The undroppables.
Posted on October 19th, 2010 | 185 Comments |
A day in the life of a Newcastle fan is seldom dull. I for one have supported them ever since they began telecasting EPL games in Goa, which would have been way back in 1996.
In that length of time, I can quite honestly say that I must have witnessed a record number of highs and lows as compared to any other aspect of my rather eventful life. I can therefore only imagine what some of you other fans out there must have experienced in a much longer length of time of following The Toon.
This very season, for instance, I have seen our team perform in the most erratic fashion possible. We have beaten Everton, Aston Villa, and Chelsea only to face defeat at the hands of Blackpool and Stoke. At times, at the expense of better and more talented players, we have to endure seeing their seemingly lacklustre counterparts played week in and week out.
This brings me and my poison pen to analyse one point alone. Why do managers pick teams that, even to us humble fans, look suspect from a mile away? What makes the players that represent these line-ups so special that they make us want to tear our hair out? Why do managers unleash ‘The Undroppables’?
I understand a player in a rich vein of form being given a continuous run out (for instance Alan Shearer), but not one who doesn’t really contribute to the team effort. This season, a couple of names come straight to the fore when we’ve thought that certain players could have and should have done better.
Kevin Nolan is one player who put in fantastic effort last season, but just doesn’t seem to have brought that kind of form with him into the Premier League. We all know he’s capable of reproducing that form given his time at Bolton as well as his performance against Aston Villa this very season.
James Perch is another who has his on and off days. Maybe he’s still finding his feet having made the step up to the Premier League, but one can only hope that the foot in question quickly gets a grip.
In any case, I really am not writing an article to single out players who are currently under-performing. Chris Hughton himself has clearly arrived at the same conclusions as us and shown that he is not afraid to make changes. Maybe he’ll even rest Perch this weekend and bring on Ryan Taylor or Danny Simpson if he’s fit? My point in putting these few lines out there is to reminisce about all those players that left us writhing in agony after some performances that were an absolute horror to behold.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, I’ve been a Toon fan for fourteen years now, a little over half my life span. So it would be great to hear from everyone out there who have been supporters for decades and have witnessed stellar players and blundering nitwits share the pitch wearing black and white.
My personal “favourite” is, and will probably always be, the defensive pairing of B&B. Boumsong and Bramble, the two of them looked like they were blundering about in a fog with no idea as to where the ball or members of the opposition were. Am still working out why they were consistently played week after week. Maybe it was to justify their transfer fee? Maybe it was due to a lack of defensive reinforcements? I have no idea…..
Enough ranting though. Who was your most agonisingly pathetic performer in a NUFC strip ever, that though you wished for it incessantly, the manager just would not drop?
Guess this article isn’t going down as well as I’d hoped…
:P