Newcastle United legend Malcolm “Supermac” Macdonald has recently stated his belief that the clubs future will be decided by Christmas as it relates to whether or not we’ll be in the Premier League or the Championship in 2019/20.
Writing in his Chronicle Column following the defeat to Manchester United ahead of the October international break, Macdonald posited that Newcastle were ‘about to receive the best Christmas present possible or the worst’ as he remains convinced that come Christmas we will either be ‘virtually safe’ from the drop or, to put it simply, ‘doomed’.
Awaiting a return to real football when the Brighton and Hove Albion fixture cycles around, Newcastle are winless in the top-flight so far this season but the United tie could well have turned out differently and given us our first three points of the season.
Macdonald had plenty of praise for goalkeeper Martin Dubravka in the defeat, but he feels the run of fixtures until the turn of the year will be make or break after our opening months of 2018/19 so far.
“Come Santa’s visit the Magpies can either be virtually safe from the dreaded threat of relegation or be doomed. Now is their opportunity to collect much-needed points. Now let us think of the alternative. If United don’t gain a good number of points then they can be down, or virtually so, by Christmas.”
I doubt few fans will disagree as Macdonald isn’t saying anything that surprising, but we have now got a particularly difficult run of fixtures out of the way and there has to be some hope of a revival now and the collection of some much needed points to pull ourselves out of the drop zone and up the table to safety.
The next ten games are certainly all winnable, or at least hopes for a draw in a couple of them and remaining unbeaten has to be the aim even if we can’t take maximum points.
That first win would certainly lift confidence if nothing else.