Football Daily | Newcastle’s Jaissle wants to scream while Grealish leaves Moyes speechless

JACK AND JAISSLE, TUMBLING DOWN While it is customary for fans of top-flight clubs with delusions of grandeur to cope with Fizzy Cup exits by pretending the competition is beneath them, this is no longer an option that is open to supporters of Newcastle United. Winning the trophy sponsored by a low-calorie, fruit-flavoured energy drink brand from Thailand may only rank fifth in the domestic pecking order behind the Premier League, FA Cup and both transfer windows, but nobody will ever forget how much it meant to hundreds of thousands of overjoyed Geordies when their team did exactly that the season before last to end a trophy drought dating back to the Jurassic era. And with a quarter-final trip to the tough-tackling League Two bullyboys of Fleetwood up for grabs during their match against serial trophy-dodgers Everton last night, the travelling Toon Army must have fancied their chances of being in the shake-up again.

Sadly, it was not to be and a season that could charitably be described as “mixed” hit another hole in the road as Matthias Jaissle – the German head coach, who Newcastle CEO David Hopkinson famously introduced as “a rock star” – masterminded another extremely tepid performance that smacked more of a half-hearted sound check at Trillians Rock Bar than his compatriots the Scorpions headlining the Wacken metal festival. “Well what do you think?” asked Jaissle of one reporter who questioned how much of Newcastle’s 3-1 defeat was down to avoidable errors. “And this is what is shocking and is frustrating as well and therefore I probably need to scream more. But that’s part of the game, you need to avoid these mistakes, be more mature, more clinical in these situations.” On the plus side, Jaissle and his gaffe-prone players will have their first chance to either put this debacle behind them, or plunge their fans into existential meltdown on Monday night when they play Everton again.

While David Moyes’s side have a quarter-final against Fleetwood that simultaneously looks extremely winnable and losable, last night’s victory was overshadowed by the absence of Jack Grealish, who was dropped for a breach of club discipline. The on-loan winger is reported to have missed training without explanation on Monday, with one paper reporting his no-show left his manager “incandescent” with rage.

“You probably know I am not going to give any details [about what happened],” whispered Moyes before the game. “It is a club decision and I support it. It is something I don’t want to speak about too much.” While Moyes was understandably reticent when it comes to discussing the circumstances surrounding his player’s absence from training, assorted pundits haven’t been so coy and have – correctly or incorrectly – linked Everton’s disciplinary action against Grealish with the player’s fabled fondness for a night out on the tiles. Whatever the reason behind his ill discipline, it is fair to say the 31-year-old is in danger of leaving a once great future far behind him and has clearly let his team down. “The one thing about Everton is that they have got real good values,” parped Moyes after last night’s win. Here’s hoping that, if required, those values extend to protecting their occasionally wayward own.

QUOTE OF THE DAY “It had been like one year and a couple of months and I still can’t walk on the stairs like a normal guy. I have to play football, so in my head I’m not going to give up, but I have to think that if this doesn’t work out, what do I do? I went to a physio in Sweden. He was able to change my nervous system and then it felt different. When I did the exercises, I said, ‘I don’t have pain, like this hurt yesterday. Why is this not hurting today?’ Then I did the next exercise and said, ‘this is not hurting,’ and I went into the room to my wife. And I told her, ‘it’s over, we’re going to do this’. From the minute I went into the room, it was better. There was still pain but it was different. Now I had control of my leg and then that is when the grind started that summer. I started to play football and it got better every day. I was limping and everything, but it was different now. I got much stronger in a short time and I went from ‘this guy will not play football any more’ to playing really good football in just a couple of weeks” – Dejan Kulusevski on how he was able to return to playing with Tottenham after a 17-month injury layoff left him fearing the end of his football career.

FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS I clearly remember the first time I laughed out hard and loud, as a 12-year-old, reading Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome. Tonight, 50 years later, after a stretch of horrendous bad years and months (and for my mental health, I exclude the struggles of Tottenham), I read the Football Daily column. Its is often quite witty, but this time, reading about some penalty kick gone awry … I know, I have a simplistic sense of humour, but I laughed so hard and cried at the same time, that my family wondered what happened. Thanks for a cathartic experience. Words” – L Json.

As a Spurs supporter who saw my first game at White Hart Lane when I was five years old – almost eight decades ago – I can only express my relief that attention has drifted away from the continual ridicule of my team. The fact that a certain club that should return to south of the Thames managed to lose at Highbury (ironically), that lot from down Kings Road and Manchester United are all hogging the headlines for all the wrong reasons just makes life sweeter. It’s time for my second nap of the day now, so I’ll sign off” – Stewart McGuinness.

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