A SEASON that promised so much for the Jets came to a bitterly disappointing conclusion against the Wanderers on Friday.
On a perfect evening for football in front of a magnificent crowd, Newcastle’s season fizzled out with them barely firing a shot.
Their limp exit was in stark contrast to the sheer belief of the Wanderers and their fans.
In 2008 that passion and fervour was all Newcastle’s, and the 20,000-plus crowds were not bolstered by 8000 visitors.
Just as coach Gary van Egmond got the accolades for the 2008 championship, so too must he be held accountable for this season’s failure, for it was a disaster of his own making.
He ran the show and had financial backing and support of Hunter Sports Group, who gave him a contract extension in September – before the season even started.
Any checks and balances went with the removal of the so-called Jets Advisory Board, and any dissenting voices among the players have been weeded out.
Van Egmond will argue that he should get the chance to finish what he started, but he had that chance this season and he blew it.
He has fallen short on every marker that you could judge a coach by.
Not only that, he has gone about his business in such an arrogant and bloodyminded way that he has lost the faith of supporters and alienated a proud and faithful football community.
The planets aligned for van Egmond and the Jets in 2008.
This time, the chemistry just isn’t right, and he should go.
RESULTS
Ultimately, this is what any coach lives or dies by. After leading the Jets to a game short of the grand final in his rookie season in 2006, when he took over seven rounds into the season from the sacked Nick Theodorakopoulos, van Egmond won the championship in 2008.
The Jets got the wooden spoon the following season, and van Egmond left to take up a position at the Australian Institute of Sport.
When van Egmond rejoined the Jets after round three last season – again picking up the reins from a sacked coach, Branko Culina – his mantra was an up-tempo, possession-based passing game.
Fans gave him the benefit of the doubt as he stuck rigidly to his philosophy while giving the appearance of a man trying to bash a square peg into a round hole with the squad he had inherited. The Jets eventually finished seventh.
This season, though, there are no excuses. Van Egmond was given the opportunity to rebuild his squad into one that could deliver his brand of football.
The result, however, has been even more abysmal than the preceding season.
The Jets won four of their first six games despite not playing well – most notably home victories over the Mariners and Victory when they were clearly outplayed – and this had them in a false position at the pointy end of the table for a large slice of the season.
But they won only four more times over the remaining 21 games.
That they were still a chance of making the play-offs in the last round says more about the absurdity of the six-team finals format than the Jets’ title chances. They finished one point off sixth, but 10 off fourth, 26 off first and only four above last. Their final position of eighth was a true reflection of their performance.
RECRUITMENT
This is another key component in judging a coach – the ability to know the players to keep and the ones to let go.
Van Egmond cleaned out a host of older, established players who couldn’t deliver for him and was given an apparent free rein to bring in the cream of Australia’s young talent, many of whom he had first-hand knowledge of through his time at the AIS.
Van Egmond also picked up Swiss defender Dominik Ritter and Brazilian midfielder Bernardo Ribeiro as visa players. Both were young and had little senior experience. Ribeiro had a particularly thin CV but, according to van Egmond, would provide an ‘‘X-factor’’ as a playmaker.
When former England striker Emile Heskey was signed as a marquee player a matter of weeks before the start of the season he was described by van Egmond as the final piece in the jigsaw – although the coach had little to do with his recruitment.
That was sealed by Hunter Sports Group boss Troy Palmer and Jets chief executive Robbie Middleby with the assistance of Newcastle’s other former Premier League star, Michael Bridges.
Incredibly, as the youth-dominated squad struggled, experienced defender Tiago Calvano was offloaded to Sydney, captain Jobe Wheelhouse left, and Ryan Griffiths was allowed out of his contract to join Chinese club Beijing Baxy.
Zenon Caravella was a handy late-season pick-up, but it was too little too late.
In the final analysis, the younger players didn’t make the step up, and the Jets were woefully short of proven campaigners to steady the ship. The result was van Egmond’s dream team became a nightmare.
Meanwhile, players van Egmond let go were having stellar seasons, most notably Nikolai Topor-Stanley and Labinot Haliti at start-up club Western Sydney Wanderers, and Jeremy Brockie, who scored 16 goals for wooden-spooners Wellington.
When Wanderers played Newcastle off the park at Hunter Stadium on Friday to clinch the Premiers Plate and end the Jets’ play-off hopes, it highlighted just how wrong van Egmond had got things.
And when former Jets favourite Tarek Elrich’s desperate slide tackle on a runaway James Brown late in the game was applauded by both sets of fans, it was salt in the wounds.
TACTICS
Van Egmond stuck rigidly to his favoured 4-2-3-1 formation and trying to play a possession-based game. Nothing wrong with that, except that his rebuilt squad proved less capable of delivering his style than the preceding one.
After a bright start to his Jets campaign, Heskey became an increasingly isolated figure up front. A switch to 4-4-2 might have made better use of his strengths and shored things up defensively, but this was never tried by van Egmond.
His intransigence meant the Jets were easy pickings for opposing teams, who simply waited for the Jets to turn over possession with their fullbacks committed high up the park and counter-attacked through the space behind them.
Match day became Groundhog Day for Jets fans as they settled in to watch their side get their pants pulled down again.
The 5-0 away loss to Victory in round 23 was the low point. Sending the youngest side in Jets history out was a gamble; doing so with fullbacks bombing forward was suicide.
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Originally Posted by plague
