Pardew defends “inexperienced” and “overmotivated” players
Posted on May 4th, 2013 | 12 Comments |
Seemingly relishing the chance to shift the the cold finger of blame from himself to the players in the guise of defending them, the silver one reacted to Luke Edwards’ Observer story which alleged a rift in the dressing room and earned the former Journal hack a ban from Press access to the club. On this he began:
“Some of the criticism of the French group has been so unfair on them.”
He then went on to explain that the latest reason for the club’s recent hammerings has been the Premier League inexperience of his January signings (Debuchy, Gouffran, Sissoko and Haidara), along with Cheick Tiote’s “overmotivation” apparently. On this, Pardew continued:
“The only thing that they lack is experience in the division and the intensity has caught them out.”
“I’ll be the first to admit that the January signings have been poor in some games but they’ve been magnificent in others and unfortunately it’s that consistency you have to gain. We don’t need more fight or more passion, just to use the experience they’ve gained and put it to good use.
Moving on to what he calls the players’ overmotivation problem, Pardew went on:
“They’re motivated, sometimes over-motivated and they make mistakes. I could give you an example of Cheick who was desperate to win on Saturday and made a couple of errors in trying to get a win for us on his own – it doesn’t work like that.
“That’s the sort of inexperience we have. The young left-back [Massaido Haidara] bombs forward at 3-0 because he thinks that’s what he needs to do to influence the game.
Though Haidara is a fairly young player who has only played a few Premier League games, Tiote is now coming to the end of his third season in the division Getting back to Haidara though, most of Liverpool’s goals didn’t come down his side, they came down Mathieu Debuchy’s side, who admittedly put in a truly awful performance, possibly the worst of all before he was sent off for yet another rash and stupid challenge which would have been “inexperienced” in any league. Pardew also omitted to mention that the highly experieced Premier League players like Steven Taylor and Jonas Gutierrez were every bit as awful as the latest Gallic influx last Saturday. However, he did finally end on a positive note with:
“I am confident they can get us the points they need.”
Let’s hope so.
Pardew continued his “inexperience” theme in other outpourings to the Press too on the eve of Newcastle United’s game against West Ham at their place. This time however, he added a wish to sign a Kevin Nolan like player in the Summer, bemoaning that his current players don’t have that Nolan “nous” for a win. After trotting out the same kind of stuff I have already quoted above Pardew said of his ex-Captain:
“What Kevin has is a real knowledge of how to win games. As Sam Allardyce does and that’s what we are up against on Saturday. James Collins, Mark Noble, these are players who I know very well and they have nous. That’s a word I used a lot about Kevin as he used to find positions on his pitch just through his own nous, he is sniffing chances out. He is a worry for us. In terms of leadership in the group we have got leadership but in a different ways.
“I wouldn’t say Colo is like Kevin, I wouldn’t say Cabaye is like Kevin, or Shola is like Kevin but they are kind of our leading group and we look to them now.”
Fianlly, when asked about summer transfers Pardew said:
“That’s a question I don’t really want to answer at this time. The marker is the market. We will certainly at the end of the year have a discussion about where we are going to trade, where is best for the group.”
Will he be making a move for Nolan and Carroll if we survive relegation? If so, that would certainly be ironic.
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NUFCBlog Author: workyticket
workyticket has written 1095 articles on this blog.
The bloke is an idiot, the players we already had guttieriez, obertan, ameobi, cabaye and tiote have been woeful at times this season so unfair to single out January signings, has he never stopped to think it’s his own shitty tactics and playing players out of position which has them performing poorly???? The sooner we are shot of him the better! !