Pardew: “Bringing in a player would be a really good tonic”
Posted on October 2nd, 2011 | 13 Comments |
The last 10 minutes or so of yesterday’s game against Wolves nearly caused me to “‘ave a connery“, as DelBoy might say, but a combination of good fortune and good saves from both Krul and his defenders saw us take all three points and raised us – at least until Chelsea play – to the lofty heights of 3rd in the table.
I think we certainly rode our luck yesterday as we have done in a few other games this season but, credit where it’s due, we have also defended very well and look to be getting things together as a unit a bit more now.
I think 3rd place flatters us but even if we say that Lady Luck has gifted us 6 points this season, we’d still be 7th, which isn’t too shabby in itself.
We also have ‘significant’ players still on the sidelines. Neither Ben Arfa, Davide Santon, Silvian Marveaux, Haris Vuckic nor Dan Gosling featured yesterday through either injury or lack of opportunity, so it would seem we have talent in reserve. Let’s not forget the likes of Medhi Abeid, Shane Ferguson and Sammy Ameobi from the ‘youth’ setup either.
A lot of teams would be happy to have that sort of talent ‘in reserve’ and could be forgiven for wondering why we’re looking at the transfer market at all. But, according to an interview with Alan Pardew in the Sunday Sun, that is indeed what we’re doing. Pardew said:
“The stuff behind the scenes continues – absolutely.
“We had an agent at the training ground on Thursday who represents young players from South America, we’ve got a situation where I’m trying to get someone to the Barcelona Academy, just because we haven’t been there for a while and it would be a good time to have a look around.
“All of those processes continue.”
And in terms of looking ahead to the next transfer window, Pardew said:
“I don’t think you can change your opinions over the course of a couple of games. I think we have a long way to run before we get to that window opening.
“Four weeks before that we will need to nail down what we’re going to do because if we leave it too late we might end in the same situation – not correcting what we think might be wrong.
“At the moment the team is functioning well but you want to improve all the time.
“So bringing in a player in that window would be a really good tonic, whichever position we’re in.”
I’m presuming that one sort of player Pardew is alluding to is the striker he missed out on in the summer transfer window and top of the list, according to the Sunday Sun, is Modibo Maiga. Apparently we’ve had scouts watching Sochaux twice since the transfer window closed and Maiga has knocked in 4 goals in the last 3 games (4 from 6 in total for Sochaux this season).
We’re not exactly popular with Sochaux, who were extremely grumpy about some of our ‘transfer tactics’ in relation to Maiga this summer, but it seems that Newcastle feel they still have a chance of prising the player away from his current club in January.
So what do you think? In what positions do we need new players?
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.
Although we are all delighted with the first teams fantastic progress this season we are only now getting a glimpse of the very positive things going on behind the scenes which is very encouraging.
Professionalism and good management is breaking out all over the place at Newcastle United, not something that has been said very often before, if at all !