Alan Shearer has revealed just how concerned he is by Newcastle’s performances, despite seeing us reach the quarter finals of the FA Cup at Blackburn last night.
Speaking to Gary Lineker and Micah Richards on punditry duty for the BBC, he questioned where our identity has gone as a team. He recalled how often we’d ‘outrun and outpower’ opposition teams last season, but feels that has disappeared.
He called our performance ‘weak’ and criticised the ‘basic error’ that allowed Blackburn to get back into it, feeling it was yet another cheap goal to concede from a defence that can’t seem to keep clean sheets without Nick Pope.
“I’m really worried being a Newcastle fan”, Sheared said.
“What worries me about Newcastle last year is time and time again we saw them outrun and outpower yet the last two or three months of this season and certainly tonight, we haven’t seen anywhere near enough of that and they’ve looked really weak.
“The goal they gave away is typical of how they’re playing and how they’re giving goals away at the minute. That cannot be allowed to happen Lascelles, just stop it. Stop that ball going in behind you if you have to. It’s such a basic error.
Shearer then hailed Martin Dubravka’s match-winning performance and hopes this “huge, huge win” for Eddie Howe can be a turning point ahead of Saturday’s clash with Wolves:
“Newcastle owe him [Martin Dubravka] a lot, he’s been their best player, [he’s] pulled some wonderful saves off during 90 minutes, extra-time and penalties. They’re in the next round because of him.
“Massive result for Newcastle and for Eddie, they needed it. It’s pretty worrying that they didn’t look as though they had energy and they’ve been really struggled of late. I thought it was going to be the same tonight but that might just galvanise them and give them a bit of hope. Huge, huge win.”
It was a massive result, but there’s no doubt performances need to improve. Let’s hope we can get it right this weekend and kick on from here, especially now we’re getting a few key players back from injury.
