Newcastle United Fan View: Doing it the hard way

I apologise in advance but this article is not going to be all that positive. I am genuinely worried about Newcastle United’s promotion chase now, really worried indeed.

I watched the match against Leeds United on the TV last night as I had been away for a week in Norwich at my sister’s wedding and only got back to Newcastle in time for the televised game. I actually enjoyed 94 minutes of the game immensely and in my head I had already written an article praising an attacking performance, overjoyed with the 3 points and that promotion was a certainty but everything changed for me in the 95th minute when Chris Wood scored his 25th league goal of the season.

You could blame the defence for switching off, you could question where the 5 minutes injury time came from, you could question yet another daft Colback foul in the build up to the goal but I’m not going to – it was a good game of football but at 1-0 we were never safe despite dominating the game, the equaliser was a real blow but it was unlucky, I’m not going to blame individuals or get too angry about that. Overall, when I put my frustration and disappointment to one side, the performance was incredibly encouraging and there were a lot of positives to take from the 1-1 draw. Mitrovic put in a fantastic workhorse performance, Ritchie was dangerous on the wing whenever he got the ball and it was great to see both Hayden and later on, Yedlin, return from injury. Darlow had a great game in goal and could not be blamed for the goal and I thought Dummett at left back had his best game of the season, remaining solid throughout at the back and even making a bit of a nuisance of himself going forward. No, I really can’t fault the performance and if we play like that in the games left this season we will absolutely be ok.

The thing is though, the Sky TV commentators seem to think we are up already – even after the last minute equaliser they were talking about Leeds United’s point being helpful for their play-off push, not the dropping of 2 points being a blow to our chances of automatic promotion.

I had an ear on the other games’ results when I was driving up the A1 and after hearing the last minute drama at Huddersfield when they had a penalty saved and scored the rebound to beat Preston North End 3-2 I genuinely thought that today was not going to go our way. Brighton won at a canter away at Wolves to all but secure their title charge but surely we could beat Leeds at home to remain in the chase and keep the gap over Huddersfield? No is the simple answer and we now see the gap cut to 8 with Huddersfield having a game in hand. Now, I get it, we’re 8 points clear, Huddersfield have to win their game in hand plus 2 other games whilst hoping we lose 2 in a row to stand any chance of getting above us. I get why that seems unlikely but I am a Newcastle United fan and this is exactly the kind of thing that happens to Newcastle. If ever a team were to throw it away in spectacular style then we are the club to do it and having seen the way in which we dropped 2 points against Leeds last night, I genuinely fear the worst.