Cavalry must hit ground running or it’s relegation
CAN anyone hear a strangled cry for help echoing across the Town Moor and down to the cathedral on the hill? Mike Ashley? Steve Bruce? Lee Charnley?
Like Custer at his Last Stand reinforcements are urgently needed to head off disaster. Custer didn’t get them. United better had.
They have supposedly been coming for many a day and night but the waiting foot soldiers are getting increasingly twitchy.
Callum Wilson has been specifically targeted to ease a considerable goalscoring problem. Winger Ryan Fraser to supply the ammunition. Norwich City’s Jamal Lewis would solve a serious left-back problem.
All have been sitting in the arrivals lounge waiting for their name to be called – not to mention Rob Holding for whom a loan deal was allegedly agreed with Arsenal over a week ago.
United have to get new recruits in and fast; to go into another tough season without fresh blood could see Steve Bruce’s men in serious trouble.
One is not enough. Two neither. This is more major surgery than a sticking plaster over a scratch. The mess United are currently in is not for the faint-hearted.
Maybe there is room for optimism that a full trio of deals are near to completion but United fans have been burned before. Having seen an exciting takeover fail at the very last fence, they won’t believe anything is done until black and white is draped round the shoulders of each one.
Should United end up with Wilson, Lewis and Fraser before it all kicks off on Saturday then they are at least in the mix long term.
Why long term rather than short? Because while the signing of Fraser would be a plus, not just for Ashley being another costnothing recruit but because he is a talented footballer, his immediate impact is likely to be very little.
It is six months, a long, long time, since Fraser last played any competitive football having refused to extend his Bournemouth contract to cover the Premier League restart. Add the fact that he’s had no pre-season training and it becomes clear that catch-up would d be a major problem as games es pass by.
To ease the growing owing unrest over backackto-back pre-seaason defeats to clubs which were fighting off relegation to League One earlier in the year, Bruce at last broke his s silence via innhouse TV.
He was, he told old us, very hopeful the cavalry will arrive in numbers. The only trouble is we are now into the start of countdown week before the tapes go up on the running of what we know will be a Survival Marathon. Bedding-in time is at a minimum.
As we look towards West Ham on Saturday with the likes of Martin Dubravka and Dwight Gayle injured, will we be pleased – relieved even – if Newcastle are still a Premier League club when the chequered flag is finally taken deep into next year?
As things stand with no takeover, same owner, and the flimsy squad currently at their disposal, yes, we will be. That’s a sad state of affairs for a club of United’s size. With all due respect, this is not Bournemouth, Watford, or Norwich City preening themselves when another campaign of topflight football is completed unscathed. This is worse because this is a failure to cash in the chips of potential.
We deal with reality but at the same time we pray for a miracle. For a season where pride, not humilia humiliation, swells the chest, a and where hope repla replaces trepidatio tion. Geordies are desperate for more transfer activity short term and new owners long term.
It can also be argu argued that it’s actual actually easier to fight th the fight when expectations are so low as at Newcastle because ‘success’ is more easily attained. This will be a harder season in which to make progress for another United, the one situated in Sheffield, because their bar is an awful lot higher after last season’s Premier League debut.
We’ve become limbo dancers but our day will come! Meanwhile we gird our loins and go again.
Bruce is very hopeful the cavalry will arrive in numbers – but we have only a week before the tapes go up for a Survival Marathon