen giant. It’s going to be tough.

Having said all that, now they’re down, I’ll be rooting for them next year. They’ve been punished, and now they can start over.

I hope Shearer stays, with full support of the board, and has a really good clean-out. Most of the worst offenders in the overpaid-gravy-train category of players will have already been on the blower to their agents looking for a way out. Let them go. Sell them off at a huge loss if necessary – better that than have to keep paying wages and have them hanging around lowering the tone.

Then start doing things properly. Use whatever money can be scraped together from selling the deadwood to buy in some decent young British talent. Keep players like Nicky Butt around to provide experience and leadership. Whilst Newcastle will no longer be able to attract European players, they are still a large prestigious club and should have little difficulty competing with the likes of Doncaster and Plymouth for Championship-class players.

Above all, focus on the fundamentals. Newcastle’s current squad is criminally short of pace, in a world of football where pace is now a vital asset. Get in a few players who can run. Get in a few players who have passion, and play until the final whistle blows.

With Shearer flying the flag and a decent coaching team in place, Newcastle can get back up within a season or two. Though as soon as they do they’ll probably start spending big money on overrated prima donnas again.

Oh, and did I say Machida in round 2? Yes, I believe I did. Take that haters! Tremendous performance from the karateka, and an easy profit for me. The only problem is that now everyone realises how good he is, I doubt I’ll get any decent value backing him from now on. Ah well, fun while it lasted.