VOX POPS: Farewell 2024

Our writers look back on the past twelve months, and look ahead to what the New Year has in store for "that team we call United"...

DAI REES:

The last few weeks have been joyous. And I genuinely think we’ll win the League Cup. But I don’t want to gloss over what has been an indifferent 12 months. We should be playing European football this season and if you want to point your misery finger at the manager, the dick who came up with PSR or our boardroom shambles, the outcome remains the same. We missed a chance. I reckon it’s a chance we cannot miss again this season especially with a league table which is as predictable as Prince Andrew’s communications with China.

The important spots are very much ours for the taking and what’s more, we have some brilliantly talented footballers capable of taking us there. It’s taken too long but Eddie has realised that Sandro is world class and life has been breathed into a team who looked like they needed a bollocking and much more besides. The key is, Howe has realised what he needs to do to unlock the potential he has and he’s once again regenerated something in a side which lacked the belief it needed to fulfil its potential. The sign of a great manager is the ability to continue to reinvent his side and it is something Howe continues to do. Especially notable when the playing staff isn’t developing as we’d like. And for that reason I continue to trust Howe’s abilities to move us forward.

2024 may not go down in the history books as a classic year for NUFC but I truly believe 2025 will. We have a brilliant manager, some very gifted players and a united fanbase.

Howe, the owners and the players must make the most of that, and an indifferent premier league. We must achieve what we are capable of this season and take our place in Europe in 2025/26. The owners must maximise what we can do with PSR, and the manager must get the best from the players he has.

With all that being said, I’d take this battling and exciting version of our team over what we’ve had in recent years. For whatever misgivings we have over the team or club, I feel we finally have that team which we demanded to try, and that means a lot to me. We may not be the finished article but are a lot closer to it. That’s means we have an exciting year to come and I cannot wait to see 2025 brings for that team we call United.

@colemans_dream

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SCOTT ROBSON:

Even by Newcastle’s standards, this year has been a continuous whirl of mind blowing inconsistency. And you know what, I've kind of liked it.

This has been summed up by the last three weeks or so.

After Brentford away, Howe was on his last legs and now after four wins (against some chronic opposition) we are now world beaters again and the same manager is getting serenaded with Christmas songs and the statue is getting chiseled as we speak.

After the Bruce lows, to the takeover and Champions League highs, the sugar rush ended somewhat in 2024 when it dawned on everyone that being the richest club in the world (copyright The Chronicle) won't ever stop us being the craziest football club in the world, and this year might be the weirdest of the lot.

Take Boxing Day to Boxing Day for example.

Last year Forest at home could have been a Bruce era game. It was so bad. This year Aston Villa were thoroughly smacked as world class players like Isak and Tonali strutted their stuff.

Or that week in June when we got all panicky about FFP and bought fifty goalkeepers and tried to sell Gordon and settled on Anderson? It was jaw dropping.

You never know what you are going to get from this team and the whole league apart from Liverpool has followed suit, meaning that going into next year if we just tone down the ups and downs a tiny bit, it's very plausible we could finish top four and win a cup.

The other side of the coin is we could easily lose the next three games and limp into the top eight again. The best side in the world has won one match since Bonfire Night for God’s sake, this is no ordinary season. It would be a shame to waste it.

Resistance is futile though, this group of players will reel you in and leave you standing on the shoulders of giants one week and as low as a snake's belly the next.

I’ve well and truly got myself at ease with this and now expect the unexpected.

Jacob Murphy now being indispensable sums this year up better than I ever could and I cant put it any clearer than that.

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MATTHEW PHILPOTTS:

Let’s keep this simple and go for one positive and one negative from 2024.

Giddy on beer, sunshine, and opening day optimism, I once proclaimed Sandro the best player I’d ever seen in black and white on the basis of 90 minutes of football. The best thing about 2024? That’s now not looking quite so silly and it’s changed our whole footballing outlook.

For most of 2024 our midfield was overrun on a weekly basis. Leaving Bruno alone in there exposed his physical limitations, as teams passed around him or broke at pace when he got caught upfield. That, much more than the defence, was the reason we conceded so many goals in the first half of the year. Tonali’s athleticism, tied to his reading of the game and anticipation, plugs those gaps. At the same time, it frees Bruno to play further forward, helping us with our other Achilles heel – breaking down defensive teams. A win-win if ever there was one.

The biggest negative from 2024? This was the year that laid bare the dysfunction in the way the club is run. More than three years on, none of the big decisions have been taken by the big boys in Riyadh who have presumably got better things to do. Meanwhile, the revolving door on Barrack Road continues to spin with no evidence that those with day-to-day responsibility, but without much real power, actually know how to run a football club. We’re trapped between the worst of both worlds.

The result? No decision on the stadium, no plan for a new training ground, precious few commercial contracts, agents’ fees unpaid, public arguments between the sporting director and the manager, and, best of all, June’s PSR farce.

2025 will be the year we’re told we’re leaving St James’. I hope they know what they’re doing, but the evidence from 2024 suggests that would be naive.

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ED COLE:

After 2023 brought us the first real ‘statement’ year since the takeover - with a domestic cup final, European Qualification and the already legendary win over PSG - it was probably inevitable that 2024 was destined to resemble more of a hungover, grey-skied, after-the-lord-mayor’s-show, reality-bitten punch to the face.

Missing out on European qualification at the end of the 23/24 season was a major low, though probably not as quite as big a blow as the summer transfer window, in which we lost two fantastic young prospects due to PSR whilst having our tails tugged by Steve Parish over Dougie Freedman and Marc Guehi. Simultaneously we had the first reports of serious discord among the consortium of owners, as the departures of Ashworth, Staveley and Ghodoussi, the arrival of Mitchell and Bunce, and the relentless rumours linking Howe to England genuinely put the allyship of those in charge of the club to the test. This is not to mention the terrible news regarding Darren Eales, compounding a year which, off the pitch, will be gladly consigned to the history books for everyone connected with NUFC.

But on the pitch, there is hope - and then some. Flashes of brilliance from Isak, Gordon and Barnes (West Ham 4-3, most memorably) have given us reason to cheer, but it is the unearthing two of the most exciting young talents in recent United memory, in Hall and Tonali, that really have us looking to the future with optimism. It’s no hyperbole to suggest that the league’s best left back and centre midfielder will be playing in black & white for many years to come, and Eddie Howe and the coaches deserve serious credit for their work with both players.

Progress? Most definitely. Not as rapid and exciting as in the two previous years, but 2024 brought hard work and lessons and growing pains and patience - all of which will be very useful as we continue on this journey. The fact that we’ve finished such a tumultuous and potentially damaging year 5th in the table (trip to Old Trafford permitting) and in a semi-final, speaks for itself.

@edsamuelcole.bsky.social

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YOUSEF HATEM

2024 has been a reality check - at times welcome, at times not so much, but an important one nonetheless.

There is no “project” here, no inexorable rise, no manifest destiny. Bumps in the road are nothing of the sort - they are the road itself. We are not going anywhere: we are already here. And maybe, just maybe, there is something of comfort in that. Football - to the chagrin of our paymasters, perhaps, although who really knows what goes on inside their heads - continues to be played on grass, by flawed humans.

The best moments of the year - swatting Sunderland aside in the Cup, the “pinch-yourself” away win at Villa Park in January, the comeback against West Ham in the spring, the annual dismembering of Spurs, and the recent Sandro-inspired revival - have come on the pitch. Similarly, the worst moments - complete non-performances at the likes of Fulham, Brentford, Palace and Man Utd - have been footballing ones. Yes, there have been mutterings about PSR and transfer windows and related parties and Dan Ashworth and new stadiums and, especially more recently, Eddie Howe’s own position, but none of it has truly caught fire. It might not always have felt that way, but it’s been a good year for those of us who prefer to follow the football, rather than the circus surrounding it. In that sense, I’ve found it an enjoyable year to follow the club. Maybe leaving Twitter/X has something to do with that, too.

We are going into 2025, like fans of every club between 5^th and 14^th currently, with the season capable of finishing anywhere between triumph and disaster. That’ll do for me, for now. We can conduct a full autopsy in May.

On a more personal note, 2024 was - and, especially when talking or writing about NUFC, I’ll struggle to remember it as anything other than - the year I lost my father. He passed his NUFC obsession on to me, it was the glue which bound us, and I still feel his absence every time I watch us play. In time it may pass, but - strangely - I’m not sure I want it to.

@yousef-1892.bsky.social