With talk in the media this weekend being about how decisions Newcastle United will make in the January transfer window ultimately being the key in deciding whether The Magpies stay up and avoid relegation this season... is an actual bigger decision for owner Mike Ashley than what players he should sign, being overshadowed? Is in fact his biggest decision being whether Steve McClaren is the right man to steer his club to safety? Ashley was unusually loyal to McClaren's predecessor Alan Pardew. No matter how bad results got, no matter how loud the fan backlash was, no matter how close United looked on verge of oblivion with another relegation - he stood by his manager until that man eventually jumped ship for pastures new. Previous to that, Ashley wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger if things weren't going well... Sam Allardyce famously lasting less than six months in the Newcastle chair before he was outed and Chris Hughton being given the chop when he dared to venture to close to the bottom half of the table. Which side will McClaren fall on next month? Does Ashley trust him the way he did with Pardew? You can sense on Tyneside the patience running out from the Geordie faithful in McClaren. Although a hard-fought and spirited display in his side's unlucky 1-0 defeat at home to Everton was met with polite applause by the home fans, the reality is Newcastle need to pick up some wins before the "McClaren out" and "Sack Steve" brigade start becoming visible. Right now, Newcastle are a rotten side that has little going for it than lightning quick and skillful players on the counter attack in Ayoze Perez, Gigi Wijnaldum and Moussa Sissoko who are too easily snuffed out by sides who are competent at defending in numbers. The Magpies feel like a side without much purpose or vision and McClaren as the captain of the ship looks to be panicking and quickly running out of ideas.... almost as if he himself believes the iceberg this Titanic club will hit is inevitable. His first game-plan back when he was appointed to the club was to play Vurnon Anita as a deep-playing midfielder who would sit behind the defence as Newcastle played it out from the back. This patience play was, quite rightly, given up on after the early weeks of the season brought no victories. Genuine width was called out for with the new signing of Florian Thauvin but his ineffectiveness of getting the ball into the box led to his downfall from the team-sheet and he has now been relegated to cameos. Problems in the goals department then amazingly saw McClaren attempt to play Siem De Jong as the sole number 10 in a team with no strikers against lower league option which flopped on its ass as Newcastle embarrassingly went crashing out of the league cup at home to Sheffield Wednesday. In recent weeks McClaren has gone with two strikers up top with an emphasis to simply pump the ball to the target men of Sissoko and Mitrovic/Cisse... hoping something sticks or someone like Ayoze Perez can win the second ball and a goal can be got. This has proven in recent games to be counter-productive as it has pushed Giji Wijnaldum, easily Newcastle's most creative player this season, to the left hand side where he's too often invisible and ineffective. For a head coach who is always lauded for his training ground tactics and experience, even when the results on the field aren't going well, the amount of bad formations McClaren has tried and failed with this season spark of a man of desperation. He seemingly has no clue on how to get the best of out of the players at his disposable and has been unable to find a game plan that works. Inexplicably yesterday, McClaren chose exactly the same 11 that had succumbed to Everton just two days before... a team that had ran their hearts out for him and unsurprisingly had very little left to give yesterday. For a squad the size of Newcastle, why McClaren is insisting on only using 13 players goes beyond any sense or logic. Cheick Tiote could easily have played instead of Vurnon Anita whose tired legs led to him falling down with a hamstring injury early on. Mitrovic contributed so little to the losing defeat against Everton on Saturday and again was visibly tired.... but McClaren opted against using Siem De Jong, when the team selection cried out for the switch. Jack Colback only had 30 minutes in his tank before his legs started to go but so little does McClaren trust or think of Yoan Gouffran that he wasn't given a chance yesterday. And as for Florian Thauvin.... what McClaren expects him to do with 5 minute cameos at the end of games is anyone's guess. It's one thing to blame the tools at your disposable but McClaren has tried any numerous things this season but is still left with a team that lacks purpose and identity. They look like a club doomed for relegation and McClaren feels like a coach who is incapable of stopping it. Newcastle feel like they need a complete fresh start, not just from new players but a new manager as well.
Matt Holmes is the co-founder of What Culture, formerly known as Obsessed With Film. He has been blogging about pop culture and entertainment since 2006 and has written over 10,000 articles.
