Joe Kinnear on his first Newcastle United game

Posted by: Clarky · September 27, 2008

I caught Bobby Moncur talking on Century Radio on the drive home. He said he’d been talking to Joe Kinnear, who had asked to see him and Supermac to pick their brains on all things Toon, including the current squad.

Although not officially in charge, he said he had felt the need to go into the dressing room at half time and say a few home truths to the team. He said he was rather concerned about the reaction, apart from Michael Owen.

Anyway, if his first team talk is anything to go by, he might indeed bring about an improvement - because the 2nd half performance was immeasurably better than the 1st half had been.

This group of players are clearly moping around feeling sorry for themselves, and Chris Hughton is almost certainly too close to them. This is why the introduction of an outsider at this juncture is possibly the first sensible decision Mike Ashley has made to date.

We started off brightly, but gradually lost the early grip on m/f. Defensively, we played like nervous wrecks - especially Taylor, who is desperately low on confidence after a couple of bad recent errors, and really needs a spell on the bench - being pushed out to RB may not exactly have helped him today.

Coloccini never really got to grips with Santa Cruz, who caused us problems all afternoon - and tbh at this admittedly early stage he looks a long way from being a £10m CB. I thought Cacapa was perhaps the pick of the defence today, but we still gave away two really soft goals leaving us with nothing in a game we should have taken something from.

With Zog switched into the centre, I thought m/f functioned rather better today than recently, but we lack cohesion and organisation and concede possession way too cheaply. Zog is essentially a runner, and we don’t have anyone who can make the incisive pass.

Up front, the Cisco Kid kept battling gamely, but looks a bit short of the class required at this level. He lacks the sharpness another yard of pace would give him, and being up against two giants today he won very little in the air. I thought Ameobi actually did a little better than Xisco when he came on, despite being booed onto the pitch by morons that I desperately wish would just sod off and support the mackems.

Michael Owen was our MOTM today. He worked off his gonads, both in m/f and up front, without ever receiving the kind of service he needs. He painfully won the penalty, and when he recovered, safely despatched it.

Another dispiriting defeat, but a glimmer of hope in the 2nd half display. The football we played wasn’t that much better, but the level of spirit and enthusiasm was a 99% improvement from the heads bowed rabble that ended the game on Wednesday and the 1st half today.

Whatever Kinnear said to Damien Duff at HT certainly worked - he was a revelation in the 2nd half, and perhaps for the very first time we saw the real DD. He just needs to work the same miracle on the rest of them, and we might be back in business. In particular, he needs to sort out a dithering, utterly disorganised defence.

The unpalatable truth, of course, is that we need a few players back to make any kind of recovery a realistic possibility.

Tags: blackburn rovers, English Premier League, Newcastle United

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2008 at 2:29 pm and is filed under Game Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or trackback from your own site.