Like every other Newcastle United fan, I can’t wait for the return of proper football.
Just over four weeks time we will see competitive football again at St James’ Park.
A handful of pre-season friendlies in the meantime, then Southampton a 3pm kick-off on Saturday 17 August.
As I say, it can’t come around too soon.
For a number of reasons.
Firstly, of course, wanting to be back in the routine of watching my team play week in week out.
Secondly though, as a Newcastle United fan, I hope this calms down a sizeable number of my fellow NUFC supporters.
Honestly, this summer has been woeful in terms of how some Newcastle fans have gone on. It feels like a big minority of them live in constant fear and expectation that everything is going to go wrong.
Well, maybe you shouldn’t be a Newcastle United fan if you can’t handle this.
You need to get used to the fact that other clubs will always dream of luring the likes of Bruno Guimaraes, Anthony Gordon, Alexander Isak, Joelinton, and others, away from St James’ Park.
The same with Eddie Howe, whether it is England or any number of club teams, they would love to have him as their manager.
Do you honestly think that Man U wouldn’t have loved to take Eddie Howe as well as Dan Ashworth, rather than giving Erik ten Hag an eventual contract extension after hilariously Thomas Tuchel and a number of other candidates turned Man U down?
The same at Chelsea, desperately looking around for somebody to take the job (yet again!!!) and ending up having to take somebody whose entire management experience is a handful of games in the Italian second tier before getting the sack, then getting Leicester promoted, a club who had easily the best and most expensive squad of players.
For a decade and a half, Newcastle United fans didn’t need to worry about losing players and/or managers.
It was simply a case of knowing for sure that Mike Ashley would sell any player who there was a decent bid for, whilst if he accidentally appointed a decent manager (Chris Hughton), or was forced to (Rafa Benitz), then you also knew for sure that Ashley would be getting rid of them ASAP after they had done the job he’d needed them to do (recover from the latest relegation) because they weren’t the kind of puppets he wanted to have ‘in charge’ of things. The same of course with Kevin Keegan, under pressure Mike Ashley made a great choice to appease fans BUT at the same time secretly undermined KK from the start by giving Dennis Wise all the power on transfers in and out, ensuring Keegan would be forced out ASAP.
