Sickly, retro, and apparently never-ending, 2023-24 is the black forest gateau of NUFC seasons. Scott Robson explains.

***

The strangeness of Newcastle United, season 2023-2024 goes on. Most people secretly want it to end quickly but outwardly don’t.

It’s like cutting yourself the biggest piece of black forest gateau that you know you can’t finish. You plough on, making yourself more ill with every bite but you just can’t stop to prove everyone wrong that you still have it in you. That’s no way to go on.

The season seems to have been going on forever. The game away to Brighton seems like it took place in 1993 in my mind and Bob Moncur feels like he played for us at AC Milan away.

A quick check sees we have to go out to battle another seven times before everyone can look forward to this much vaunted reset throughout the club.

Everton was, fundamentally, a pictorial peek for the outsider to see how things have gone wrong this season. Ravaged by injuries we struggled to capitalise against a poor side and a mistake costs us.

It’s a well worn path. When United slammed five past Aston Villa on the opening day, you would have been hard pressed to find anyone who would say that, 29 games on, we would not have beaten anyone out of the bottom five at home (albeit with two of the worst to come).

Is this all down to injuries? Well, it probably is. The level of sickness would, in real life, force the Tory government to change benefit policies. It has been unseen in my time watching football.

These players are key, key players. Take Wilson out and we lose 15 goals; this also denies Isak the rest that his glass body deserves. Take Botman out and you lose the most accomplished defender we have seen in black and white since Woodgate. I’m not counting the ghost return of Botman when he played more like Fitz Hall, by the way.

Willock, Lascelles, Pope and, most importantly, Joelinton are all so key to the way we played and conquered last year, it’s a wonder we are where we are, if I’m honest.

Not having Joelinton in the side has cut off so many tentacles in our team. It rarely gets mentioned, but that player is now essential for us. Tonali on the flipside has been done to death, but to have all these injuries while a fully fit international flits around in training must be a hard one to take.

Some of the long-term absentees are returning, like Barnes and Anderson.

The former is now tantalisingly showing what we’ve been missing after an eyebrow-raising time away for a toe injury. The latter has been denied a breakthrough season which must have been made all the worse by that young lad who did his boots now being ahead of him in the team (himself now injured).

When everyone comes back I maintain United will now have the strongest squad we have had since the first Keegan days. That, though, at the minute remains laughable, when the likes of Dummett are thrown onto the pitch. A great servant for the club and an accomplished player at his peak, it’s plausible that he wouldn’t get into a top Championship side right now, let alone a Premier League struggler. I’m not joining the line to turn Dummett into a human punch bag after last Tuesday. It’s just a fact. United versus Everton should really be a no contest.

Newcastle are at a fork in the road never seen in the modern history of the club. This summer will likely see change in every part of the club.

Injuries or not, state owners don’t accept the Conference League (I would bite your hand off by the way), and state owners certainly don’t accept being twenty points behind other state owners. Or in our language, being below Wolves or Bournemouth.

Heads will undoubtedly roll. The Howe rumours won’t go away unless the position improves. I’m against that wholeheartedly, but I’m also a realist, as is Howe. He also may take the route of saving us the bother by accepting the inevitable England vacancy which will become a thing the day after the European Championship quarter final.

The sporting director position will hopefully be filled as we finally rid ourselves of the gardening jokes which the Ashworth saga has brought us.

The medical review, which presumably will be done by Casualty’s Charlie Fairhead now he’s at a loose end, will probably see huge changes in that respect. The video of Gordon’s knee being bent back at Chelsea just won’t leave people’s craniums.

We will sign and sell players as well. Both might cause anger. Players you have on your wall at home may say goodbye to be replaced by an unfashionable incomer, or we might go all out. No one knows but the board and the people who bring the sandwiches out at Alnwick Castle.

Even the queen of St James’ (copyright Newcastle Chronicle and Journal) Amanda Staveley could probably do without us failing to beat terrible teams at home, as she faces a massive financial court case which sees priorities go elsewhere. Ground moves may tentatively get mentioned. Even the kit is getting supercharged.

Everywhere you look it’s chaos at the club, a lot of it through no fault of its own, but chaos nonetheless. Newcastle’s reboot happened so quickly on and off the pitch, we have tripped over all the potholes this year and had some terrible luck to go with our undoubted errors.

The notion by the believers is that this position is really last year’s, and last year in real terms should have been this year. That’s worth a look. No one would have complained if we had finished eighth last year, but this year really does look more like missing a trick every single game.

There is good chaos and bad chaos, though, and the club is a different entity to the one we had only three years ago. To be even chasing European competition would have been laughable then, as would seeing a player like Isak bought and play for us.

Do we keep going into this as a defence every time we make mistakes though?

It’s not wrong to criticise just because of how far we have come. Terrible administration decisions and ticketing disasters don’t help either, and the club have been dangerously close to losing the rank and file this year, this just being redeemed with classic ‘watch the birdie’ announcements.

As harsh as it is, this period of Newcastle may be about to come to an end. Last season saw the magnificent poetry of the Newcastle team that survived relegation turning into football gods and creating something special. When the takeover happened I yearned for this to happen as an antithesis to just buying success. We can’t really complain too much when those gods suddenly become human after all.

Of course we are Newcastle United as well. Only one team in the world would become the richest club in the world and have a substitutes bench of players (minus a not fit Willock) who would generally be happy to appear in the Northumberland Senior cup and a couple who really should have retired years ago. It’s the United way. No amount of money can save us from being fuck ups. Just, in time, the money will enable us to be less fuck ups year after year.

This year is a sideways move which sometimes drags itself backwards but at least it’s been exciting eh?

Newcastle United. It’s never dull.

Scott Robson