Having narrowly beaten the drop in a dreadful previous season, Newcastle were looking for a fresh start and stability when they appointed Steve McClaren in the summer. It was the former England national manager’s first job in the English top-flight for almost a decade but the ingredients were there for a decent season. Quality signings in Chancel Mbemba, Georginio Wijnaldum and Aleksandr Mitrovic were lured from the Netherlands and Belgium while the hopes were that a talented player in Ayoze Perez will grow further too. Yet Newcastle had a horrible start of the season and immediately were put up against it. Their only decent result in the first two months was a battling draw away at Manchester United and that was more a result of the home side being poor. The Magpies delivered some woefully listless and riderless displays, with defeats against Watford and Sheffield Wednesday at home really turning the fans against McClaren from very early on. It did not get much better for the embattled manager, who seemed to lack both a belief in himself and the trust of the players, as a 6:1 beating at the hands of Manchester City further damaged confidence. A hefty win against Norwich provided a brief upturn but it lasted just a week as big rivals Sunderland send them packing for a 3:0 loss. There was undoubted quality in the team and at times they looked good when things clicked. Yet the absence of backbone and character was staggering and their complete collapses became a worrying common occurrence over the course of the season. The trend continued in the early weeks of 2016 as the odd good game was followed by a few extremely poor ones and the Magpies became firmly entrenched in the bottom of the table. They went for it in the transfer market, signing four new players to bolster ranks, but the initial impact was negligent as McClaren continued to toil. He was expected to be sacked any game now but he managed to save himself from the brink on a couple of occasions. Yet a completely defeating and gutless display in a resounding 3:1 home loss to Bournemouth in March eventually proved his last game. Newcastle pulled off a coup in persuading Rafael Benitez to take over and try to rescue a side that was in dire predicament, with confidence on the floor. He had an initially disappointing start and a 3:1 loss at Southampton looked to have ended the team’s hopes of beating the drop. But Benitez inspired the team to end the season six games uneaten after that. Wins against Swansea and Crystal Palace gave them genuine hope of beating the drop but a really costly goalless draw at hapless Aston Villa a week before the end proved the result that send them down. A final-day 5:1 win over Tottenham displayed just how far Newcastle progressed in the few short weeks Benitez was in charge and the Spaniard would have surely kept the team up if he had taken over back in January. As it is, Newcastle face at least one season in the Championship but their prospects of immediately returning have been given a great boost by Benitez accepting the offer to stay on.
