Pardew missed experience of Nolan and Barton in Wolves game.
Posted on October 2nd, 2011 | 21 Comments |
Of course, Newcastle chalked up their fourth win of the Premiership season against Wolves, though they took something of a battering in the latter stages of the game, and were undoubtedly helped by a couple of incorrect decisions by the referee, Mark Halsey and his linesman. The first was a free kick which should have been a penalty for a Steven Taylor foul which took place a yard inside the area, and the second being a perfectly good goal which was ruled out by the linesman. Pardew acknowledged the luck in his post match interviews, and also gave credit to the performance of Mick McCarthy’s Midlands men.
Speaking on the lack of experience in the revamped side, Pardew said:
“We haven’t got that experience of a Kevin Nolan or Joey Barton who might have stopped or slowed down the game.
“We’re a different team and we need to see games out better than we did.”
However he also acknowledged the significant role played by young goalkeeper, Tim Krul, in the tight victory, with Krul having recently snatched the number 1 jersey from the much more experienced Steve Harper since the latter’s return from injury. On Krul, Pardew added:
“Tim had more work to do than in about three of our games, if I’m honest. That’s why you need a good goalie. But we have a lot of attributes to our team and we had to show different sides to our game.”
Of course, while the club still has experienced outfield players in the side, the average age of the squad has gone down significantly in recent times, and Pardew was probably referring to the midfield area, which is now populated with younger players who have spent the majority of their careers so far in different leagues such as France’s ‘Ligue 1’.
Pardew’s seeming desire to see more experience for such situations as the team faced in the latter stages of yesterday’s game, and also to show different sides to their game is somewhat at odds with the club’s policy of selling or releasing older members of the squad and putting the emphasis on young, more inexperienced players who can be sold on at a profit in the future.
Could it be that Pardew wants to see a more balanced policy, and feels a certain dissatisfaction with the manager’s current lack of influence in choosing the squad?
NUFCBlog Author: workyticket
workyticket has written 1091 articles on this blog.
Funny how Pardwho thinks experience on the pitch would have helped yesterday !
Maybe if there’d been a little more nous on the touchline we’d have won more comfortably ? Next time I see Lovenkrands play it better be for the reserves :(