Skip to main content

Eddie Howe walks tightrope at Newcastle with ominous January fixture list ahead | Jonathan Wilson

The Magpies manager needs results but his side face Liverpool, City and Villa in the league – and Sunderland in the FA Cup

When results go awry, football clubs tend to have only one response. Sometimes the act is undertaken with a sense of ruthlessness, sometimes relief, sometimes with the dutiful sombreness of somebody taking a faithful labrador to the vet for the final time, but always there is a feeling of necessity. “I’m sorry, Nigel/Antonio/Steve, but there’s no other way.” Inevitably, though, the result is the same: whatever is going wrong at the club, however good a job has been done before, the manager is the one who takes the blame.

That is just the nature of the modern game. Managers may just about be given time to work their way through a dip, but nobody ever sees the other side of a slough. Which should concern Eddie Howe. Newcastle are in a dip at the moment, the Christmas defeats by Luton and Nottingham Forest meaning they have lost eight of their last 12 games. They are out of the Champions League and the Carabao Cup and, while Champions League qualification is not out of range, a small gap is beginning to open. And January looks tough.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/LgUxFZ9
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Rico Lewis helped harden up Manchester City’s treble challenge | Jamie Jackson

Guardiola believes advent of the teenage talent sowed seeds of change that turned his side into champions again Mid-January, the Etihad Campus. Before Tottenham’s visit a discontented Pep Guardiola is addressing a Manchester City team meeting that includes Erling Haaland, Kevin De Bruyne, John Stones and Ederson. The champions are in second place, eight points behind Arsenal, each having played 18 games. Performances have dipped and so has the attitude of his players. The final match before the World Cup was a 2-1 home defeat by Brentford . Since the tournament, City have beaten Leeds and Chelsea, drawn with Everton and lost their previous outing , 2-1 at Manchester United. Seven points from 15 is not championship-defending form and, when being knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Southampton is factored in, Guardiola can see City’s campaign derailing. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/h8WjbMX
Post a Comment
Read more

Wandsworth escape accused says it was ‘foolish’ to jail him with his ‘skill set’

Daniel Khalife, 23, says he absconded because he was ‘terrified’ of being locked up with dangerous offenders A former British soldier has told a jury he did not hand himself in after he escaped from prison because he was “finally demonstrating what a foolish idea it was” to imprison someone with his “skill set”. Daniel Khalife, 23, told the court he absconded from Wandsworth prison while on remand because he was “terrified” of being locked up with “serious sex offenders” and “terrorists” who wanted to kill him, and that he did not think his imprisonment would be in the public interest. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/vRZHkaw
Post a Comment
Read more

Bodies of Men: the love story taking on toxic masculinity in a time of war

Nigel Featherstone’s new novel tackles traditional conservatism and patriarchy through an unconventional romance How can you be a man and be anti-war? This is the question that Sydney-born novelist Nigel Featherstone, who is a pacifist, considered while he took up a three-month writing residency in a military library. He set out to discover what happens to very different expressions of masculinity placed under military pressure. “Australia does have a very defined, toxic brand of masculinity,” says the bespectacled Featherstone, seated by the window at his local pub facing the railway station at Goulburn, north of Canberra, while men on stools at the nearby bar sink beers and televisions on the walls screen horse racing results. Continue reading... from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2N8piOc
Post a Comment
Read more