Well that was a totally pointless embarrassment and an insult to the opposition, both sets of fans at the ground and those who paid to watch it on tv.
Club have mess that up quite badly. Why travel and play an u21's squad - anyone who paid to see the game should be reimbursed - Imagine if you flew to Oz to watch that! Appreciate a lot of the seniors left to go on international duty but seems disrespectful to the fans and the A League team to play the U21's against them. Can't tell me Paul Dummett and Ritchie weren't fit for these games? Players like Hayden and Lewis' loans are done so should have been called up too? Gillespie Ashby, Murphy, Dummet, Lewis White, Hayden, Hall Ritchie, Parkinson, Diallo Would have been a better shout and not as disrespectful - probably would have been beaten by a similar margin but it'd at least look like we were trying...
No he looked really poor across both games, rapid but no way near technically/mentally ready for first team football.
Probably a few away with youth international teams - Sanusi, Harrison, Shahar etc would have been on the plane if available.
He probably did if it had been billed as such but a lot of money was spent going to watch what was billed as Newcastle United and those people rightly feel ripped off by the club. Embarrassing and awful PR. Not likely to to attract new fans worldwide with that.
Yeah there were a few senior players stood around watching - they could have easily had a 15-20 min run out at he end. Pope, Burn, Hall, Murphy, Wilson maybe even Trippier should have been chuck on for the last few mins for the fans. At 6/7/8-0 it's not like tackles were flying around.
All of this just looks like a bit of a clusterfuck. Awful decision to go in the first place, pointless second game, embarrassing from the U21's and I cannot conceive of the commercials being remotely worth it for a squad that seemed constantly knackered all season. The result's meaningless - but the whole exercise just looks incredibly ill conceived.
The 1st team players played in the 1st game like 2 days ago... what was everyone expecting including the Australians. It's been a good trip and the club had to do these things.. people need to accept things.