Bolton 1, Newcastle United 0
Mar 2 2009 By Luke Edwards, The Journal
MANAGING director Derek Llambias is still trying hard to convince supporters there is a well constructed, long-term plan to bring success to Newcastle United under the Mike Ashley regime.
After this drab defeat at the hands of a desperately poor Bolton Wanderers, the United hierarchy had better start taking a long hard look at their contingency one for relegation.
By their own admission, the prospect of Newcastle United playing Championship football next season is unthinkable, but it is only right the board start to give that disastrous scenario careful consideration, because this performance stank of relegation.
Newcastle had plenty of shots and created the better chances against a team who, with the best will in the world, are massively over-achieving with the top- half-of-the-table position this scrappy victory brought them.
Yet, for all of the shots and desperate blocks which prevented them from finding their way towards goal, much of Newcastle’s football was sloppy and slack, lacking both imagination or purpose.
No matter what the statistics may say, this was yet another must-win game United have failed to win and they are being dragged back towards the drop zone like a helpless teenage victim heading for a grizzly death in a low budget horror movie.
To hear United’s away fans booing and jeering in the second-half was to also taste the fear that relegation is spreading through a football club which is still trying to come to terms with the fact it is neither too big, nor too good, to go down. A run of just one win in 11 games proves that.
The chants of ‘you don’t know what you’re doing’ were directed at Newcastle’s makeshift management team of Chris Hughton and Colin Calderwood for replacing Obafemi Martins in the second half, but it summed up the frustration of an entire season.
In truth, Martins deserved to be hauled off. He was terrible in the second period, having missed a wonderful chance just before half-time with a header after Jussi Jaaskelainen had denied him with an acrobatic save moments earlier.
Hughton and Calderwood’s mistake was not their decision to take him off, it was the manner in which they froze under pressure, leaving a potential match-winner like Mark Viduka on the bench until there were just 10 minutes remaining.
With Viduka on the pitch and Bolton defending deep, Newcastle did come close to cancelling out Ricardo Gardner’s goal, which came just 80 seconds into the second half.
Fabricio Coloccini had a shot blocked by the hand of Jlloyd Samuel and Shola Ameobi forced a fingertip save from Jussi Jaaskelainen, but it all came a little too late in the day to be impressive. Even when Peter Løvenkrands’ overhead kick was blocked on its way towards goal in stoppage time, it was difficult to say Newcastle had been hard done by because so much of their football had been so poor.
Worryingly, they had begun both halves poorly as Bolton did most of the early pressing, without forcing Steve Harper into a save. The Newcastle goalkeeper was beaten after 10 minutes as Johan Elmander ran on to Kevin Davies’ flick. Harper was caught a little out of position and when the Sweden international stabbed a low shot goalwards, it needed Jose Enrique’s intervention to hook the ball away.
Elmander did even better moments later when he darted across Steven Taylor on the edge of the six-yard box to meet Matty Taylor’s first-time cross but, having stretched to get the ball first, the striker lifted it over the crossbar.
That was a let-off for the Magpies, but they improved and slowly began to force their game on to their hosts with Ryan Taylor particularly prominent in an unusual central midfield position.
Ameobi hit the post with a header – although the big striker had managed to wander offside before the free-kick was hit into the area – and Løvenkrands forced a low save from Jaaskelainen at the end of a direct run through the middle of the Bolton defence.
Wanderers were starting to struggle to contain United’s midfield runners and the Magpies were only denied the lead by a fingertip save from Jaaskelainen, who tipped away Martins’ downward header. The Bolton keeper was a busy man, getting down low to keep out Jonás Gutiérrez at his near post. The Finland international, though, would not have been able to get to Martins’ header just before half-time but the Nigerian, who was completely unmarked at the far post, failed to hit the target.
It was a mistake Gardner punished with aplomb in the second half, running untracked into the area to hit a looping shot over the head of Harper from Taylor’s low cross.
