The motorway warnings offer stern reminders. “Tiredness Kills” and “Don’t drive tired”, the signs urge as vehicles hurtle past.
In many ways Newcastle United are a bit like the driver who opts against taking the suggested rejuvenating service station break.
The miles are clocking up, the hours passing and, suddenly, he is struggling to keep his eyes open. With three games remaining and eight straight defeats immediately behind them, Newcastle have finally come to and belatedly realised far too many corners have been cut and they are confronting potential catastrophe. The possibility of averting relegation looks touch and go.
The determination of their owner, Mike Ashley, to cut costs at every opportunity and gamble on everything somehow being OK, threatens to land John Carver’s team in the Championship. If so it is understood Newcastle will have to continue paying Premier League wages as the contracts of several key players lack relegation clauses.
Many clubs routinely stipulate that remuneration will drop by 40 or 50% if the team exits the top tier but it appears the St James’ Park board neglected to do this with some signings.
Similar complacency meant Ashley and Lee Charnley, his managing director, turned a deaf ear when Alan Pardew repeatedly told them the squad was dangerously thin and desperately needed at least one new striker and one new defender in January.
That was before Steven Taylor, Newcastle’s best defensive header of a ball, ruptured an achilles tendon and it became apparent Papiss Cissé would require a second knee operation to correct the limp the forward carried as a legacy from earlier complex surgery.
When Pardew learned Ashley intended keeping his money in the bank – Newcastle’s latest accounts revealed an £18.7m profit and the presence of £34m reserves for “cash flow purposes” – he duly jumped ship to Crystal Palace in January.
The hierarchy identified Steve McClaren as the ideal successor but he was keen to remain at Derby County until the summer (and might now stay in the Midlands much longer) so Carver, Pardew’s assistant, earned a six-month gig at his home club.
Eager to please, Carver immediately allowed Newcastle to send Davide Santon to Internazionale on loan which swiftly became a £2.8m transfer. The reasoning was that, with Newcastle safely in mid-table, Roberto Mancini was welcome to the Italy left-back.
What, though, is £2.8m next to the countless millions the Tynesiders stand to lose in television money alone if they go down? Technically assured, Santon could also operate at right-back and across midfield. How Carver could do with him at home to West Bromwich Albion on Saturday when his only fit left-back, Paul Dummett, will be relocated to centre-half to cover for the suspended Mike Williamson and there is no specialist right-back to replace Daryl Janmaat, who is also banned.
In the world of football at least, Ashley, the owner of Sports Direct, has never seen the point of speculating to accumulate but, with a gargantuan new Premier League television deal on the horizon, a modest January expenditure would have surely guaranteed Newcastle’s place at the party.
Replacing Pardew with an experienced short-term firefighter – a man such as Dick Advocaat, who was brought in as Sunderland’s worldly interim replacement for Gus Poyet – might also have offered the club and their eclectic, heavily francophone and sometimes downright difficult dressing room more insulation against a relegation skirmish.
While the scale of the present fiasco is such that many experienced managers would struggle in Carver’s shoes, his often naive public statements and painful honesty have set him on needless collision courses with various players including Williamson and the captain, Fabricio Coloccini.
The board acknowledge the head coach has been betrayed by a woeful lack of dressing room leadership and, with the failure of their attempts to poach McClaren for the season’s end, they have no option but to back Carver.
With Derby sources adamant McClaren’s mind has changed and he now no longer even wants to join Newcastle next month (although, perhaps significantly, the former England head coach has, so far, refrained from publicly confirming this) the air of uncertainty on Gallowgate is both palpable and paralysing.
Much depends on which division Newcastle end up in when the music stops but should it turn out to be the Championship, Ashley will have reason to recall an old nursery rhyme: “For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse the rider was lost … ”
