Mark's Travels: Man City Away
By Mark Deeks
August 25 2002
Mark Deeks writes about the Man City game. His second column, and its great! Man City away. Lost 1-0. What does he think?

MATCH 1.
TOON 0 vs MAN CITY 1.
AWAY. SATURDAY 24TH AUGUST.

Hi there folks! Couldn't make the match today. Was
forced to work in Halifax this morning, followed by a mad dash to the couch at Gill's (that's my other half by the way). As the motorway back to Wakefield greeted me with a nice traffic jam with only two minutes to go till kick off, Five Live was my only compatriot for the first ten minutes.

The team news was that the Sir had decided to go for a 3-5-2 with Bernard and Solano as wing backs. I'd be surprised if the Kippax Stand at Maine Road didn't hear my groans from the outskirts of Halifax.

Let's get one thing straight. Newcastle United do not play 3-5-2. They never should. In my football watching lifetime, whenever they have they concede goals, they get beaten and they look as confused as a guest on Trisha when presented with the choice of which door to go through at the end of the show. (You must excuse my daytime TV references. As I told you in last week's column, I'm a teacher on holiday. This makes you do strange things...)

When I finally hit the couch it was plainly obvious for all to see that the formation was not one the players' felt comfortable with. It was like Spurs at home last season all over again. The defence didn't know who to pick up and as a result we looked constantly over-run. To make matters worse, Nobby and the little wizard KD were having their own respective nightmares at the other end. The choice of having to watch worst cross of the season or worst open goal miss of the season was unbearable.

I love Bobby Robson. I wish he'd been my long lost
grandad. I sometimes wish I could call round his house for a cuppa on an evening. You know. Just to chat. But he got it wrong today. On the rare occasions he tries 3-5-2, he gets it wrong. For some reason, NUFC players cannot play the formation. I don't know why it is. I cannot remember EVER seeing it work for the toon. No matter who the players or who the opposition.

What worries me slightly is the fact that given it
plainly wasn't happening for us, there was no
instruction from the bench to try something different i.e. what the players are comfortable with.

I'm not really having a go. I'm not stupid enough to be demanding Robson's P45 or anything. It's just puzzling. Why is it, that a team packed with
internationals are incapable of changing the way they play?

Perhaps I'm being harsh. I mean let's face it. Some of Man City's football was excellent. But I just get the feeling that my Saturday dinner would have gone down a lot easier if we'd just made it a little bit more difficult for the Premiership new boys to get their tails up, their fan's excitement levels up, and our hopes of mainting our good start to the season, up.

Anyway. At least we've got a good hammering of some cheeky Bosnians to look forward to.

Oh, and my ticket came for Anfield this week......

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