Coloccini: Players get the message

May 11 2009 by Mark Douglas, The Journal

Fabricio Coloccini has suffered like the rest of the team this season, but Newcastle United’s struggling defender can see a route out of relegation trouble tonight.

THIS wretched season is nine months old, but for Newcastle United it must feel like a lifetime.

Since the first ball was kicked this term, the club have gone through four managers, five coaches, an executive director (football), 30 players and – more pertinently – won just four home games.

That back story will become somewhat irrelevant if United can make it five tonight – home wins, that is, not managers – but even if Alan Shearer’s side gratefully wriggle out of the escape route offered by this weekend’s results, the lessons of this traumatic campaign cannot be forgotten.

Just ask Fabricio Coloccini, who signed up for United’s cause expecting May to see the consolidation of Newcastle’s European challenge.

Instead the Argentina defender has endured a campaign of struggle – collectively and personally, his form flat-lining amid the black-and-white drift that preceded Shearer’s appointment.

Likely to be pushed out of the starting line-up by Steven Taylor, should he be fit enough to return, Coloccini cannot believe that the season has panned out so poorly.

“When I joined Newcastle, I could never have imagined the club being in serious danger of relegation, having to win their last two home games just to stand a chance of staying up. It would have sounded crazy,” he said.

“I was sold a club that would be challenging in the top half of the table with maybe a good chance of doing well in the cups.

“But the reality is that we are in the relegation zone and we have to fight to get out of it. If someone had told me May would be a very important time for Newcastle, never would I have thought it was for this reason.

“But now we must show that we are ready to fight to stay in the Premier League.”

If any one player could be the poster boy of this traumatic season, it is Coloccini. When the Argentina defender was embraced by a smiling and clearly elated Kevin Keegan back in August, it seemed that the doubt and mystery surrounding Mike Ashley’s summer intentions might have been misplaced.

Keegan, not a bad judge of a player, cracked a couple of gentle jokes about his hairstyle and then launched into glowing testimonial about the abilities of his ball-playing centre-back.

Indeed, his first month in England was pretty encouraging, Coloccini feeling his way into the Premier League with Keegan’s guidance.

When the latter went, so too did the individual attention that was required to consolidate Coloccini’s development. Successive managers were too busy fire-fighting and the defender, one of the few players who has been fit and available throughout, started to struggle.