Well … for those sides struggling at the foot of the Premiership Table, this is the last chance saloon and the reality is that for some, it may be their last chance at playing (or managing) in the Premiership again.
For clubs, the ramifications of relegation are profound ... emergency boardroom meetings, contingency plans, player negotiations and heated conversations will be common place. For fans, staring down the barrel of relegation is a crippling and gut wrenching feeling, one that I felt for the first time this season with Charlton. It was a weird feeling, one of emptiness and helplessness, as we watched the side squander countless first half leads. The Championship's relegated sides this year were all in Britian’s top flight five years ago which I guess is testimony to how difficult life in the Coca-Cola Championship can be, especially if the relegated sides are not able to bounce back up while they are still receiving parachute payments.
Out of the sides that are scrapping down at the bottom of the table, the most surprising is Newcastle United. I think at the start of the season people expected them to struggle, but I certainly didn’t think that they’d be in the bottom three on the last day of the season, that’s for sure. They are a funny side, a side made up of world-class players, prima donnas and absolute no-marks and one that has just not been able to settle or gel together. They often look like a bunch of individual players who have never been on the same pitch together; there is no ‘connectivity’ between the players and certainly no telepathy!
There are those out there that will say they’ve been unlucky, but I don’t think luck has anything to do with it. The club have been a shambles since Ashley took over and despite him ploughing £250m of his own fortune into the club, they remain the laughing stock of the league.
The hiring and firing of five managers since May 2007 has to take a significant portion of the blame for the situation that the club find themselves in. The hiring of ‘King Kev’ was one of the most random decisions I’ve ever seen in football, and it highlighted the fickleness of the Geordie faithful. The man was running a soccer circus in Glasgow or something that like and confessed to not following the Premiership or watching the Premiership for several years before turning up to St. James' Park and being unveiled to thousands of Geordies who hailed the return of the King to the Toon, only to see him disappear after 21 matches as manager of the club.
To the unbiased supporter, it was a shocking decision to remove Sam Allardyce and to replace him with Keegan in the first place. Allardyce had a record of 8 wins, 6 draws and 10 defeats during his time on Tyneside, that’s an average of 1.25 points per game, which isn’t great admittedly, but at the same time, it's not relegation form, rather mid-table mediocrity. The issue with Newcastle United and with the Toon faithful, is that they think they are better than they actually are. History doesn’t lie. Newcastle United are, at best, a mid table side whose trophy cabinet has remained bare since their 1955 FA Cup victory and with the Championship a real possibility, things do not look all fine on the Tyne.
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