Newcastle United’s dreadful campaign will stagger anxiously into the final afternoon with their Premier League status still hanging by a thread. A tantalising opportunity to scramble clear of the condemned had presented itself here but, in the context of recent trauma, it felt apt that they eventually capitulated against a Queens Park Rangers team already resigned to life in the second tier and who had not mustered a home win since before Christmas.
For the visitors, this was a new nadir in a campaign already wrecked by strife and discord. John Carver had cut a helpless figure on the sidelines as his team wilted miserably after the interval, all the hope generated up to then effectively deflated by the youthful energy of Reece Grego-Cox, an 18-year-old striker flung on for his third top-flight appearance.
The teenager selflessly ran, harried and turned Newcastle’s ponderous defence at will, opening up space that Charlie Austin and Matt Phillips eagerly exploited.
The manner in which the visitors wilted was shameful, their back-line horribly slack and nerves gripping all over the pitch, but the reality is an injection of energy is all it takes to flummox them these days.
The manager, wearing that all too familiar haunted look, hardly inspired confidence in his post-match talk of hiding away from media coverage in the days ahead, of the pressure at life at a big club or even with his admission that the situation may simply have overwhelmed his players.
“We’ve got eight days to get our heads round this scenario,” said Carver. “In the conditions, and given everything, at least they’ve had a go. Sometimes the quality’s not there and you’re just not good enough. Today might have been that situation. Papiss [Cissé] doesn’t usually miss chances like he did, but he did today. Pressure is a funny thing. If you take your eye off the ball, you get punished.”
The problem with that assessment was that QPR have been so abject themselves of late and, throughout the first half, had appeared to be sleep-walking their way apologetically back to the Championship.
Chris Ramsey, an interim desperate to secure the managerial position in these parts full-time, had needed a performance to carry into contract negotiations and at least his tweak at the interval did the trick.
There was renewed incision and urgency, Leroy Fer tucking back into midfield and the front-line reinvigorated. Newcastle duly fell to pieces.
Austin, playing against one of the clubs who covet him, wriggled away from Fabricio Coloccini into space on the left of the penalty area before chipping a cross over Tim Krul. Matt Phillips met the delivery, but his shot flicked from Paul Dummett and just wide.
The visitors did not learn and, moments later, that same combination prised them apart again with Austin’s wonderful clipped cross nodded in by Phillips, leaping above Daryl Janmaat, at the far post.
That brought Newcastle’s nerves flooding back, the visitors panicked as opponents revelled in wide open spaces. Even Krul was affected, his attempted clearance reaching only Phillips who was more committed in the tackle than Ryan Taylor. The ball dribbled on to Fer, 25 yards out, whose belted shot flew viciously beyond Krul and, in seven brutal minutes, Newcastle had been dragged back from safety to the edge of the relegation zone. “We had a mad 10 minutes in that second half,” Carver said. In truth, they had merely slipped back into their customary inadequacy.
They should have killed off the game – and ensured their own safety – when they had been dominant. That first half felt an age away by the end, when the travelling fans were spitting their disgust at the owners, their dissatisfaction at the players and trading bottles and other missiles with the QPR fans who had invaded the pitch. There had been a time when Newcastle had appeared close to a first win since February, edging ahead when Krul’s punt downfield bypassed a dawdling Steven Caulker for Emmanuel Rivière to collect smartly at the centre-half’s back.
The Frenchman, alone in front of goal, slipped as he shot with his right foot but the ball, struck firmly into the turf, bounced over Rob Green’s attempt to smother to provide a first Premier League goal on his 22nd appearance, and after 1,087 fruitless minutes.
Green departed soon afterwards, clattered inadvertently by Joey Barton and requiring stitches in a head wound, with Alex McCarthy doing well to deny Coloccini a second.
Had the second been pilfered then Newcastle might now be safe, surveying the scrap beneath them as they licked their season’s wounds. As it is, they must endure one more afternoon of torture, the late attempts to restore parity here through the substitute Cissé and Moussa Sissoko having yielded no rewards.
A solitary point from a possible 30 tells its own story. Theirs has all been a miserable unravelling of a campaign.
