From the blood and thunder of his Caabao Cup career to the deaf noise and the error of his premiere shape, Newcastle is in danger of blowing a hole in his own season. That Thud is the manager Eddie Howe hitting his head against the ward of the costume.
For your team in recent times, the roof is high but the floor is low. Saturday's performance at Manchester City was even underground. Captain Bruno Guimaraes called them 'lazy' after a 4-0 defeat, and this on one side that, at their best, buzzs like bees around honey. Swarm the opposition. Lazy, they are not.
So why, then, are the risk of chopping at the back? The fear is that they are already blinded by the brilliant pot that awaits Wembley in a month.
However, if they continue as they did in the city, and the recent defeats in the home of Bournemouth and Fulham, two things will happen: they will reach the final without the possibility of beating Liverpool, as well as without any possibility of doing the first five and The League Champions. Fans may not agree, but the latter is more harmful to the club than the first.
That is why Howe will return to “the basics”, as he said, in the training field this week. The chief coach has three 'non -negotiable' features that requires his players. Two of them are: 'Always give your best' and 'put the interests of the team before yours'.
They looked negotiable in the Etihad. Newcastle did not give anything close to the best and played as if he had something to go back to Wembley in mind. Did Dan Burn's lesion scare in Birmingham the previous weekend, immediately framed in the context of the final of the Cup, scared his teammates and threatened his personal goals?
Newcastle season is swinging between ups and downs, and its future is on a knife edge
Bruno Guimaraes called them 'lazy' after Manchester City mistreat
After beating Arsenal in the semifinals, they cannot afford to remove the foot of the gas
Because this is Howe's challenge in a club like Newcastle. Winning a National Cup, 70 years after your last one, will be like Escalar Evrest. Now they have their fingertips within the reach of the summit, no player wants to lose his control of immortality potential. Be part of the team that day, when and if it ever arrives, and you will never have to buy another Brown or Stottie beer in Tyneside again.
For Liverpool, the Caabao Cup final will only enter its thoughts in the game week. Before that, there is the Champions League and maintains its position for the title of the Premier League.
For Newcastle, the final feels like everything. It is with a good reason that players like Guimaraes and Anthony Gordon have spoken so passionately about putting an end to the drought of the trophy by signing their new contracts. They know that the largest awards, the main leagues and the champions leagues, will probably not happen in their useful life of Newcastle.
But here is the elephant in the room, and a warning for the followers, does not carry a black and white scarf. If Newcastle wins a cup but cannot qualify for the Champions League, there is the possibility that some of their stars names can feel a natural page change in their career. No one connected to the club would want Guimaraes, Gordon or Alexander Isak leave, but at least it would be a happy ending.
The unhappy end is not covered and is not finished in the top five. Days like Saturday and Bournemouth and Fulham, make that feel more likely not. Because it will be much easier to keep those great happy players, paid sufficiently and believe in the direction of travel if they have their passport of one hand and the accreditation of the Champions League in the other.
The Carabao Cup is large, but there is another image that is bigger, and Howe knows it. This is the case, then, that Newcastle's future, in the short and long term, is based on a knife edge.
Two years ago, before the final defeat of the Carabao Cup of Manchester United, they cut their throat in the accumulation, lost the shape and focus on the Premier League.
When Wembley arrived, they were as good as hit before a ball had kicked. Even so, they recovered to reach the first four.
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It's different now. There are five league games between the semifinal and the final, there were three in 2023, and Howe has warned that his Premier League season will end whether the city's effort, or the lack of, is repeated in the coming weeks.
He and his players have not been helped by a third straight transfer window without an addition of the first team, and that talks about why they feel able to leave as they did on Saturday. No matter how bad is Isak, Gordon, Guimaraes or Sandro Tonali, they will start in Wembley.
For them, to arrive, instead of form, is perhaps the subconscious priority. That is an unfortunate result of any real competition for places.
But players who get wrapped in cotton soon become soft. They were as soft as the clouds in the city and played as if they had their heads on them. The danger now is that Newcastle's dreams become a nightmare.