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Much has changed in the seven months since Nick Woltemade put us one up against Arsenal at St James’ Park.
At that point, my baby son was twelve minutes old. He’s now started on solids.
At that point, Arsenal / Newcastle was on the verge of becoming a genuine modern day rivalry. Woltemade, for his part, was in his fleeting honeymoon period - the “Two-Metre Messi” moniker not seeming quite so misplaced. And now here we are - Arsenal gunning for the title, and United just about staying ahead of Leeds and Forest in the race for fourteenth.
So yes, much has changed.
For evidence of just how far we’ve slipped since the last time we played Arsenal, perhaps look no further than the fact that, if the away end was anything to go by, this 1-0 defeat was greeted not by anger, or consternation, but by polite applause, and a general feeling that this - at least when viewed against other recent displays - was alright. I was one of those offering up that applause, so I pour no scorn on it.
We were okay. With about fifteen minutes left, Wissa had a golden opportunity to equalise, following gorgeous play from Big Nick, rolling back the months. He blew it. Had it gone in, nobody would have begrudged us the 1-1, for which we would have been decent value. As it was, he blazed it high, and Arsenal staggered over the line.
We didn’t do much else, but we also restricted Arsenal to fairly little. The goal was frustrating. Arteta - puce-faced, Lego-headed artichoke that he is - had clearly identified that United were vulnerable to a short corner. It worked in September. And it worked again here, from their third corner (the first two also having gone short). That was damning, well-worked though it was. That we did not capitulate from there - the goal was only ten minutes in - was something, though. A second might just have triggered a mass decampment to the warm embrace - and it was warm; gorgeous North London evening, this - of the nearby Hemingford Arms. A third most certainly would have done.
Arsenal did - as Arsenal do - go long on occasion, but found Botman and Thiaw equal to that challenge. Miley was solid enough. Burn was Burn. Slow, limited but willing. When we did get the ball, though, we did little with it. Sandro and Bruno moved it tidily enough, Willock and Ramsey carried it well enough, but end product was non-existent. Murphy - whose purple patch reached its zenith here last January - was the chief culprit, with Osula in pursuit.
There was, at least, spirit and effort to get behind. This wasn’t terrible. We weren’t too far short. Maybe actually picking our best player - that’s Hall, of course - would have made a difference. Maybe starting with some the cavalry, instead of bringing it on, between sixty and seventy minutes, might have tipped the balance somewhat. We are out of everything, down to one game a week, our work-life balance restored. So why were we resting - in fact, let’s call a spade a spade - why was Howe not picking, so many of our better players? I do not know. Nobody alongside me in the Clock End knew, either.
Arsenal did, truth be told, have more of the ball and more of the play. That was not unexpected. When they did threaten a second, they found Pope solid. A superb save at his near post from Odegaard (I think) was one such contribution. He could not be faulted for the goal, either: a superlative finish from the classy Eze. His distribution was also better than normal. A little fortunate not to see red for cleaning out Gyokeres in the second half, but VAR insisted that Malick Thiaw was covering, so who was I - eighty yards away and squinting in the low sunshine - to argue? In any case, at least we got some change out of the officials there: besides that, we got nothing from the referee here. Not that it altered the outcome - it didn’t - but every fifty-fifty seemed to end with a whistle being blown and a free kick awarded to the home side. The league wants its title race.
The final whistle was greeted by an outpouring of emotion from the Arsenal fans who - in fairness - were louder than is commonly the case here, for all that the away end of course expectedly poked fun. Scarves aloft, that awful “North London Forever” dirge ringing out, they did not seem to feel - as I felt - that this was a bad result for them, their best chance to improve their goal difference going begging. Perhaps they think we’re better than we now are - that this is the Newcastle United of a year or so ago. The time-wasting that their team engaged in, from around mid-way through the second half, suggested the same.
We are not. We are much diminished, and the summer cannot come soon enough.
We did, at least, try. Viewed against the non-performances against Sunderland, Palace and Bournemouth, that was something. I guess it was, anyway. It’s hard to know what to feel these days.
**YOUSEF HATEM - @yousef-1892.bsky.social**