Newcastle have made a less than great start to the season, with underwhelming results and inability to beat teams around them seeing them languishing in the relegation zone.
It seems a huge task for Steve Bruce to rescue the season and avoid a drop to the Championship for the third time during Ashley’s disastrous tenure.
In order to achieve Premier League survival, Bruce will somehow have to navigate Newcastle to around the 40 point mark, a total that looks a very long way off at the moment.
Even further off than that, is the alleged target Bruce has been given by Messrs Charnley and Ashley, who – according to the Chronicle’s understanding – expect him to reach the heady heights of 50 points.
The season is almost a quarter of the way through, and we currently sit on eight points, have scored only five goals having not been able to score more than one in any game, and have failed to beat any of Norwich, Brighton or Watford.
It hardly bodes confidence in the pursuit of a half-century points haul.
Despite some tough games, Newcastle have failed in those they are expected to win
Granted, Newcastle have played five of the ‘big six’ sides, and also Leicester, who hope to break into that echelon of teams, but our only wins came against two of those, and it is the performances against those expected to be around us that is the biggest worry.
At this point in time, it is difficult to see us getting anywhere near the target total, and if you asked fans now if they would accept scraping enough points to see us limp over the survival line, I would suspect most would snap your hand off for it.
It will be interesting to see how the club hierarchy react if the man they deemed the right person for the job fails to get near his expected goal, or worse.
Fans would probably be more inclined to think Bruce being relieved of his duties is more realistic than him managing to steer us to the 50 point mark.
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