Not even a week removed from last weekend’s amazing, and entirely deserved, dismantling of champions-elect Liverpool in the League Cup final, and we’re already seeing weapons grade revisionism from sections of the national media when it comes to Newcastle United’s success and the main protagonists involved.
Various shots have been fired at Dan Burn by the Daily Mail press pack as ‘his limits [are] exposed on underwhelming England debut,’ according to Ian Ladyman, who wrote a bizarre piece dedicated to raining on Burn’s parade.
This is despite the lad from Blyth having a 98% pass accuracy, more touches than anyone else on the pitch, winning all his duels, keeping a clean sheet, and crashing the crossbar with an attacking header (and a defensive one to be fair).
Perhaps Ladyman was quaffing prawn sandwiches and champagne when he was supposed to watching a football match instead, as most agreed that Burn had a solid senior England debut.
He may not choose the headline, but it’s just odd and untrue –‘Dan Burn returns to earth with a bump as his limits are exposed.’An interesting way to spin it when the prevailing opinion was positive – from fans and his manager – on his first England outing.
Dan Burn returns to earth with a bump as Newcastle’s Wembley hero sees his limits exposed on underwhelming England debut, writes IAN LADYMAN https://t.co/9HMiEgeAyw
— Mail Sport (@MailSport) March 22, 2025
Another to raise his head above the parapet and try to claim someone else’s success as his own this weekend, is our old favourite Steve ‘I’ve managed a thousand games, don’t you know’ Bruce.
In a shameless and strangely timed piece for The Mirror, Mike Walters claims ‘Brucey’ is ‘is too diplomatic to reconstruct a strident defence of his reign in the Geordie nation where he was brought up. He adds, ‘Bruce was not a failure as Newcastle manager. Not a messiah, but not a failure. He held the fort where others had toppled off the drawbridge into the moat.’
Where do you even begin with this whopper from Walters? It is pure, unadulterated revisionism from. Take this gem:
‘And, yes, Eddie Howe inherited a struggling team in November 2021 at a club who had been relegated twice in the previous 12 years during an age of austerity under previous owner Mike Ashley’s parsimony.’
Struggling doesn’t even cover it Mike, United hadn’t won a game of football in its opening fourteen in 2021/22, no club had ever avoided relegation from such a dire position before, and the fact that Eddie Howe only managed one win from his opening 10 games with the same squad shows just what a state Bruce had left the team in.
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Throw in Dwight Gayle’s recent comments about Bruce and his complete lack of tactical acumen (all things fans were saying back in 2021) and the revisionism may as well be wearing a high vis jacket screaming ‘you must wear a hard hat for your safety you dunce.’
Bruce may appear hard done-by on paper, as Walters ably demonstrates in the piece by evidencing that Bruce and Benitez did indeed finish on the exact same points tallies in their two seasons in the hotseat on Tyneside. What he fails to understand is the feeling and emotions of fans – Benitez offered hope and a feeling of what may be; Bruce offered drudgery and a return to the status quo under Mike Ashley.
To be absolutely fair; the headline of the piece published in hardcopy in the paper ‘The Howay it is Bruce happy with role in Toon Story’ is much more antagonistic than the online headline: ‘Steve Bruce opens up on Newcastle trophy win and how Blackpool changed retirement plans’, so there’s definitely a lesson there on how the framing of a story matters it terms of how it is perceived.
Ultimately, some will write in the comments below ‘why do you care, just enjoy our success,’ and I do agree with that sentiment up to a point and I have greatly enjoyed revelling in Newcastle United’s success this week and will until we play in the league again.
However, shoddy, lazy journalism with revisionism at its heart should always be called out; because being a ‘decent bloke’, doesn’t make a man a decent footballer manager. Just ask Dwight Gayle.