The Toon are back! Your full NUFC pre season guide (Part two)

Posted on July 14th, 2012 | 24 Comments |

Káposztás Utcai Stadion, Sopron, Hungary.
Káposztás Utcai Stadion, Sopron, Hungary.
Pre season guide part one

Fenerbahçe S.K. v Newcastle United.

Date: Saturday, 21st July.
Venue: Káposztás Utcai Stadion, Sopron, Hungary.
Kick off: 7pm local time / 6pm UK time
Tickets TBC.
UK TV: Live on ESPN UK.

This one sees the Magpies making another step up as they take on last years runners up from the Turkish Super Lig.

This one against the Istanbul club will be another “battle of the birds” as Fenerbahçe, like Norwich City over here, are known as the Canaries back in their native Turkey.

Formed in 1907, the Istanbul giants have been Turkish Süper Lig champions no less than 18 times, also winning the Turkish Cup five times and the Turkish Super Cup eight times. They feature a few names which will be familiar, including ex Liverpool forward and winger, Dirk Kuyt, who tranferred to the yellow Canaries at the end of last season. Another name from the team is Demba Ba’s mate from Senegal, Moussa Sow, who was the subject of Newcastle United transfer speculation when he was a Lille player in the past, with him being Ba’s mate and Yohan Cabaye’s former team mate and such.

Anyway, Fenerbahçe aren’t to be sniffed at, and these Turkish canaries should provide a very stiff test for the Magpies indeed!

Please note: Since the time of writing, the venue for this game has now been changed to the Sonnenseestadion, the home of Austrian club, SC Ritzing.

Address: Sportplatz 1, 7323 Ritzing, Austria / Österreich.
Telephone: +43 (2682) 704 720
e.mail: office@sc-ritzing.at
S.C. Ritzing club website.

Olympiacos CFP v Newcastle United.

Estádio Algarve.
Estádio Algarve, Faro, Portugal.
Date: Friday, 27th July
Venue: Estádio Algarve, Faro, Portugal
Kick off: 8.45pm local and UK time
Tickets TBC.
UK TV: Live on ESPN UK.

This will be the first of two games for the Magpies which form part of the “Guadiana Torneo” at the Portuguese Estádio Algarve in Faro, which will also see the Toon facing Portuguese champions and former Champions League winners, the mighty F.C. Porto S.C. Braga (see below for details of that game).

The full itinerary of matches will be:

Thursday, 26th July: S.C. Braga v Olympiacos (8.45pm kick-off local and UK time)
Friday, 27th July: Newcastle United v Olympiacos (8.45pm kick-off local and UK time)
Saturday, 28th July: Newcastle United v S.C. Porto (8.45pm kick-off local and UK time)

Getting back to the first game though, another big test awaits with the clash against Olympiacos “CFP”. “CFP” is an acronym of “Olympiacos Club of Fans of Piraeus,” which was founded in 1925 as a result of the merger between Piraeus Football Club and the Piraeus Fan Club. As you may have guessed by now if you didn’t know already, they are from Piraeus, the port area of the Greek capital, Athens. Olympiacos are biggest trophy winners in Greek football, having won an incredible 39 Greek Superleague Championships, 25 Greek Cups and 4 Greek Super Cups. They are also the current Greek Superleague champions.

Premiership fans will recognise ex Manchester United goalkeeper, Roy Carroll amongst their ranks, along with a host of players from the Greek national side such as Vasilis Torosidis, the Olympiacos captain and several more, so it may be a stiff test to break through their back end if they are as stubborn and obstinate as the Greek national side in defence.

S.C. Braga v Newcastle United.

Date: Saturday, 28th July
Venue: Estádio Algarve, Faro, Portugal
Kick off: 8.45pm local and UK time
Tickets TBC.
UK TV: Live on ESPN UK.

Originally, this was going to Portuguese giants, F.C. Porto, however, this was changed a few days ago, and their place will now be taken by another Portuguese club, S.C. Braga.

Founded in 1921 in the city of, er, Braga, this team have usually been a “best of the rest” side outside of the Portuguese “big three” of Porto, Benfica and Sporting Club of Portugal (aka Sporting Lisbon). In the last few seasons however, Braga have been breaking through into the top three Champions League places, coming second in the 2009/10 season and third last season. Though not quite Porto, who have bestrode the top of the Primeira Liga over the last decade like a mighty Colossus, they should nonetheless provide some very substantial opposition for the Magpies.

One of their star midfielders will undoubtedly be a familiar face to quite a few Toon fans as it’s Hugo Viana. Signed for Newcastle by Robby Bobson in June, 2002 for what was thought to be £8.5 million, the skilful mid never quite fulfilled his potential in a more physical Premiership and ended up being loaned back to his original club, the above mentioned Sporting Club in 2004, eventually making a permanent move to Valencia in Spain under Robson’s successor, Greame Souness in the summer of 2005.

One ex Braga legend was a personal favourite of mine, not just for his excellent goalkeeping skills for Braga, Benfica and the Portuguese national side, but also for his name, “Quim”.

Gateshead FC v Newcastle United Reserves.

Gateshead International Stadium.
Closest thing to a home pre season fixture so far.
Date: Wednesday, 1st August
Venue: Gateshead International Stadium
Kick off: 7.30pm
Tickets TBC.
UK TV: None.

Only a short trip ower the watta for this one against the mighty ‘Heed.

As you can see, this one is only designated as a reserves game, though it will hardly be different from the Chemnitzer friendly mentioned in the first part of this guide, where the club fielded what was more or less a reserve team anyway.

On a historical trivia note, most of you will know that Newcastle United had a great period in the FA Cup in the early and mid fifties, winning the competition in 1951, 1952 and 1955. What you may not know is that Gateshead also had a great period in the FA Cup during the same period. Of course, they haven’t won it, but in the 1952/3 season, they even reached the quarter final stages, and were very unlucky to be knocked out by Bolton even then! At 0–0 late in the game, Bolton defender, Eric Bell, handled the ball inside of the penalty area (which Bell later admitted). However, the referee missed it and Bolton quickly broke on the counter with Bolton and England legend Nat Lofthouse eventually heading the ball past Gateshead goalkeeper, Bob Gray, to steal the match with a solitary goal.

Getting back to the present though, this Toon-Heed clash seems to be as close as it gets to a “home” pre season match so far.

ADO Den Haag v Newcastle United.

ADO Den Haag's Kyocera Stadion.
ADO Den Haag's Kyocera Stadion.
Date: Saturday, 4th August
Venue: Kyocera Stadium, the Hague.
Kick off: 5.00pm local time, 4pm UK time
Tickets See below
UK TV: TBC.

Founded in 1905 as just “ADO”, ADO Den Haag (Alles Door Oefening Den Haag = “All Through Exercise – The Hague”) is the primary team of the Netherlands’ third city, administrative capital and home of the International Court of Justice.

Despite being a team from a beautiful historic city, the fans of Den Haag have had something of a reputation on the past for being a bit “tasty,” a kind of Dutch Millwall. Last season they finished 15th in the Dutch Eredivisie, and haven’t had any recent success in terms of trophies. However, they did win the Dutch league title twice whilst the Netherlands suffered under the yoke of Nazi occupation in 1942 and 1943. They also won the Dutch Cup in 1968 and 1975. Nowadays though, they are generally a lower end Eredivisie team on a fairly low budget in terms of players, and have done well to stay in the Eredivisie since they last achieved promotion at the end of the 2006–07 season. On a trivia note, they are “twinned” with the Premiership’s Swansea City and the two clubs regularly fly each other’s flags at games, and regularly hold pre-season friendly matches like this one!

The most legendary coach in their history was undoubtedly the Austrian, Ernst Happel, who started his coaching career at Den Haag, eventually becoming one of the greatest coaches who ever lived. It was he who steered them to their abovementioned Dutch cup success in 1968 before moving on to greater success with another Dutch club, Feyenoord, with whom he won a brace of trophies including the European Cup in 1970, the start of the golden age in Dutch club football which saw football geniuses such as Happel and Rinus Michels guiding Feyenoord and Ajax to complete European domination. But I digress!

Getting back to the match, this one has yet to be confirmed by sloppy Newcastle, though it has been by Den Haag and tickets details are below:

Ticket prices: Haaglandentribune: €12.50 (touchline), Aad Mansveldtribune: €10 (behind the goal). Prices are excluding handling fee.

Availability: Tickets sold at the main entrance of the stadium (Saturday, Sunday and Monday closed), Tuesday to Thursday 12:00 – 18:00, Friday 12:00 – 20:00 and on the matchday at the office on the other side of the stadium from 11.00 o’clock.

The End.

Pre season guide part one

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NUFCBlog Author: workyticket workyticket has written 1096 articles on this blog.

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Comment on this post

24 Responses

  2. Aye Jack, I’m just sorting that out now, sorry for the slight delay. There was two reasons for that, I haven;t been very well and plumbers have been channging all my hot water and radiators all day.

    I’ll give you a hint for now, most people fell at the “minutes per goal” fence for Papiss Cisse. I used the Premiership “OPTA” stats and several others for the answer, and even calculated it myself using every minute he was on the pitch divided by the amount of goals he scored. His average is great, but not quite as great as some people seemed to think it was. ;-)

  3. I don’t know if there is truth to some of these transfer rumours but they certainly are stupid. Santon for Krkic after he has just started to settle.

    Simpson leaving for only 2 million is bad business, and everybody’s defense of the former fat man is that he is a good businessman.

    And Andy Carrol to West Ham would put the icing on the cake of Liverpool stupidity. He’s a good player, why wouldn’t you keep him. Is it out of sight out of mind?

  5. Riza says:

    July 14, 2012 at 7:11 pm

    “Braga will replace FCPorto on that tournament mate, and Cardiff (Aug11)”

    Correct, Riza, they have, and we are.

  6. jack72 says:
    July 14, 2012 at 6:09 pm

    “Worky whats happening wiv the last quiz mate n what were the answers?”

    OK Jack, I’m gannin’ to post a full blog announcing the winners and everything first thing in the morning, but to put everyone out of their misery with the answers, here they are:

    Papiss Cisse answers:

    1. 22 goals in 2010/2011 season,
    2. EFFIFU AWARD,
    3. For the goals per minute question, there was a very slight variation between stats providers, but anyone who put 85 or 86 minutes per goal was marked as correct, and there weren’t many!
    4, Douanes Dakar, Metz, Cherbourg, Châteauroux, SC Freiburg.

    Hatem Ben Arfa answers:

    1. £2 million,
    2. Tibia and Fibula,
    3. Blackburn Rovers, FA Cup, 7th January, 2012.

  7. GS says:
    July 14, 2012 at 7:04 pm

    “Simpson leaving for only 2 million is bad business”

    Aye, he’s worth a fair bit more than £2 million nowadays, GS, but the hacks have worked in the fact that he’s in the last year of his contract before conjuring up that figure from their fertile imaginations.

  8. For those who may be in Portugal and are thinking of attending a game there, i recomend it, as their stadiums are excellent and the natives are friendly, their food amongst the best as are their wines.
    With quite a few sides located around the Porto area, Braga being one.

    I thought the new home strip looked decent, simple black and white stripes, untill i saw the back, ffs how can you screw up like that, simple by puting an eormous white area for the number.
    What kind of tasteless idiots would feck up a simple black and white strip like that, i dont get it, are Puma not considered a sports fashion house, do they not hire designers.
    I wonder!

    Well looks like Debuchy is close to signing, to be followed by Douglas and hopefully a decent LB.
    but then there are rumors concerning a trade with Roma, Santon for their former Barca. wonderkind striker.
    Whats the panic concerning strikers, we have two of the best, with Ba insisting he wants to stay ?
    If we are to play a 4=3=3 then one will have to be benched, cause Ba was poor as a winger and wants to be upfront.
    Plus we have a now fit Marveaux and a pretty good backup in young Ferguson for the left wing role.
    I’m using the general lineup indicators of a now defunct system, as these positions are as outdated as center half, inside right and left half of half a cenntury ago.
    But the UK has always been behind the curve tacticly.
    Relying on power and physicality, rather than technique and tactics, apart from a few managers with insight.
    Rodgers as opposed to Dalglish for instance, with Carroll who represents the (geordie favorite Big Center Forward)old football vs. the modern game.
    Question remains what kind of football can we expect from Pardew and which camp does he belong to ?

  9. Why do we have to play the same system every week Chuck. It looks to me that we will have two attacking fullbacks now in Santon and Debuchy, totally different to Taylor and Simpson.

    Some times it may be best to play Cisse and Ba in a 4-4-2. Ben Arfa can’t play every game you know and Marveaux is not a pure replacement.

    I don’t know enough to figure this out, hopefully Pardew does.

    By the way, and this is a serious question because I can’t remember, but did we play 4-3-3 when we got tonked by Spurs and Wigan?

  10. I seem to remember Pardew tinkering mid-game at Wigan and then doing something else?

  11. chuck says:
    July 15, 2012 at 1:26 am

    “But the UK has always been behind the curve tacticly.”

    No Chuck, English teams were the best teams in Europe by a long way in the late seventies and early eighties, with English players and English managers playing excellent football which was great to watch. We had a complete stranglehold on the European Cup with teams such as Paisley’s Liverpool and Clough’s Nottingham Forest until UEFA and Margaret Thatcher got English teams banned over Heysel. Even Aston Villa won it in 1982, and even the shit kickers of Ipswich won the UEFA Cup in 1981 with a little Geordie help from Robby Bobson. It was a big thing when he brought a mere two Dutch players into his squad. By the time we were back in European Competition, everything had changed.

  13. 85/86min per goal?????
    Sure it was opta stats i looked that up on Worky.think it was 72or78mins they had plus he was the best in prem For mins per goal…bad question Worky mate as there are to many different answers to that..but all in all good quiz…

  14. Do you get what I am saying though? Ferguson gets plaudits for adapting his formation, Mourihno even more so. Spain played 4-6-0. Pardew gets panned though and needs to stick to a “modern” 4-3-3 and there is no place in the game for Angy Carroll’s type?

    I think we are setting up to outscore teams so it might be wild.

  15. jack72 says:
    July 15, 2012 at 2:50 am

    “For mins per goal…bad question Worky mate as there are to many different answers to that..but all in all good quiz… ”

    Aye, in hindsight you may have a point, Jack. Honestly though, as I stated in the piece, whilst there was some very slight variation, all the reputable ones I checked, including OPTA, had 85.something minutes per goal. My OPTA stats are by subscription and require a password, but here’s some from the German “Transfermarkt” site:

    http://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/en/papiss-demba-cisse/leistungsdaten/spieler_33952_2011.html

    I even painstakingly went through all of his games checking substituion times and such just to make absolutely sure as I didn’t want to be unfair. When I calculated it that way I came up with 85 minutes too.

  16. Chuck, you rail against the Italians with their Capuccino, and hail the Spaniards with their 4-6-0, but do you know who was the first to play 4-6-Nowt?

    Luciano Spalleti at Roma.

    Check him out. ;-)

  18. jc toon says:
    July 15, 2012 at 7:06 am

    “Robby Bobson? Is that a joke or a typo?”

    That’s what the Viz comic used to call him, jc toon. When people make a typo of his name, it’s nearly always “Booby Robson.”

  19. As I mentioned in an update to the piece above earlier, the venue for Fenerbahce game has now been changed from Soprom in Hungary to Ritzing in Austria (details above).

  20. Workey
    Afraid it’s you who’s wrong, the English sides of the seventies played the same old fifties football, the diffrence was they had good players in those days, many of whom were Scots.
    Look at both England and Scotland now, what happened ?
    In case you disagree check out the EPL and find out how many English players are involved.
    In fact check out our own NUFC.

  21. chuck says:
    July 15, 2012 at 10:53 pm

    “Workey
    Afraid it’s you who’s wrong, the English sides of the seventies played the same old fifties footbal”

    No they didn’t, and Brian Clough was a very famous advocate of a short, passing game as opposed to the style favoured by his great foe, Don Revie, at Leeds United. Hence his legendary quote:

    “If God had wanted us to play football in the clouds, he’d have put grass up there.”

    I’ve seen Clough’s Nottingham Forest during their great period, and Paisley’s Liverpool. You just grasp at vague stereotypes without any real background knowledge to support your obvious hatred of the British in general.

  23. Workey
    I never railed against the cattenacio, i merely mentioned it’s existence as a style played for the most part by the Italian sides.
    It’s true i thought of it as an anti football style of playing, very boring.
    I also doubt very much that Roma were the innitiators of the present style played by both Barca and the Sanish national eleven.
    And i never called it a 4-6-0, i said the played a flat four at the back, with six little guys with tremendous techniqe, playing in interchanging positions, with no designated Striker.
    Even getting rid of Ibrahamovich the great Swedish striker, not becaus he could’nt play, but for the same reason Rodgers wants rid of Carroll.
    He does’nt fit in with the style being played.
    Now if we want Carroll back, that in itself is proof that we cannot expect to see any form of modern football played by Pardew in the near future.
    Not that i expected it, shame really, cause we are bringing in the horses who have the technique to play a modern (possession) game.