Taylor conked – Ameobi crocked
Posted on October 25th, 2011 | 49 Comments |
Alan Pardew is considering playing Steven Taylor with a broken nose on Wednesday, by which I mean Steven Taylor has the broken nose rather than Alan Pardew. At least I don’t think Alan Pardew has a broken nose, although it’s not important if he does – to me, anyway – because the conk in question in this article is Steven Taylor’s.
Taylor got is nose bloodied after a clash with Mohamed Diame in our game against Wigan on Saturday, although this is the first I’ve heard that it was actually broken.
Mike Williamson’s ankle/foot injury won’t be healed in time and it seems that Pardew doesn’t fancy someone like Perch at centre-back. Pardew said:
“We might have to look at him wearing a mask or something but we have to make sure he looks after his looks. He lost a lot of blood and we had him off the pitch for five minutes. It’s something we’ll have to think about for Wednesday night.“
Perhaps this issue highlights that the biggest weakness we have in terms of depth is in defence and maybe that’s something we ought to be addressing in the next transfer window.
You have no doubt already heard that Shola is now sidelined too. In his case it’s a troublesome hamstring and it’s likely to keep him out for 4-6 weeks, which is bit frustrating as he seemed to have found a run of startling form lately, particularly against Spurs. Alan Pardew said:
“Unfortunately we lost Shola on Saturday so he’s going to be out now for, we think, four to six weeks.
“That’s a blow to us. He pulled a hamstring after about three minutes of coming on, and still played on which just goes to show you what sort of a character he is.
“He’s going be a loss to us and I think our fans will see that now, how important he is when he’s not there.”
We do appear to have a bit more cover offensively than we do defensively though with Ben Arfa, Lovenkrands, Sammy Ameobi and Ranger lined up as backup for Best and Ba, who seem to be our first choice strikers so far this season.
I’m presuming Alan Pardew is going to take this League Cup game against Blackburn fairly seriously and will play something quite close to his first choice team. Ashley wasn’t too happy that Chris Hughton didn’t take the cup seriously enough last season and I can’t imagine Pardew wants to make the same mistake. And that would be in accord with a fans’ vote we had on here a little while back where a massive 90% voted in favour of going all out for the League Cup.
Maybe our stunning start in the league has afforded us the opportunity to do that.
Can Santon not play CB??? I would like to see him given a shot as Raylor is playing really very well and so this could be his opportunity to prove his worth?