Benched!

Scott's perplexed by the United bench last weekend. Just what's going on?

In the early nineties ex-Newcastle (plus twenty eight other clubs’) goalkeeper John Burridge had a shop in the now bulldozed Newgate Shopping Centre called the ‘Subs Bench’. Get a load of this, hipsters. It sold football shirts, tracksuits, and boots (Quaser, usually) from all the teams from around the world.

In these days of classic football shirts going for the same price that I once paid for a car, this place was like Arcadia, Nirvana or Canaan for a twelve year old me.

Small problem. They were all seconds. I remember a seeing a Rangers top looking the colour of the team off the Sky football melodrama ‘Dream Team’ and a Brazil shirt with the badge upside down. I had an incredible Adidas Yugoslavia shirt that shrunk so much in the wash that, if Robert Prosinecki had worn it, he would have been breach of every gross indecency law going.

Budgie eventually fell foul of pen pushing bureaucrats in the trading standards, but until last Saturday, that was the best Subs Bench ever recorded in NE1.

Then ‘Budgie’ was blown out the water on Saturday 2 May 2026, by possibly the weirdest, most expensive, cap laden substitutes bench Newcastle have ever assembled.

And yes, just to put the cherry on the top, we had a few seconds kicking around as well. Sold as seen, alright.

Let's look at the bare facts here.

Harvey Barnes, Anthony Elanga, Anthony Gordon, Lewis Hall, Aaron Ramsdale, Jacob Ramsey, Kieran Trippier, Yoane Wissa and Nick Woltemade.

£352m worth of talent. 157 international caps.

It can be argued, and believe me it was, that every one of those was a better option than the ones who actually started. Wissa is an argument for another day.

Either way, this was a quite incredible situation for us to be in. It fascinated me at 2pm when I saw the team and it still fascinates me now. This substitutes bench full of NUFC ‘galacticos’ was a sad indictment of our season. With a bib on.

Bungled transfers, players out of form, players who have made no secret their agents are working overtime to, as the Animals once said, “Get me outta this place” and more intriguingly players who have plainly fallen out with the management or are being used as scapegoats for our recent/ not recent inadequacies.

To me, if Newcastle United play football and they are fit to play, Anthony Gordon and Lewis Hall should be playing.

All points surely must go to the fact they both were not 100 per cent fit, but Hall came on and looked like a spring lamb when he came on. There was fuck all wrong with him.

Gordon? Well, he might be going and you might not like his haircut, but if Osula was breaking like a steam train and looking like prime Henry, what would Gordon have done against a team whose Achilles heel was exactly the counter attack. Yeah probably turned back or crossed out of play, but come on, Gordon should play.

Instead he didn't come on at all and, like Woltemade, looked to have to be calmed down by Trippier at the end. You can see why.

Woltemade looked apoplectic. Out of nowhere, after backing him earlier in the season when he played him in the wrong position and let his confidence drop out like a broken tap, Howe seems to have just piled everything on Woltemade. The fact he didn't even get ten minutes at the end must have been an eye opener for the German.

On this evidence and the reports that Howe will remain, you can (at this point) see no way back for him here. People might think this is hyperbole but not even getting on for a minute was very damning and hugely significant.

Now we are safe, surely we now drip feed him into the games. If not, he will take his oversize clothes to the World Cup and not come back.

This isn't Shaun Neave (who also deserves a mention here for his non appearance) we are talking about here, but a player we hung our hat on for large parts of the season and six weeks away from a World Cup and one we have massively invested ourselves in.

Granted, after the away derby I would have benched him for the rest of his life, but it is a weird, weird situation between manager and player here. Howe might not fancy him and can't wait for the transfer window to open to sell him, however not even a minute!?

Wissa is in a similar situation but got twenty-five minutes or so. Wissa needs minutes as well as we try and try and salvage something, on the back of the news of a £15m release clause and an eye watering loss of money if he is sold.

OK, he came on and missed a sitter and was booked, but we still learned more when he came on? Yes? Why are we not getting Woltemade involved and heaven forbid trying to crack the Da Vinci code of a lanky young German’s proper position. It felt a bit personal.

Ramsdale? Has he actually done anything wrong? Let him try and play to earn a transfer. A hungry footballer is the one who's nearing the end of a loan spell. Even if he's going, a player who's pretty pissed off that he's going will be better than a one with the slippers on and one who kicks like he's wearing some.

Ramsey? Should have played. The head of steam he got up in late winter seems to have dissipated by the return to the bench.

Trippier is leaving ok, I get it, but still should play some part.

Elanga is similar to Woltemade. Give him some minutes. What's the harm? What's the problem? It's just nonsensical. Yes, he's been awful but he's not going to get any better sitting on the bench wondering where it's all gone wrong.

It makes the signings last summer look even worse. It’s admitting defeat and we simply can’t afford to do that with the fine margins we are playing with. Heaven forbid that Elanga comes on, does something and someone takes a punt.

You could understand if someone else bought these players and the coach was proving a point (like Keegan with Gonzalez and Xisco), but it's generally well known that these were Howe's players and preferred ones at that. He just doesn't usually do things like this; it's quite frankly bizarre.

Has Hall fallen out with someone? Does he want out? Is he just simply not quite fit? God knows. However his non appearance yet again gets rumours started and at a club who's more of a soap opera than anything the writers of Neighbours could produce, it just fans the flames doesn't it?

You can all say I'm making a mountain out of a molehill here, but that bench and Trippier's reaction just doesn't look good does it. He shouldn't have to do that.

The fact Newcastle won was neither here nor there and some of the players picked ahead of the substitutes were good, but it was at best odd and at worst a self-engineered problem from a manager who is losing huge swathes of the dressing room.

International footballers who are not happy can make life very uncomfortable for an under-fire manager. Is this the ‘No Dickheads policy ‘ gone rogue or is Howe completely in the right?

A lot of the players' faces in the team photo showed who they think the dickhead is.

Scott Robson

Image: Simon Carey via wikicommons, CC BY-SA 2.0