It is increasingly rare in the modern, public relations constrained age, but every now and again, a footballer speaks and you have to sit up and take notice. Joey Barton’s interview in Saturday’s Journal is one such moment.
Without going into too much detail for fear of ruining the story (you can read it on the Journal Live website from Saturday morning or you can do something revolutionary like actually buy the newspaper) Barton has raised some emotive issues about the future of Newcastle United by warning the club’s fans they are starting to become a hindrance rather than a help.
It wasn’t a rant or a blast - those two favourite phrases of the tabloid press - it was an honest assessment of the situation Newcastle find themselves in where the manager and the players are being openly and widely abused by their own supporters. Barton isn’t looking for excuses, he just wants to see Newcastle have the best chance possible for future success.
You pay your money, you are entitled to your opinion and how to express that opinion, but has the negative atmosphere at St James’s Park become self-defeating? Is the club becoming poisonous because of the bickering and sniping which constantly surrounds it? Are the fans guilty of living in the past and the glory days of the Kevin Keegan years?
Have the players really become scared of playing in front of their own fans? Do big name players no longer want to play for the club as a result of the abuse they are scared of receiving if they make a mistake?
Have some of the big name players who have failed to bring success to the club since the Keegan years really buckled under the pressure of playing in front of a crowd which has become too quick to turn on its own?
Or is this just a case of over-pampered footballers looking for excuses for their own short-comings? Newcastle fans have stuck by their team in more numbers, and for longer, than any other club in the country so why shouldn’t they express their unhappiness at the way things are going this season - and the season before that and the season before that?
The thing with Barton is, he is not one of the players who will buckle under this sort of pressure. he will just roll his sleeves up and try harder, so his argument does carry extra weight. He isn’t talking about himself, he’s sympathising with his teammates and his peers when he described the Newcastle crowd as “vicious.�
Barton feels the club has become stuck in a rut, where impatience means neither players or managers are allowed to settle and long term plans cannot be put into place.
It has long been an opinion of mine that Newcastle’s fans are the club’s greatest strength and their biggest weakness. With their vast numbers they give the club the financial clout to compete with the biggest in the country and when they are behind the team, at home or away, they are, to use a cliche Barton also adopted, a vital 12th man.
They give the players inspiration and encouragement at vital times and they can, when they are at their most vocal and supportive, make the opposition shrivel up and lose.
However, they are also impatient, impatience which leads to frustration and, eventually anger. It is impatience which has built up over almost 40 years without a trophy to celebrate, exacerbated by the various near-misses which have littered the club’s history since those thrilling Keegan years.
They still turn up, to their immense credit, in vast numbers, week after week after week, but have they become too quick to moan, too willing to vent their frustration on those they initially came to support?
Given the standard of recent Newcastle performances, I can’t blame any fan for booing and jeering, but is it helpful during the game itself? At the final whistle, yes, of course, let the wasters know how you feel, but when a player is coming on as a substitute.....
I appreciate this is a difficult subject to tackle and Barton’s comments will annoy some who believe it is up to the manager and players to provide them with inspiration and entertainment on a matchday, not the other way round, but, let me know your thoughts!
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