I'm writing this on my birthday. Wednesday 4th December. Ahead of the Swansea game that I've just watched us lose, I kind of took it as a given that Newcastle were all set to let me down. I'd been guilty of enjoying the day too much. Setting myself up for a fall. The 4 wins on the bounce that had preceded the game merely added to that fatalistic sense that it was all going to go wrong.
However, I do feel that it's important not to dwell on the negatives. The fact is that at 36 you simply have to accept that socks & underpants become a birthday present staple.
Sorry, just remembered I'm here to write about football.
I do feel that it's important not to dwell on the negatives IN FOOTBALL. The trip to Wales felt like a game we could/should have got something from, with Swansea missing both of their main strikers, us on a great run of form and with a fully fit squad to pick from.
Yet, as is so often mentioned on social media and reported in the press, we don't respond well to going a goal down. The wheels come off and defeat is pretty much inevitable. Pardew has no Plan B. If we go behind we might as well give up and go home! More on that shortly.
Before kick off at Swansea you just sensed it wasn't our night. Ben Arfa gets flu, Cisse gets named as sub then injures himself in the warm-up. One glance at the bench and we're gently reminded at how thin our squad still is. When the game unfolded as it did, that lack of options couldn't have been more firmly underlined than it was by the introduction of Haidara, Obertan and Yanga-Mbiwa to help overturn the deficit.
Let's pause for a moment here to contemplate Gabriel Obertan. He's made three sub appearances so far and on each occasion I'm fairly sure he has at some point gone off on a blistering run during which he has left the ball behind. The man defies belief. He is never, ever going to make it as a top flight footballer and if we can ever persuade some mug somewhere to pay actual money for him it would be a miracle.
I digress..
Aside from the pre-match absences, there were two decent penalty shouts turned down, a hugely fortuitous second goal for them which killed the game just as we were seriously threatening to draw level, then of course there's the fact that Shelvey could have been sent off - a goal from him was inevitable after that.
Afterwards, predictably, the moaning anti-Pardew brigade emerged from the woodwork after being able to take the whole of November off. General grumblings about the team selection, the tactics, the substitutions. We're back to being rubbish again, just days after being on the crest of a wave.
What needs to be accepted here is that we are a mid-table Premier League team. That is, quite simply, what we are. Since promotion we've picked up 175 points from 128 games. An average of 1.37 points per game, which works out as around 52 per season. Which will get you around 8th - slap bang in the very heart of "mid-table" territory. In fact, at the end of each Premier League season, the average number of points per team is approximately 52.
Naturally, being Newcastle, we reach this "mid-table" average level via the medium of extremes. Mixing 5th with 16th. It's how we do things. Similarly, we react to the Swansea defeat (and the likely defeat at Old Trafford a few days later) as though it's the end of the world.
Another regular gripe is the old chestnut of us failing to respond when we go a goal behind. It was mentioned nearly as often last season as the old "scoring from a corner" favourite that we've, thank God, managed to bury recently. So let's look at the evidence..
It's certainly true to say that if we concede the opening goal away from home, chances are that we'll go on to lose the game. In fact, since promotion we've only won two away games when we concede first. But surely that's fairly common? Don't most games end up with a home win when the hosts score first? The overall Premier League average is that in those circumstances you'll see a home win 75% of the time (a draw is 17%, an away win 8%).
We've conceded the opening goal in 35 of our away games since promotion. 2 away wins in those circumstances equates to 6%. Our 6 draws equate to 17%, meaning we lost the other 77%. An almost exact mirror of the general Premier League average, in fact.
So maybe it's the case that we concede the opening goal too often away from home, then? That's why we're so poor on the road! Again, the stats suggest otherwise. The general Premier League average is that the home team scores first 55% of the time. How often do we concede first away from home? 55% of the time.
Statistically, in fact, since promotion we're probably as close to the Premier League "average" as it is possible to be! An average number of points, an average record away from home, just a whole load of average. Teams who finish 8th tend not to go on 7 or 8 match winning runs. Teams who finish 8th tend to have smaller squads. They win the occasional game they weren't expected to and they lose the occasional game against "lesser" opposition. We're ticking every single one of the clichboxes when it comes to being a mid-table side, in fact.
I suppose a lot of the frustration comes from the sense that our group of players should be doing better. That we are capable of comprehensively beating Chelsea and then rolling over for Swansea. A lot of that does, in the end, come down to squad strength. This was a fully fit squad, remember. It just shows that by taking Ben Arfa and Cisse away from the subs bench there were literally no other options left for Pardew and we begin to look stretched again. Maybe this will prove to be a blessing - much-needed evidence that we still need another striker (Gomis, perhaps?) to give us genuine depth and some real options for Pardew if we need to make a change.
We've shown a willingness in recent years to sign players in January. Mike Ashley clearly feels there's more value around at that time. So let's look ahead to the new year with some optimism. "Average" is a good starting point. It's something to build on. It's better than being bottom, anyway. Merry Christmas, folks!
Originally published in , December 2013
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