Newcastle fans will be hurting beyond belief right now as their beloved Magpies got relegated for the second time in seven years
Every season that passes gives us champions, a team of heroes who got things right over the course of the campaign. Similarly, every season gives us failures, lads who didn’t get the rub of the green, or often, lads who let themselves down. The Newcastle United and Aston Villa teams of this year fall in the second part of the second category and I cannot begin to imagine how angry the fans of both these clubs are feeling right now.
No offence to any other teams in the Premier League, but relegation is never expected from either Newcastle or Villa. Taking a look at the Magpies, it’s still so hard to accept that a team as big as theirs got sent to the Championship back in 2009, and for that disaster to happen again just seven years on is a massive blow to their very existence as a club. Similarly, who would have thought that Aston Villa, a team that has played Premier League football since the inception of the League back in 1992, would be relegated this season, and more importantly, in this manner!
Similarly, Aston Villa are in turmoil and have been so for the entire year and there was nothing that present caretaker manager Eric Black could do about it
Aston Villa were one of the elite few clubs who have had the honour of playing in every edition of the Premier League, and yet they were booted out of England’s top division for the first time since 1986. If Leicester’s achievements this season is stuff to tell our grandkids, then the fall of Newcastle and Villa are surely equally big events that need retelling to the coming generations.
One technical difference between Leicester’s canter to the title and Villa’s and Newcastle shameful exits from the Premier League is that the former is moving towards a position of permanence in the lore of English football. The latter, though, are heading towards extinction, to a situation where they’ll be looked at as one of the fallen giants of yore, as the likes of Nottingham Forest, Leeds United and Sheffield Wednesday.
Newcastle fans are voicing their frustration regarding the present regime as they want their current owner, Mike Ashley, to sell the club
Change is permanent as they say, and maybe this is not a time to be romantic because a power shift in favour of newer teams would automatically mean that a few others were going to be heading in an unfavoured direction. But then again, it would be wrong to blame the wane of these clubs fortunes on the waxing of another. The underlying powershift did not score the goals that won Leicester so many games, and similarly, the very same powershift did not lead to all the bad goals that the Magpies and the Villans conceded.
I’m looking towards characters like Gabby Agbonlahor, Joleon Lescott and Jack Grealish as I say this bit. Newcastle too have had too many of their star names letting them down over the course of the last season, but Aston Villa have been a toxic cesspool and the discipline issues that cropped up at Villa Park all throughout the year have ruined the club’s reputation in the public eye. Both clubs will need to buy well in the transfer market, so they can prepare themselves as best as possible ahead of their Championship campaign.
Similarly, Aston Villa fans want exactly the same as they have grown impatient with owner Randy Lerner
Personally, I hope that both of these teams can bounce back into better days from the next season even if they cannot win promotion. Newcastle have experience in this regard as they managed to climb straight back into the Premier League after a season in the Championship in 2009. While I’d wish both of these giants of English football a big helping of luck as they struggle through a tough patch in their illustrious history, I cannot help but fear for their existence as there have been too many incidents of clubs failing to control their drop from the honour roll and into the underbelly of English football.
