Newcastle were handed a humbling defeat to bottom of the league West Brom on Saturday afternoon, and it will serve as a welcome reminder to the Geordies that they are not totally out of the woods yet.
While there’s no chance of Rafa Benitez’s side going down this season, the manner of the defeat to West Brom showed just how desperate Newcastle are for reinvestment ahead of the next campaign, otherwise another relegation battle will beckon.
Benitez only made one change to the side by bringing Dwight Gayle back into the team in place of Islam Slimani, who would come off the bench to disappoint once again and potentially pick up a ban that will end his career on Tyneside.
Other substitutes Jacob Murphy and Joselu had zero impact as Newcastle laboured to a defeat, in even more disappointing fashion to their defeat the previous Monday away to Everton.
While the Magpies had been on a sensational run, particularly at home, the bubble has been well and truly burst over the past week, and the pressure is on Mike Ashley once again to back his manager and give Benitez the tools to actually do his job properly, rather than piece together teams with cheap signings and temporary loan deals.
Once again Newcastle had no cutting edge on Saturday, never really looking like getting anything from the game other than a brief attacking spell towards the end of the first half where Kenedy struck the post and Gayle forced a stunning save from Ben Foster.
Other than that, it was the typical pedestrian style football we had seen earlier on in the campaign, that saw Newcastle slap bang in the middle of a relegation scuffle.
Without proper investment, next season could actually be worse for Newcastle, as surely Benitez will not work on a shoestring budget for another summer when he has better offers elsewhere…