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| Seasons gone sour: Hull City and Newcastle have a lot in common | Seasons gone sour: Hull City and Newcastle have a lot in common |
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| Eyes down, then, for the Premier League finale. The season may have produced an unusually flaccid endgame higher up the table, but at the bottom there is a note of genuine drama to come as Hull City and Newcastle United play out their own arm’s-length head-to-head to avoid the final relegation place. | Eyes down, then, for the Premier League finale. The season may have produced an unusually flaccid endgame higher up the table, but at the bottom there is a note of genuine drama to come as Hull City and Newcastle United play out their own arm’s-length head-to-head to avoid the final relegation place. |
| Sunderland may have come stumbling out of the mists just about intact on Wednesday night, a point at Arsenal trimming the numbers in the final day shakeup from three to two. At the same time for some this may already feel, in the absence of any other point of drama, like the most eagerly dissected allocation of a final relegation spot in Premier League history. | Sunderland may have come stumbling out of the mists just about intact on Wednesday night, a point at Arsenal trimming the numbers in the final day shakeup from three to two. At the same time for some this may already feel, in the absence of any other point of drama, like the most eagerly dissected allocation of a final relegation spot in Premier League history. |
| But for all the sense of narrow-focus theatre it is still a genuinely intriguing prospect. Not only is Survival Sunday, as television insists on calling it, the first time since May 2012 that the final relegation place will be decided in the last round of fixtures. There is also something strikingly similar in the texture and tone not only of the final two candidates for the drop but in at least four of the Premier League’s bottom six, for whom the season has been less a battle to survive against the odds; more a case of acrimonious, well-resourced stagnation, a battle of the basket cases. | But for all the sense of narrow-focus theatre it is still a genuinely intriguing prospect. Not only is Survival Sunday, as television insists on calling it, the first time since May 2012 that the final relegation place will be decided in the last round of fixtures. There is also something strikingly similar in the texture and tone not only of the final two candidates for the drop but in at least four of the Premier League’s bottom six, for whom the season has been less a battle to survive against the odds; more a case of acrimonious, well-resourced stagnation, a battle of the basket cases. |
| Hull remain strong favourites to go down. Not only do they need to beat Manchester United on Sunday, Newcastle must also fail to win at home to West Ham. In Hull’s favour there is perhaps a faint chance United will still be “seeing the lady saxophone player” after a boisterous end-of-season bash before what is a dead rubber for Louis van Gaal’s team. Otherwise there is little encouragement to be drawn from history. Not only have Hull lost their past three matches with just a single goal scored, they haven’t beaten United since 1974. Steve Bruce, meanwhile, still awaits his first win against his old club in 17 years of management | Hull remain strong favourites to go down. Not only do they need to beat Manchester United on Sunday, Newcastle must also fail to win at home to West Ham. In Hull’s favour there is perhaps a faint chance United will still be “seeing the lady saxophone player” after a boisterous end-of-season bash before what is a dead rubber for Louis van Gaal’s team. Otherwise there is little encouragement to be drawn from history. Not only have Hull lost their past three matches with just a single goal scored, they haven’t beaten United since 1974. Steve Bruce, meanwhile, still awaits his first win against his old club in 17 years of management |
| Hull also offer the most unremarkable story of a season turned sour. For all the expansionist dreams of the club’s tycoon owner, Assem Allam, this is still a relatively minor Premier League power. A team assembled at a cost of just over £60m in the past two curious years have been left toothless by the absence of Robert Snodgrass since the opening league game and Nikica Jelavic and Mohamed Diamé for long periods. Throughout which Hull have looked like what they are: a mix-and-match squad thrown together on the hoof, without any real suggestion these diverse component parts are about to spark into life. Since Christmas a decelerating central midfield has seemed to sum up Hull’s lack not just of drive but of basic precision: between them the England internationals Jake Livermore and Tom Huddlestone have had only 18 shots on goal in 65 matches combined, scoring just once. | |
| So far so familiarly doomed. In more orderly times for Newcastle United, Hull might have already been relegated. At which point some common factors begin to emerge among the Premier League’s endangered back-markers. Most obviously Hull, Newcastle and Sunderland have had an unusually fraught relationship with their own support in recent times, not only dissatisfaction but real structural friction between owner and fans, manager and owner, fans and manager and all levels in between. The unrelated travails of Livermore and Adam Johnson have provided an improbable off-field distraction. At Newcastle there is open animosity between some supporters and a group of players many feel have been in a state of well-paid competitive catatonia since Christmas. | |
| Either way, at least four of the bottom six are more a case of mismanaged assets – clubs funded in scattergun, feast or famine fashion by assorted billionaire investors – than a more Rotarian failure of talent and financial heft. Newcastle are the seventh-richest club in England in terms of income, but Aston Villa are 10th and have a greater total revenue than Roma and Marseille. Queens Park Rangers have a bigger wage bill than Milan and would surely, but for the likable, Twitter-friendly demeanour of Tony Fernandes, have a fanbase in uproar at the baffling state of the club’s finances. Sunderland are hardly a billionaire’s toy but income is reliably healthy, the academy highly regarded, the club stable beyond its own internal fretfulness. | |
| And yet everywhere there is a sense of drag, of trapped energy, and of a wider unhappiness with some unloved and unlovely owners. In Hull’s case the background rancour is rooted in matters as diverse as rising season-ticket prices, the abrupt withdrawal of venue space from community groups as the club’s academy ground is upgraded, and the oddity of that proposed name change. Certainly there is something salutary in the idea that calling the club Hull Tigers is the best way to max out its global marketing potential, while alienating those parts of the club’s support Hull will need to stand by them should they go down. Meanwhile: how’s that global marketing campaign coming on? | And yet everywhere there is a sense of drag, of trapped energy, and of a wider unhappiness with some unloved and unlovely owners. In Hull’s case the background rancour is rooted in matters as diverse as rising season-ticket prices, the abrupt withdrawal of venue space from community groups as the club’s academy ground is upgraded, and the oddity of that proposed name change. Certainly there is something salutary in the idea that calling the club Hull Tigers is the best way to max out its global marketing potential, while alienating those parts of the club’s support Hull will need to stand by them should they go down. Meanwhile: how’s that global marketing campaign coming on? |
| As for Newcastle, well, where to start? Five wins in a row from October to November masked an almost complete surrender before and after, to the extent that under John Carver Newcastle are now effectively a zombie team, with nine defeats and a draw from their past 10 matches and 13 shots at goal in their past three games. There are some familiar problems of personnel here. The players signed in the past year, with the exception of Jack Colback, simply haven’t been good enough, and Papiss Cissé has been missed during his injury and spit-related absences. | As for Newcastle, well, where to start? Five wins in a row from October to November masked an almost complete surrender before and after, to the extent that under John Carver Newcastle are now effectively a zombie team, with nine defeats and a draw from their past 10 matches and 13 shots at goal in their past three games. There are some familiar problems of personnel here. The players signed in the past year, with the exception of Jack Colback, simply haven’t been good enough, and Papiss Cissé has been missed during his injury and spit-related absences. |
| Beyond which the club itself has evolved into a parable of elite modern football’s uneasy collision of interests. In the long term a club such as Newcastle may be owned, de facto, by its fans, who want entertainment and an answering passion. In the short term, however, it is owned by Mike Ashley, who wants lucrative stasis, a billboard for his tracksuit empire and the continued disposable income of that captive consumer audience. | |
| It is an unworkable collision of interests, a relationship that has perhaps run its course judging by the current state of paralysis. And yet for all that it is probably Newcastle who have least to fear from relegation. The fans will continue to pay the wage bill. Ashley, who has already backed one instant return to the Premier League, will be required to shore up the capital value of his investment. Relegation would be a disaster, a hall-of-fame abomination of inept management and sickly leadership. But Newcastle’s wealth is such they would expect to spend their way to promotion. | It is an unworkable collision of interests, a relationship that has perhaps run its course judging by the current state of paralysis. And yet for all that it is probably Newcastle who have least to fear from relegation. The fans will continue to pay the wage bill. Ashley, who has already backed one instant return to the Premier League, will be required to shore up the capital value of his investment. Relegation would be a disaster, a hall-of-fame abomination of inept management and sickly leadership. But Newcastle’s wealth is such they would expect to spend their way to promotion. |
| Hull are relatively stable, with a manageable wage bill and a wealthy owner of their own, but they still look more perilously placed. Despite a £48m parachute payment guarantee – now increased to £60m – the past five years have seen Fulham, Wigan, QPR, Blackpool and Portsmouth suffer with debt, mismanagement and owner lassitude after falling out of the Premier League. Hull may yet survive either Sunday afternoon or, failing that, the pitfalls of the relegated “project club”. For Newcastle, or indeed any of the Premier League’s unhappy middleweights, a more toxic process of review and reinvention remains – whatever the weekend brings. |