Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Lack of English grit could send Newcastle down - Yahoo! Eurosport UK (blog)


Newcastle United's Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa


Newcastle are now just one place above the relegation zone and have lost their last two home games by a combined score of 9-0.


They punched above their weight last season and qualified for the Europa League but that is now one of the big reasons why they are struggling.


The club just didn't need Europa League football. It may only be Europe's second tier competition but you still need a competent squad to deal with that and the Premier League.


Everything was rosy in the garden when the French revolution began at the club – playing in Europe was a big lift for all those European players who clearly loved it, but since they have got knocked out they have struggled to get back up for their domestic fixtures.


To get out of trouble you need continuity and a good dressing room but with different languages flying around it is difficult to produce a positive atmosphere no matter how hard you try. They look like a squad of players that don't know each other.


Things were going great for a spell with all those exciting French talents but when things are going bad you need your bread and butter characters to help get you out of trouble and Newcastle just don't have enough of those type of players.


You can't put together a group of foreign players and then expect them to suddenly click for you when faced with an English relegation scrape that they are not used to.


A lot of them just can't deal with it - they are not programmed to play the way you need to when you are struggling. They're not battle hardened, it is more physical down at the bottom and a whole different mentality is needed than for the Europa League matches which on many occasion they had been playing just a few days previous.


Gary Neville contrasted the Newcastle situation – where they played seven French players in their 6-0 defeat to Liverpool – to that at Crewe Alexandra who fielded a team of 11 players that all came through their academy at the weekend.


I thought it was a great point and if Newcastle do go down it will show the danger of neglecting youth players from your local area.


And the end of the day, there are too many people in England slagging off the quality of English players – saying they can't do this or can't do that – but us English were all brought up on a diet of blood, guts and tears and that can be valuable too.


Passion, heart, desire – these are the things that English players have that some of these more technically gifted players from abroad might be lacking.


We have got too caught up in this idea of the Barcelona style of beautiful football and we seem to have forgotten about the sheer grit factor that English football is all about.


If we are looking for an example to follow, we should be turning to Germany more than Spain because they are a closer model to what English football is all about. They seem to have matched passion and desire with more skilful football and that's what we should be aiming for.


Newcastle is a unique type of club too – it is a one horse town and everyone lives their life around the football club. When things are going great this is a superb asset as the Newcastle fans are second to none when things are going their way.


However, when they are struggling, the fans can be a burden as certain players find it difficult to cope with the pressure – especially as a lot of these players come from backgrounds where they were not used to playing in front of huge full houses every week. Only really Germany has the same type of culture of fans filling out grounds and getting emotional about relegation scrapes.


When these players go into the town they need to realise that they are always being watched and sometimes the fans might let their emotions get the better of them.


A lot of the players that Newcastle have brought in are not household names, you suspect that they are using Newcastle as a bit of a stepping stone to even bigger clubs but they need to be wary that clubs are always looking to see how they cope with a variety of different situations and won't be impressed with what they are seeing at the moment.


Clubs like Arsenal and Chelsea treat not qualifying for the Champions League as their own type of relegation battle so Newcastle's stars need to show some fight if they want to attract the interest of these kinds of teams.


Make no mistake Newcastle are still in danger of going down. You would still back them to survive as they have the points on the board which is much more beneficial than having a game in hand like Wigan do and you also feel that Roberto Martinez's side might be distracted by the looming FA Cup final; but it is also hard to see where the next three points are coming from for the Toon Army and if they keep losing games then they could pay the ultimate price.



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