First bus 15 norwich
But Howe would be best served building on the qualities he saw here: solidity, defiance, spirit in adversity.
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How to resist the urge to skimp on the dull bits, to just hurl Ousmane Dembélé (or similar) head first into a relegation scrap, to rush straight from the lottery office to the helicopter showroom.Ī point against Norwich is hardly a jumpstart. What kind of talent can be thrown, profitably, at this situation? But the right moves here are also unclear. The window will loom as a kind of cavalry charge. A draw seemed fair.įor Newcastle the avoidance of defeat will come as a relief, not least as the oddity of their situation is yet to fully reveal itself. Callum Wilson buried the kick, just about. With 58 minutes gone the ball struck Billy Gilmour’s hand at a corner. Albeit, solid in the face of a team that have scored seven goals this season. Clark walked off looking stricken.Īnd suddenly the game had a different gravity. Running a bit faster than Teemu Pukki: this is not an unreasonable ambition. Clark’s red card came after he fluffed a clearance into Teemu Pukki’s midriff, leaving him haring off towards goal, but still 40 yards out. Roared on by a boisterous home support, there were at least signs of something stirring here. How do human beings react in this situation? We will find out. That group of unwanteds is also charged with keeping the club in the league – so that they can be replaced by better players. Here we have a group of players who have been told they are the living, breathing symptoms of the managed decline of the Mike Ashley era. Salvation from that point would require a kind of reverse-Keegan.īut then, anything is possible from this point, because none of this has been done before on this scale. Fail to win the next one and it could be the end of December before a similar chance comes again.
After which it’s mission not very possible: Leicester and Liverpool away, then Manchester City and Manchester United at home. Newcastle’s month of living dangerously had been widely trailed before this game. Because there were signs of some kind of spark here. It is to be hoped Howe’s voice is the loudest in that room. What to expect? Will Newcastle machine gun the world with money, will they grab the moon out of the sky, chop a mountain down with the edge of their hand? Will they sign Renato Sanches, Jack Wilshere and some people they met at the bus stop who seemed nice? There are four weeks to go until the January transfer window. The first is the current one: emergency stations, the uplift of a new coach in an old group of players.Īfter which, well, here comes everybody. Has there ever been a more bizarre, unplanned three‑quarter season than the one that awaits Newcastle’s manager? There will be three stages to this process. Newcastle fans show their support for Eddie Howe in a banner before the match at St James’ Park. Because things are unlikely to become any less strange from here. But Howe will draw comfort from the spirit shown here. To their credit Newcastle’s players showed resilience, adapting quickly and remaining tightly packed in the face of Norwich pressure – albeit this is something of an oxymoron, the football equivalent of being thrashed to within an inch of your life by a damp piece of kitchen towel.īy the end a 1-1 draw might have felt like an anticlimax, having taken the lead. Ciaran Clark’s red card was the first significant act of this match, one that required the immediate junking of all plans and the scaling back of what had looked a progressive and attacking Newcastle team. Nine minutes later the new manager was already clutching his head and pointing feverishly to the subs’ bench. The colours, the staging, the lines, the steely stare, the club tracksuit energy. He looked sharp, fizzing with that familiar ferrety energy. This is basically who Newcastle should have had in charge all along.Īnd the early optics were good. Howe has a fierceness about him, a modernising zeal. And why not? At times during the late games of the Steve Bruce era it felt as though someone had wheeled a worn, brown, slightly sagging Chesterfield armchair out on to the touchline and left it there to manage a football team.