Stoke v Newcastle: Pardew hands all plaudits to the team
Posted on November 1st, 2011 | 84 Comments |
Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew gives all the kudos to the team for yesterday’s win at Stoke whilst Tony Pulis is somewhat less generous.
Yesterday’s game could arguably be seen as our biggest test of the season so far and we passed it with flying colours. Alan Pardew, however, refuses to take much credit for the win and instead prefers to praise the players. Pardew said:
“The players have to take great credit. You can have a game-plan of what you want to do but by the same token, players have got to be brave enough to see it out. And we showed some bravery. Absolutely brilliant, some of our players tonight.
“You’ve got to be brave, and we were brave at their throw-ins. We left two up and that caused them some problems on the break a couple of times.
“Sometimes you’ve got to change the emphasis of a game and we did that well – in the second half, not so well and that’s why we came under pressure.
“Having said that, it was a soft penalty that they got, I thought. But at least the ref was consistent because we got a soft one too!“
Yes, if I’d been the ref neither of those would have been penalties but at least Mike Dean evened things up in that respect. Tony Pulis wasn’t in a mood to give us too much credit after the game though, instead preferring to claim that Stoke contributed to our goals and that they just had an unlucky night. Pulis said:
“It was disappointing – the goals we conceded were very poor goals. Newcastle did not play through us, we contributed to the three goals.
“When get this week out of way will have played 21 games and in the first 10-15 minutes one or two players looked a little slow out of the blocks.
“It is the first time we have lost at home and I can honestly say certain things went against us, we have to take it on the chin and dust ourselves down.”
Well, whatever. I think we were worthy of the win. It was a great all-round team effort and we managed to defend well against Stoke’s ‘one trick pony’ of the long throw-ins and I thought they lacked for a ‘plan B’ once we’d nullified that. Although if their pitch was any smaller it could be used as a tennis court.
There’s still a long way to go but taking all three points at the Britannia Stadium is an accomplishment that many of the top clubs fail to achieve, so I think we have good reason to celebrate.
Let’s hope that same fight is there on the weekend against Everton. If it is then I’d be inclined to think we can take another three points before we come up against City, United and Chelsea, which will be another huge test of the resolve of our team.
But so far so good eh?
Proud!