In the Premier League form is king. And since the start of the season, it seems like no one knows this more acutely than Newcastle United.

The Magpies have taken just three points from their eight games and are still looking for their first win of the campaign. This despite Steve McClaren taking over the reins in the summer and putting some optimism into the club for the first time in a long time.

Things, really, could only get better. After all, John Carver’s reign at Newcastle was disastrous. It wasn’t Carver’s fault, but he didn’t help. In the end, Newcastle lost 13 of the 20 games with Carver at the helm, but you couldn’t question his passion for the club. It was just enough to save them, and they really were hanging on by the skin of their teeth at the death.

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But this season has started in the same vein. If they thought things could only get better, perhaps what they meant was that things couldn’t get any worse - because things just stayed the same.

Steve McClaren is paying the price for Newcastle’s poor form from last season. McClaren, it seems, is paying the price for Mike Ashley’s decision not to appoint a long-term manager after the departure of Alan Pardew.

You appoint an interim manager to steady the ship ahead of appointing a full-time manager down the line. So far, so good. But you can only do that when the form won’t suffer too badly. Newcastle simply had too long left in their season to do that - the form dipped, but instead of that being of little importance, it got to the point where the club was threatened by relegation. That was a position Newcastle should never have been in, whoever the manager.

It’s easy to say that Pardew did a good job in hindsight, but he seemed happy to settle for a mid-table finish over the last few seasons. He never pushed for a cup run, he never seemed to gee the team up for anything more than a mid-table finish. Mike Ashley was content with it, Pardew was content with it, and when he left, he left a squad who lacked motivation, lacked grit and lacked drive.

That’s a recipe for disaster in any case, but in that situation, whenever you’re faced with a full half season to play and you don’t have a full-time manager, you’re in severe trouble. What Newcastle needed was a new man, with new ideas and with the ability to get the team to play for the shirt. He needed to instil some drive and some passion, some sort of motivation to give the team something to play for.

Instead, a squad lacking drive was given a manager who was never going to stay past the end of the season. They were never going to play simply for the pride of playing for Newcastle United. It’s a sad fact that modern football doesn’t work like that, you have to give the majority of players something to play for. Did John Carver really think that his passion for the club would convince any of the foreign players to do anything other than coast along until the summer holidays?

And now McClaren is paying the price. he came into the club too late to make a difference. The malaise had already set in, the club were too far down the slide for an easy rescue. The form has settled and Newcastle are losing matches at the start of this season just as they lost them at the end of last season.

It’s not terminal by any means. The new manager brought optimism with him into the job, he brought in a few new signings and they were exciting signings - Wijnaldum was the record signing and Mitrovic plays with the passion Newcastle fans expect, he just needs to curb the temper and disperse the red mist.

But in order to do something about the run, the team must be convinced that they’re playing for something. Newcastle’s players played well for the first few games. It’s like they are a bunch of players who quite fancied a kick about in the first few games, but losing every week has made the appetite fade.

McClaren is dealing with a mess inherited by a terrible decision made in January. But with only one win in 19 games - that’s half a season - there’s a huge cloud to shift.

The optimism of the summer, it seems, was only the eye of the storm. It's going to continue until McClaren can weather it and give his players some motivation.

It's a good job, then, that he knows how to use a brolly!

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