We now enter the most crucial part of this Newcastle United season. The run in.
Lads and lasses, it is crunch time.
You’ll all have different memories of many past Newcastle United seasons. Great starts, middling middles and awful fades towards the end of campaigns.
The notable one was when we came out the traps early in 1995, scaring the living daylights out of Alex Ferguson’s mob at Old Trafford. But, gradually and heartbreakingly at the time, we stuttered at Christmas and despite some form at the back end, tailed off and lost that famous 12 point lead we’d amassed.
Manchester United knew what to do over the course of the season, we didn’t. Even they probably didn’t think we’d falter as much as we did, but in May 1996 it was their name on the Premier League trophy and not ours.
So if you could pick your form, what’s better to have? My preference will always be consistently average throughout the season with the odd peak of form, as this should (in theory) keep you there or thereabouts by March/April, but achieving something at the end of it relies on one thing. A strong finish.
We are, as it stands, on the cusp of Europe. It’s not the Champions League type of Europe which we all aspired to repeat at the start of the season but our form simply hasn’t been good enough for that. We are six points behind Chelsea (whom we’ve just beat) and that is the team we need to gazump over the run in. Will it be enough for Europa League? That’s the multi-million pound question.
We can worry about if the Europa League is a good enough carrot to keep our best players when the summer arrives but that’s a debate for another day.
On the subject of our players better or otherwise, let’s be clear, this is a team in transition. The progress (or regression) of the team/club was effected by one scenario last summer and that was the Alexander Isak saga.
Put simply, selling a disgruntled player for £130m should have been a positive but unfortunately he hasn’t been adequately replaced. When you lose a 20+ goal a season striker you are going to struggle, especially when you consider our top league goalscorer is Bruno Guimaraes with nine goals, Nick Woltemade slightly further back with seven. THERE is the major problem.
In fact, with that in mind, I’m actually amazed we are in with a shout of ANY Europe at all.
Yoane Wissa was unlucky with his early season injury and NEEDS a pre-season if he is to remain at Newcastle and play a bigger part next season. Not having a proper pre-season has been massively problematic for him, as it has been with other Newcastle United summer 2025 signings. They need to hit the ground running in August if they are still at the club. It’s these mitigating circumstances that keeps my mind off any criticism of Eddie Howe. What was he supposed to do?
Another hindrance was the lack of a CEO and a Sporting Director for pre-season.
Only Anthony Elanga was brought in early enough. Malick Thiaw was signed on the very eve of the season with Nick Woltemade, Jacob Ramsey and Yoane Wissa all brought in after the season started. Again, what is Eddie Howe and his coaches meant to do?
On the subject of the Newcastle United hierarchy and poor league form, I seem to recall the loathsome Dan Ashworth (correctly) saying during the Amazon Prime documentary that the board at the time understood that teams qualifying for the Champions League teams nearly always experience a “significant” drop off in league form the following season, usually due to injuries, suspensions associated with the extra games. I certainly hope this is on the minds of our current board when analysing and evaluating the season (and Manager) come May.
Looking into our future, this summer is going to require a massive overhaul of the Newcastle United squad. The side that did so well in 2022/23 and in 2024/25 is now 3-4 years older and it was far from a youthful side back then. When I said that this is a team in transition, it’s important to play both the importance of the summer and praise how well we’ve actually done, even this season.
In recent months, our back four has been made up of Kieran Trippier (35) Dan Burn (33) and Fabian Schar (34). Once again in the Amazon Documentary, Ashworth made the salient point that we had “aging players” that couldn’t be expected to “churn out” the amount of games we would be playing across four competitions. Yet here we are with many of the same players three years down the line doing exactly that.
This season we’ve faced Manchester City three times in both cups and are in the last 16 of the Champions League, drawing at half time with Barcelona. That is nothing to sniff at despite our mid table status so far.
In the meantime, the squad has a job to do. Never mind strikers having a hissy fit or CEOs appointed late and the Manager having to cut short his holiday to rescue the transfer window (an absurd situation by the way), it’s now down to the players that are here and crucially, those that are fit to effect what state we are in this summer. We can question the merits or lack of merits in keeping players at season’s end. It’s now time to focus on that crucial run in.
We have Tino Livramento, Fabian Schar and Bruno at varying stages of returns to the squad at a time when a big push is required.
Our fixture list has started to clear somewhat with only the (welcome) distraction of Barcelona on Wednesday to effect our domestic final matches. Failure to go through will leave no excuses for tiredness. Getting to the next stage should equally provide impetus from such a feather in the cap.
The strategy for the rest of the season will surely be to simply win our remaining home games, something which we’ve struggled to do, especially against poorer sides. Then we must pick up points from some of our last away fixtures of the season. The Chelsea win was as welcome as it was equally unexpected. But it’s a springboard, a springboard into a crucial week.
After Wednesday night we have “The Big One”. It would be nice to go into it with the knowledge we are in the next round of the Champions League but that’s the nature of the game we’re in. We’re playing at the elite level and many would snap your hands off to be in our position, especially next Sunday’s opponents.
After all I’ve just said, I’m positive the summer will take care of itself, mistakes will have been learned from last summer, sagas and tantrums hopefully less prevalent. But that relies on what the players do on the pitch between now and May, having started things off brilliantly this week at Stamford Bridge.
Let’s keep it going.