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Another night in Bigger Cup and the hopes and dreams of another two teams from The Best League In The World™ were brought to an end in varying degrees of ignominy. Of the six teams that advanced to this season’s Round of Arsenal, only two (including Arsenal) made it into the quarter-finals. This state of affairs has prompted all manner of existential angst for assorted Premier League cheerleaders. Never mind the fact that Barcelona are simply much better than Newcastle, or that Spurs have been complete bobbins for the best part of three seasons, the media needs a narrative. Thus, the mass exodus of English top-flight clubs from the last 16 must mean something. And so it has come to pass that an army of chin-stroking statto types who in previous cycles have mused that the likes of Paris Saint-Germain couldn’t hack it in Bigger Cup because their domestic league isn’t competitive enough, have now decided the reason so many Premier League sides hit the bricks is because the English top flight is just too darned competitive.
While Newcastle more than held their own against Barça for the opening three halves of their tie, their latest Bigger Cup campaign came disastrously unstuck in the fourth. Having failed to capitalise on an uncharacteristically diabolical Barcelona performance at St James’ Park, Eddie Howe’s team came from behind twice at Camp Nou before conceding a penalty on the stroke of half-time. At that point, the wheels didn’t so much come off as spontaneously liquefy, regroup T-2000-style into a sentient puddle and mail a Get Well Soon card to the chassis from a beach in Ibiza. “Our performance dropped – that was very clear,” parped Howe in his postmortem of a 7-2 humiliation. “The first four goals you can’t concede. To concede two from regulation set-plays, from one free-kick and one corner, I can’t be impressed.” With their mackem mates from Sunderland due in Toon on Sunday, Howe and his players will have little time to dwell on this bruising defeat if they are avoid extending their winless run in Wear-Tyne league derbies to an inglorious 11 games.
