Toon to announce excuse later – Best to plug the hole for now
Posted on September 2nd, 2011 | 68 Comments |
Newcastle United Limited has so far remained silent about the club’s failure to recruit a much-needed striker during the transfer window. Even Alan Pardew – a man not known for being backward in the tongue-wagging department – has had nothing to say.
However, they will apparently make some sort of official statement later today.
Presumably they’ve now had sufficient time to think up an excuse, probably along the lines of “we tried our best”, “we’re not paying over the odds” and “last minute rejections by other clubs”. I think we pretty much know what it’s going to say.
Apparently Maiga was the chap we came closest to buying and Llambias was ready to catch a plane to Paris to collect his signature. It seems, however, that Sochaux pulled out at the last minute ‘without explanation’ according to a Deep Throat somewhere within Newcastle’s hierarchy. Yet according to the foreign press last week, Sochaux had already stated that they wouldn’t let Maiga go if they couldn’t get a replacement.
Apparently we then tried to recruit Ruiz and were shocked to find that he actually intended to honour his promise to Martin Jol and join Fulham.
Well, whatever. It’s all history now and we’ll just have to struggle on.
One man who’ll have a job to do is Leon Best. He is arguably our first-choice striker now – particularly after his two goals against Fulham – and he reckons he’s up to the task. Best said:
“I think if you want to go off my starts in the Premier League it is almost one goal every two games.
“That sounds very good but I want to add on that. I am obviously looking forward to the next few games. We are in the top six now so why shouldn’t we be as players?”
Personally, I have always thought Leon Best has been somewhat underrated and I’d tip him to come good for us. Maybe he’s not quite a 20+ goals a season man, but I reckon he could get into double figures and take up some of the slack left by Nolan and Carroll.
If Demba Ba regains the sort of form he showed last season, he should be able to contribute to our goal tally too.
Whilst I certainly do think there’s still a hole to be filled up front, maybe we have enough to see us through until January when we’ll probably have to go through all this nonsense again.
We’ll just have to cheer the team on and hope for the best. Having said that, is cheering now banned? Anti-Ashley chants are, as is standing up it seems – maybe we can still get away with a polite clap and an occasional “Oh I say, jolly good football, what what”.
Ah, the joys of being a Toon supporter!
NUFCBlog Author: Hugh de Payen
I'm a baby-boomer of the punk rock persuasion, currently exiled in Somerset for crimes committed in a previous life where locals keep trying to poison me with something called 'scrumpy'. Hates sprouts, coat-hangers, Cilla Black, ornaments, Steven Seagull movies and 50 Cent (he's not worth 10).
Hugh de Payen has written 634 articles on this blog.
what ever statement they now make,will look contrived in the corridors of power.they should have came straight out with what had happened,during the window.
todays statement will be short,patronizing,and will not tell us anything.
pardew will now sit tight until the qpr game,and hope he gets a result,so this will all go away.
i’m sure the nutters upstairs will have told him as much,”oh alan get a result against qpr,and those thick geordies,will come crawling back”.
the sad part about it is,this will be the reality,a few good results and ashley is off the hook again.