Mark Hughes thinks that one incident during Newcastle United’s draw with Wolves could be a major factor in whether or not they stay up this season.
Newcastle United could only manage a draw on Saturday night with Nuno Espirito Santo’s side in a game that was crucial in their efforts to beat the drop, but they could have picked up three points if they’d have dealt with the Wolves equaliser a little better.
Speaking to Sky Sports after the game, Newcastle captain Jamaal Lascelles discussed how things were a little confused with how the team was set up following a substitution made by Steve Bruce. And as heard on the Sky Sports Football Podcast, the former Premier League boss didn’t understand how the team could find itself getting confused, and that it could end up playing a part in them going down.
He said: “It’s a lot easier when there isn’t 20, 30, 40, 70,000 people depending on where you are. If you’re in an empty stadium, I find it difficult to believe that they couldn’t have got the message to the people that needed to get the message soon enough. You understand why it’s happened, but you’re a little bit confused to understand how it’s allowed to develop as much as it did, as long as it did.
“They’ll look back on that. Goodness me if consequences are that they go down, they’ll look back at that moment and think, for the sake of getting communication right, we could have stayed up.”
Do you think Newcastle will be relegated?
Yes, we are finished
No, we will stay up
TIF Thoughts on Mark Hughes’ comments about Newcastle United…
Whilst you can never really put the success or failure of a whole season down to just one factor or incident, Hughes’ point does perhaps speak of a broader issue within the team.
If there is such a lack of communication within the side whereby it gets to a point that it is costing the team games, then that shows how badly disorganised the team is and how it needs to be fixed incredibly quickly if the club are to get themselves out of this mess, even though stuff like that should have been sorted months ago.