Did the old Newcastle United ruin the fans? | OneFootball

In one of my favourite movies of all time, the brilliant Blazing Saddles, Sheriff Bart picks up his gun to go sort out Mongo (who rode into town on an ox, punched a horse to the ground and at the time had everyone in the local bar pinned against a wall behind a piano).

The Waco Kid says “No, no, don’t do that. If you shoot him you’ll only make him mad.”

Being Newcastle United fans, over the years we have been trained to expect certain things.

“Trained” may not be the correct term here. Maybe “conditioned” is more relevant to the point.

While Ben Arfa could be a genius, nine games out of ten we expected, and got, very little from him, but when that tenth game came around, and he actually did turn up, he was hailed as a god.

We were conditioned to ignore the other nine.

Going back a few years we were “conditioned” to expect Steven Taylor to hurl himself around the box, always seeming to be just that half a yard out of position. Then there was the old “shot by a sniper in the stands” routine, after he’d cleared the ball off the line with his hand.

While we’re at the back, we always knew what to expect from Titus Bramble, but were still surprised when he actually did his “party-piece”.

Titus Bramble, the only player to be cheered by the opposition when being brought on as a sub.

Thanks to a certain geezer of Cockney origin, heading into March, April, May, we were conditioned to accept RFRS as an almost seasonal norm.

RFRS – Relegation Fight Related Syndrome – it’s a real thing, look it up.

There was a time not too long ago when, if we went a goal down, our brains would go into “limp home” mode. When Jonjo Shelvey was our top scorer with six goals, we quite literally had no idea where our next goal was coming from.

Going a goal down could suck the atmosphere out of the stadium and send some fans to the Metro station.

Fortunately, things change.

In the last couple of seasons we’ve had 16 or 17 different goalscorers on the scoresheet. When you have 10 players on the pitch who could score, going one down isn’t really such a big thing.

Going back to Mongo and Sheriff Bart, sometimes we need to be “shot” to get us to concentrate!

A hundred years ago, Pavlov’s dog was conditioned to react to a bell that sounded just before it was fed. It heard the bell, expected food and began to salivate.

I used to have a bit of a Pavlov’s dog thing going on, only with me it was the sound of the whistle for the start of the second half. We’d gone in at half time a couple of goals up. We came back out, the whistle goes, and within a few minutes I realise that we are setting up to try to defend the lead.

Pre-Eddie we were never good at defending a lead.

The difference between me and those laboratory mutts is that instead of a bell producing saliva, the sound of that whistle could bring tears to my eyes.

I just didn’t get why, having dominated the first half totally, and dictated the style and pace of play, we would ever even consider changing our game plan.

I have to admit to having a bit of a Pavlovian flashback on Sunday against Forest.

Okay, I get that Forest had tweaked their formation a bit, but instead of pushing on through to six or seven goals, we came out to defend.

There were tears.

I just don’t get it.

On the subject of not getting things…

At the risk of sounding like the President of the Martin Dubravka Fan Club (yet again), what was Howe’s logic in demoting Dubs to the bench? If, as we are led to believe, Howe is a numbers man, approaching everything logically, analytically, what was his motivation in restoring Pope to the line up when the numbers are so clearly against him?

I get that I don’t see what happens in training, but I just cannot understand why our manager favours Nick Pope in the number one slot.

When Dubravka came in this season we won 12 of the next 14 games.

We won nine games on the trot.

We had seven clean sheets, added to that, four games where we conceded only a single goal.

How much better did Dubravka need to play to keep his place?

Here’s a little summary of the outcome of each keeper’s last 15 games.

Martin Dubravka

Played 15 Won 12 Drawn 0 Lost 3 Goals Scored 36 Goals Conceded 16

Nick Pope

Played 15 Won 5 Drawn 5 Lost 5 Goals Scored 20 Goals Conceded 22

15 5 5 5 20 22

In his 15 match stint before being injured, Pope played two cup matches and we got 14 points in the league. That’s pushing 1.1 points per game. Numbers that get you relegated.

In Dubravka’s similar run, he played five cup matches and we got 21 points. That’s seven points more in three fewer games.

I know it doesn’t work quite like this but if, in those previous 13 league games, Pope had matched Dubravka’s 2.1 points per game average, that would have resulted in 13 points more than we have now. That would have us in second place snapping at Liverpool’s heels, with a chance at the title.

Was Howe’s decision based entirely on the Man City defeat?

If Howe is as objective as I would hope he is, he would acknowledge that Pope was hardly perfect against Forest, and put Dubs back in for the Liverpool match. That said, if we are going to take another drubbing (which of course I do not want to see) leave Pope in.