I have never been a fan of Monday night football.
Guessing most of you reading this are exactly the same.
It is a day (night) that is neither weekend nor midweek, it is simply a day when most of us head back to work and it is most definitely not a day (night) suitable for Premier League football.
German football fans rebelled en masse when the Bundesliga announced moving just a handful of league matches to Monday nights, Premier League fans on the other hand have just accepted for many years now, that this is the way it is.
I say Monday night football is woeful, but of course, I am talking about it from the point of view of those ‘legacy’ fans, you know, those of us who actually go to matches.
However, when we join the TV brigade watching Monday night football games from our living rooms that don’t feature Newcastle United, then it can at times throw up some admittedly glorious scenes.
Last night was one of them.
Manchester United fans watching on as their clueless manager and largely non-trying team, were defeated 4-0 at Selhurst Park. Palace actually let them off the hook because this could and should have been seven or eight goals in the Man U net.
Anyway, whilst I laughed on with the rest of you, there was one thing in particular from the commentary team that irked me.
After Crystal Palace had scored their fourth I think it was, there was an outpouring of sympathy for Manchester United fans, including one comment saying how ‘They have been through a lot this season.”
It struck me as just yet another extreme example of how distorted things are these days, how skewed the media coverage is.
How there is these very different levels of how the media report on various clubs and their fanbases, they do actually see it now as some divine right certain clubs and their supporters have to be successful.
Put it this way, ask fans of all the football clubs in this country, would they take top eight (at worst) in the Premier League AND looking forward to an FA Cup final???
Never mind fans of almost all of the clubs outside the top tier, now much sympathy will the likes of the fanbases at Luton, Burnley and Sheffield United have for Manchester United fans, as their own teams are relegated. Not to mention Forest and Everton as another two prime examples, both now looking set to survive in the Premier League but for how long? As the repercussions continue from the skewed PSR restrictions pushed by the ‘big’ six to try and stop Newcastle United especially, as well as the rest, from getting a place at the top table, they don’t want any other snouts in the trough of privilege, cash and power.
However, whilst other fans of countless clubs could be included in this conversation, I just want to concentrate on the media and three clubs, three fanbases.
Manchester United fans
As I say, according to Sky Sports we are supposed to feel sorry for this lot.
Why?
Well, they are facing the ‘disaster’ of supporting a club that could for the first time in the Premier League era finish as low as eighth!
Checking back, it was actually 1989/90 when Man U last finished outside the top seven in the league, they ended up 13th in the table.
Looking further back, this is the only time since 1975 that Manchester United fans have seen their team finish outside the top half of the table.
Apparently, Manchester United fans have also seen their team win a ‘few’ trophies as well in the 1970s onwards.
IMAGO/Sportimage
Liverpool fans
As for this lot, after winning the top tier in 1989/90, every season that followed the rest of us were informed that the poor ole Liverpool fans were going through their XX years of hurt. The media angle that this was affront to how things should be, the red scousers not winning the league.
Those 30 years of ‘hurt’ at last ending in 2020, Liverpool fans apparently seeing their club returned to its rightful place etc etc.
The pain they had experienced on the pitch something we were all supposed to think was a shocker for Liverpool fans, totally ignoring of course the fact that in those 30 years of ‘hurt’, the red scousers had actually seen their team win double figures of trophies, including Champions League ones!
One astonishing statistic that I always struggle to get my head around, when it comes to how supposedly Liverpool fans have ever had it really bad on the pitch in living memory, is this.
You have to go back to the 1961/62 season for the last time Liverpool finished outside of the top eight in the league.
Just think about that.
So there will be Liverpool fans who have reached the age of 80 and have NEVER in their adult life seen their team finish outside the top eight in the top tier!!!
Which brings me to…
Newcastle United fans
Unless you are somebody who has simply chosen a club to support because they have a record of winning a lot of trophies recently, then the chances are you are supporting a team that hasn’t been winning a lot of trophies recently.
I am biased of course but the thing with Newcastle United, is that we could have been a Manchester United or Liverpool these past 50+ years.
The simple fact is that it came down to those owning the respective clubs, all three were/are massive clubs, but the decisions and leadership in the 1960s / 1970s and onwards, shaped who would be successful and who wouldn’t.
I know there have been points in the ownership of both Liverpool and Man U when they have had serious issues. However, they absolutely pale into insignificance when it comes to what Newcastle United fans have experienced.
For 50 or 60 years or more, a shambles at St James’ Park. Even the brief flurries of a handful of seasons of competitiveness under Kevin Keegan and Sir Bobby Robson were thrown away by the Shepherd and Hall ownership, when they made the Dalglish and Souness appointments, the latter an unbelievable move.
Then of course the real killer blow of the Premier League era, when Shepherd and Hall sold to Mike Ashley and at the very time all other major clubs in England were establishing their clubs as major forces on the back of the Premier League appeal worldwide, we had an owner who dragged NUFC back like a big fat anchor (rhyming slang applicable…) as he instead simply used our football club to promote his shops and increase his personal wealth from billionaire to multi-billionaire.
The new/current Newcastle United ownership and Eddie Howe, now trying to drag us back into proper contention after those 14 years of Ashley. We have seen what can be possible in just two and a half years of running a club properly and with ambition, just imagine where Newcastle United could have been now, if the club had been run the previous 14 years like this, never mind the last 60 years or more…
For those Liverpool fans and Newcastle United fans who want to claim the above is a fallacy, they have always been massive clubs and Newcastle United nothing, how about this.
It was only the 1974 FA Cup final, when Liverpool finally moved ahead of Newcastle United when it came to winning trophies in their respective histories.
As for Manchester United fans, down the years they had seen their club with ten major domestic trophies and one European one, the exact same as Newcastle United fans had seen. They at last moved in front of Newcastle United in 1977, when Man U won the FA Cup final.
Last word
To sum up the incompetence and/or lack of ambition at Newcastle United across the years that we have watched our team.
These are the decades that have followed the 1950s when Newcastle fans have watched second tier football in at least one season of that decade.
1960s TICK
1970s TICK
1980s TICK
1990s TICK
2000s TICK
2010s TICK
2020s NOT YET!!!
Incredible isn’t it? Although maybe incredible isn’t quite the right word, more like horrific!
I earlier said about 80 year old Liverpool fans who in their adult lives had never seen their team finish outside the top eight of the top tier.
How about poor Newcastle United fans in their 80s now who were just kids in the 1950s and didn’t properly appreciate those FA Cup wins at the time, but then have had to endure relegation after relegation and EVERY single decade of their adult life watching second tier football for one or more seasons???
I’m not saying many other fanbases haven’t suffered as well BUT I think surely fair is fair and Newcastle United fans now deserve better, even better if it comes at the expense of Liverpool fans and Manchester United fans, with their respective clubs.
Whilst if anybody in the media doubts just how massive the Newcastle United fanbase is. You don’t even have to point to how difficult it is now to get tickets and the need for a stadium that hold 20,000-30,000 more fans.
Just look at the 2016/17 season, even though Newcastle United were in the second tier AND still had Mike Ashley, simply because Rafa Benitez gave us a little bit of hope by staying, Newcastle fans created a new modern day record for crowds in the second tier, filling St James’ Park match after match in the Championship with an average home attendance of over 51,000 in the second tier.
This actually was second to the all-time record average attendances in the second tier.
The holders of that all-time record?
Yes, little old Newcastle United who averaged 56,298 in the second tier in 1947/48.