Dave’s Ramblings – Newcastle United

March 15, 2026 Admin

On the flight back from Paris on Thursday, I found myself pondering what the events of the previous evening might mean for the rest of the season. Mainly because there was nothing else to do except stare out the window, eat tiny biscuits, and question why we put ourselves through this.

Our coach, it seems, has absolutely no issue with rotation. In fact, rotation might be underselling it. If the mood strikes, he appears perfectly happy to swap the entire team like he’s shuffling a deck of cards at a casino.

Meanwhile, the barcodes have an extra 24 hours’ rest before facing Barca, and they already had another 24 hours on us after the last game. I’m no sports scientist, but I’m fairly certain that more rest is… beneficial? Possibly? It probably means something. Or at the very least it sounds like the kind of thing commentators say with great confidence.

I struggled with how to start my thoughts after Wednesday’s debacle. Honestly, I was lost for words. Not because it was complicated… more because it was that bad.

Thankfully, today is much easier to sum up. We were dreadful. No creativity, no direction, and leadership so absent I’m considering filing a missing persons report.

The Premier League started in 1992, and in all that time the barcodes have only beaten us once at the Bridge. Once. That’s roughly the football equivalent of Halley’s Comet. And yet here we are, generously helping them add another rare celestial event to the calendar.

Mind you, it shouldn’t really come as a shock. Since Liam became coach, we’ve managed two league wins at home. Two. Brentford and West Ham. Both felt less like victories and more like we’d accidentally found three points down the back of the sofa.

Two lucky wins in five home league games, all against teams below us in the table… I remember, as I’m sure you do, when this place was a fortress. Teams used to turn up already beaten.

Now? Now it’s less fortress and more crumbling seaside cliff… with the waves battering it, the warning signs up, and the rest of the league happily bringing deckchairs to watch it slowly fall into the sea.

The stats today tell quite the story.

67% possession. Which sounds impressive until you realise most of it was us passing the ball sideways… then backwards… then sideways again… like a group of lads trying to parallel park a bus in a bicycle lane.

We had three times as many shots as they did. Fantastic. Unfortunately, only three were on target… which is two fewer than them. So essentially we did all the shooting practice and they did all the scoring practice.

Now, as a person — and as a coach — I quite like Pep Guardiola. He seems like a nice bloke. But I’m blaming him anyway.

Because he’s the one responsible for this possession-based obsession that’s infected football. Everyone wants to play like Barcelona in 2011, but what we actually look like is five-a-side after Christmas dinner.

Personally, I don’t care if you have the ball for 67%, 87%, or 147% of the game. Possession only matters if you actually do something with it.

And right now, what we’re doing with it is going backwards… at a fairly alarming rate of knots… while carefully passing it between defenders like we’re trying to return it to the manufacturer for a refund.

Stupid of me, of course, but I genuinely thought we might see a positive response after Wednesday’s defeat.

As I sit here now, I realise that was wildly optimistic. Frankly, I’d have settled for the radical concept of professional footballers showing signs of life.

I’m going to temporarily ignore PSG turning up at the white cliffs of Stamford Bridge on Tuesday, because frankly my mental health can only deal with so much at once.

Instead, I’m looking at the league fixtures: Everton away, then both Manchester clubs at home.

Be honest, how many points do we realistically expect from those three games? Because I’m counting on one hand… and even then I’m not sure I need all five fingers.

The highlight of today was spotting the referee stuck in our pre-match centre-circle huddle.

For a moment I thought he was about to give the team talk. To be fair, at least someone out there looked confident about what was going on.

Looking forward, I think we can safely assume we won’t be playing Champions League football next season.

That’s obviously disappointing for us fans. It’s even worse news for the ownership, who have managed to rack up debts on a scale normally associated with small countries or NASA space programmes. Those debts will need servicing, and without the income from Europe’s premier competition… well… let’s just say the financial outlook is about as comfortable as defending a corner with no centre-backs.

At this rate we might need UEFA to invent another competition just for us.

Something like:

The UEFA Financial Recovery Cup.

Entry requirements:

1. Spent an absolute fortune.

2. No longer entirely sure on what.

3. Wild panic setting in.

My takeaways…

We used to have a player called Frank Lampard. Remember him? Chelsea’s record goalscorer.

He had this unusual habit, and I know this will sound revolutionary, of shooting at the goal. Quite regularly, in fact. And weirdly enough, that often led to… goals.

Now yes, occasionally his efforts were helped by the legendary Rick O’Shea, whose deflections were so consistent he probably deserved a testimonial. But the important thing was that most of Frank’s shots were at least travelling in the general postcode of the goal.

Fast forward to today and we’ve spent ridiculous sums of money on… what exactly? You can blame the coach. You can blame the tactics. You can blame the alignment of the planets. But none of that matters if the players out there look like they’ve accidentally wandered onto the pitch while looking for the team bus.

Would John Terry have been happy with that sort of performance? Or would he have been berating every single player within a 20-yard radius while veins popped out of his forehead like garden hoses?

And just in case it’s not completely obvious from the tone here…

I am slightly less than delighted with today.

Slightly. 😐⚽

Apologies if I’ve rambled more than usual and wandered off on tangents that even I didn’t see coming. But I needed to vent and get everything out of my system before I frightened the neighbours.

With luck I will have a good night’s sleep. Waking up to a lovely espresso and able to move on from the events of the past few days.

There are pictures available here but, I won’t blame you if you just pass on by!

In the meantime, onwards and upwards. UTC 💙

Dave M