THRU BLACK & WHITE EYES ‘ The Time is Now! (7/Feb/22)

Here we are then. A very big week indeed!

It wouldn’t be Newcastle United if we didn’t go into this game with something of a set-back and we got two of those in the shape of news that Callum Wilson may be out for virtually the rest of the season. I don’t think there are many who don’t rate Wilson highly for his ability as a very good No.9. But Wilson misses far too many games to be relied upon. I think we can see that United moved to bring in Wood to strengthen but we are flying by the seat of our pants in relying on the New Zealander and my heart sank last week when I heard he’d perhaps be missing for Everton due to Covid. Thankfully that wasn’t proven to be the case and he’ll be up top for us v Everton. Dwight Gayle? The lad is a conundrum.

Similarly, news that Burn will be missing with a problem with his toe is a set-back and that means we’ll start with options on a centre-back pairing much the same as we had on the last day of December, 2021. That’s despite all the money spent.

https://twitter.com/tfNUFC/status/1490754792653795329

More positively we’ll welcome Matthew Targett at left-back on loan from Villa and of course Bruno Guimar’es who may make an appearance under the lights at St James’ Park. I hope the full-back positions have now been significantly improved and I’m at risk of being accused of a man-crush with how much I admire everything Kieran Trippier brings to Newcastle United.

The win at Leeds has lifted everyone and on the whole the January transfer window has gone down well, though few of us would have said no to more attacking talent.

We are where we are and we go into a massive week now.

My hope is for 6 points between Everton and Villa this coming Sunday. There’s a definite mood of positivity around Newcastle United, particularly amongst supporters but to justify that frame of mind, we need to add to a paltry two wins this season. We can do ourselves a lot of good over the next six days. The reverse of that is obviously true too.

One thing the team won’t be lacking is support from the stands. Every time United take to the pitch at St James’ Park, every seat is sold. Every time we go away from home, the away allocation is full to bursting point. There are frantic requests for tickets.

This is a club in the relegation spots but with a supporting bursting at the seams with hope and optimism. As has been said a million times by all of us before, add a smidgeon of success to Newcastle United and the club will become a juggernaut.

This is what we all long for and I have to say, despite being completely carried away by the KK era of ’92 onwards, this feels far more promising of delivering the success we’ve all craved.

We’ve all heard and perhaps parroted the ‘richest club in the world’ line but the wealth of our club’s ownership doesn’t matter without the appropriate expertise. Vast amounts of money have gone into Everton on Moshiri’s watch but all they have to show for it is a list of failed managers and a very unhappy support.

The imminent appointment of Dan Ashworth as Director of Football is an appointment that has been accompanied with almost universal positivity (okay, perhaps not at Brighton and Hove Albion).

My fellow TF scribbler, Matthew Philpotts, wrote this excellent piece concerning Ashworth at the start of January (click here) Its more than a bluffers guide to Ashworth in that it gives a real insight to what the man brings to United.

Ashworth appears to have the pedigree to make the club’s ambitions become reality. He has done an excellent job at Brighton who are now consolidated as a Premier League club, with both one of the best young English managers in the PL and more tellingly, with a new state of the art training facility that The Seagulls have invested in heavily.

In the short time we’ve had the new ownership there has been some moments which have reminded us of our current reality. Unai Emery got cold feet and remained unconvinced about the Newcastle United ‘project’. We have also had that from agents and although as supporters we’ll bristle at any criticism, it is perhaps inevitable that Staveley, Ghodoussi and Reuben would be unable to fully outline a football vision to those who have been in the game decades. I’ve no doubt on occasion, some who have been in the game for lifetimes might view their current modus as naive, clumsy and even gauche. At this point in time, we can forgive them that. We are now beyond that early point however and moving into the next stage where we see moves being made to build a giant of a football club.

Ashworth will be able to do that as well as provide the expertise to completely overhaul the club’s operations with regards training facilities, the academy, coaching, recruitment and scouting.

Not that Newcastle United wishes to replicate the model at Brighton (with all due respect) but rather create the infrastructure of a club with global ambitions. Ashworth may be being appointed to one of the most powerful and exciting positions in world football. It is also going to be one of the most demanding.

The next appointment I’d hope we’d make is an experienced Chief Executive. The club needs talent and expertise in all of its executive positions to put the club onto a completely different level. Newcastle United will demand a calibre of executive on a par with anything at the world’s top clubs. It has been reported United have engaged a recruitment agency to head-hunt suitable candidates and the sooner that is concluded the better.

That new Chief Executive will also need a team to support them because the task if vast. That will be initially to vastly grow the Newcastle United business but it doesn’t begin and end with commercial considerations. Newcastle United in its new form has made much of United as a family, a club centred in the community. That has to move from warm words to practical measures. It’s a topic in itself which I’ll likely return to in this daft, little football blog at some point.

*

I was delighted to see United announce they were in the process of applying to become a Living Wage Employer. One of TF’s writers, Craig Shaw has covered what this means here -‘I don’t wish to regurgitate Craig’s points but I do want to congratulate United on taking this step.

In my days on the Newcastle United Supporters Trust, it was the view of the then board, that the club should play a lead role within the economic and social life of the city-region. We petitioned United about the Living Wage but Charnley was more interested in pursuing ridiculous bans for NUST than listening to anything progressive. Obviously, given the zero hours contract employment practices of Ashley, we were always on a hiding to nowt with that.

Nevertheless, it somewhat boiled my piss when the Newcastle United Foodbank was allowed to be used as nauseous PR for Charnley personally and the club generally, given their poverty employment practices.

As a gnarled old cynic myself, I’m not completely missing the PR points to be scored by the new owners attachment to the Foodbank and now the Living Wage (particularly as several of the movers and shakers of the new regime have overt links with a Tory party who have made Foodbanks such a depressing part of our landscape across a deprived region).

I think it would be difficult to identify a more popular board of directors than Staveley- Ghodoussi and Reuben at any football club anywhere in Europe right now. They have played a deft PR game as they move through the months of their 12-month management of United. No doubt club Chairman and PIF big-wig Yasir bin Al-Rumayyan is keeping a ready eye on how his fellow board members are getting on. The positive PR generated from the Living Wage will not do the minority shareholders in United any harm.

But I’ll finish where I started with Newcastle United and football matches it simply has to get points from. We’re altogether. Come on United, get into them.

Keep On, Keepin’ On …

MICHAEL MARTIN @TFMick1892