Another weekend with all the trials and tribulations of following Newcastle United to look forward to.

Last weekend’s defeat to Aston Villa at St James’ Park was no shock. Far from it.

This lack of surprise at a defeat, I fear, will become a common and frequent feeling as the weeks and months go on.

It’s very difficult to look at anything other than the way this Newcastle United team is set up as the root cause.

Former Newcastle United player John Anderson said this week: “We’re so easy to get at, so easy to play through.” He’s right. All a side has to do is mount some form of meaningful offensive and you’ll get joy against our lot.

I would stop short of calling Newcastle United slapdash and haphazard, there MUST be some sort of tactics going on during the week in the build up to matchday. but I’m flummoxed as to what they are.

Against Villa, the sight of Dan Burn playing up front as a striker in the closing stages, in an attempt to salvage something from a horror show of a game, will stay with me for a long time. Pure and total desperation born from a tactical set-up that you’ll never be able to explain to me as to how it can possibly work.

I’ve always been from the school of thought that if you win your midfield battle, you’ll win more games than you lose. You can have a lightweight attack and a poor defence, or even both, and you can still secure points here and there IF your midfield is good. You might not be winning the league or qualifying for Europe any time soon but you’ll get by and be safe.

At this present moment in time, the Newcastle United midfield is either all over the place, or practically non-existent. It hasn’t dominated any of the seven games so far this season and, barring five minutes here and there it has been over run time and time again. I used to give up hope of seeing a dominant display away from home but it seems the set up is prevalent at St James’ Park as well AND it doesn’t matter about the standard of the opposition.

Just based on simple numbers, if you play two in the middle against any side that are prepared to give their own midfield some help, then our lot will simply be given the runaround for long periods. If that side has a competent defence and an equally competent attack, we’re in deep trouble.

More concerns arise when you hear Matthias Jaissle comment that the system won’t be changing and that the players must adapt. I fear we have swapped a stubborn manager in Eddie Howe, who stuck with like for like substitutions ad nauseum, for a stubborn manager who won’t change a currently failing tactical set up.

I remember a time in NUFC Premier League history that to my eyes seems to correlate with what I’m witnessing from this current team. Brace yourselves if you didn’t see it or can’t remember it but it’s safe to say it wasn’t good and didn’t end well.

The way we are playing reminds me of the Kenny Dalglish era.

Looking back to 1997/98, we had Rob Lee, David Batty and Gary Speed in midfield, all good players in their own right and whilst others may disagree, for me it was the strongest part of the team at the time.

Having lost Alan Shearer (injury), Les Ferdinand and eventually Tino Asprilla (sold), Dalglish had to rely on a bunch of players that were woefully ill-equipped to do the job in both attack and defence. Sound familiar?

Up front we had to get by with Jon Dahl Tomasson, Ian Rush, Temuri Ketsbaia and Andreas Anderssen and at the back we relied on Alessandro Pistone and ageing players like Philippe Albert and Steve Howey. It was pretty diabolical.

An important point to make is that quite a few players bought during the Dalglish era eventually came good under Sir Bobby Robson (after the Ruud Gullit fiasco). Even the much maligned Tomasson eventually went on to be a world beater after he left.

Shay Given, Aaron Hughes, Nikos Dabizas, Nobby Solano, Gary Speed improved under Bobby and both Shearer and Lee came back into form and secured Champions League football.

If Matthias Jaissle is to avoid the Dalglish eras eventual demise, he needs to get a tune out of at least one part of the team for at present we have a powderpuff attack, a porous defence and the midfield is missing in action.

And this is my fear for Matthias Jaissle. I worry that we’ll only see the current crop of players succeed AFTER he has gone and for two reasons. 1. The players are adapting to a new league and unless they adapt VERY quickly, poor results and performances will get the manager ousted. 2. I simply have no faith that the system this manager adopts will ever work well enough for said results and performances to improve consistently enough for sustained success.

I’ll be interested to see both the starting line up and the way the team sets up down at Crystal Palace tomorrow but from what’s been said, I can’t see it changing at all. The promising pre-season videos of players hunting in packs and getting “a beasting” in training are all well and good. The natural good looks of Jaissle may have gone down well with the female half of the fan base (and some of the lads I might add) but the sight of the man in the dugout getting all agitated and lively may look as good on the eye as the individual himself but it needs to have an actual effect.

But from the way I’ve seen us play so far, the manager will be gone by late January or the style and set up will have clicked and worked.