Pardew reflects on season and looks ahead to transfer market
Posted on May 14th, 2012 | 15 Comments |
On the back of our 2011-2012 season Alan Pardew has been reflecting on things and considers it a good season, all-in-all. Pardew said:
“We have made a huge leap this year. Even just to compete with these top teams, and to finish above the great teams that we have, the players can be very proud. It is one of the finest seasons at this club.”
Pardew has also been indicating that he’s already looking to strengthen the squad, saying:
“We’re already thinking about two or three players, but I think you’ll find that a lot of the clubs who might want to do early business will have to wait until the European Championships are over.
“It’s going to be a bit like a roulette wheel, and I’m hoping that the players we’re looking at all have awful tournaments.
“But there’s a good chance they’re going to have excellent tournaments, and all of a sudden, their price might look a bit different. I think all of us will be looking at that closely.”
I think it’s been a successful season for Newcastle United. 5th place and a Europa League spot is far more than I thought we’d get but we’re worthy of it. You can’t be lucky for 38 games and the Premier League is the true test in that respect.
We started well, going 11 games unbeaten until our visit to Eastlands in mid-November and that was the start of a dodgy run for us. But we came out of it with a new formation, better football to watch, a new number 9 and we finished the season well.
This is a snapshot of what the season looks like statistically, divided (roughly) into thirds:
| P | W | D | L | F | A | Win% | Loss% | PPG | GPG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Whole Season | 38 | 19 | 8 | 11 | 56 | 52 | 50 | 29 | 1.71 | 1.47 |
| First 13 | 13 | 7 | 5 | 1 | 19 | 12 | 54 | 8 | 2.00 | 1.46 |
| Second 13 | 13 | 5 | 2 | 6 | 19 | 26 | 38 | 46 | 1.31 | 1.46 |
| Final 12 | 12 | 7 | 1 | 4 | 18 | 14 | 58 | 33 | 1.83 | 1.50 |
It’s interesting that our goals-per-game is pretty much the same between our decent first 13 games and the poorer second 13 games, which points to a problem defensively. This ties in with the long-term injury to Steven Taylor and, shortly after that, a shorter-term injury to Coloccini too, which meant we had to reorganise things and include players who, up to that point, had had little first team football. I’m sure the defence is something that the club will seek to shore up during the summer.
Stats aside, what I ‘feel’ is the main thing to address in preparation for next season is a certain ‘fragility’ we can sometimes have. On our day I believe we can take the game to the best of them but we’re also prone to crumbling a bit at times and particularly suffer when we don’t score first. I wonder why that is?
Is it because we panic when we go one down, pushing players forward too far too soon in an attempt to level things for fear of the thought of being behind? Is it psychological or is that we just don’t have players capable of digging us out of a hole? Personally, I struggle to believe we don’t have the players because these are the players that managed to secure us an admirable 5th this season and have at times looked excellent. Maybe it is some sort of panic and perhaps they need to be drilled a bit better in the art of comebacks.
Anyway, I was just taking a first look at some of the things we may need to address for next season. That takes nothing away from our excellent finish this season, so congratulations to the players and all at the club for that.
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.
We’ve had “headless chicken” 20 minutes in a couple of matches which have badly affected our goal difference. In those matches we just didn’t seem able to get hold of the ball and keep it for five minutes to take the heat out of the game.
But it’s been a fantastic season with many, many highlights.
I think Tiote may go and perhaps one other, but we’ve coped admirably with such departures.
I can’t wait for next season. Passport being dusted off already.