The Saints are marching in!Venue: St James’ Park, Newcastle. Date: Sat 14th Dec, 2013. Kick off: 3.00pm. Referee: Mike Jones. UK TV: None.
Hello, good afternoon and welcome to my latest ‘match banter’ feature for this afternoon’s game against Southampton.
This could be the last one for a while, if at all. I thought I’d do one last set of matchday blogs though to let all you regular readers know that I won’t be doing any more for a while at least as there are far better things I could be doing with my life right now.
Anyway looking forward this afternoon’s game, one intersting statistic is that Southampton are the last team Newcastle United managed to score more than two goals against in a competitive match. That was way back on the 24th February when the Magpies won a 4-2 victory at St James’ Park on an embarrassing and contrived ‘French Day’ where Geordies collaborated with Mike Ashley in reducing the entire history of one of Europe’s greatest countries down to mustachioed Breton Onion Johnnies and Can-can girls. (more…)
The Silver Fox: OK, but no fist pump.The 9th December marked the third anniversary of Alan Pardew’s appointment as Newcastle United manager, with the 11th being the third anniversary of his first game in charge, a 3-1 victory over Kenny Dalglish’s Liverpool.
So, bearing that in mind, I thought I would look at Pardew’s 113 Premier League games, crunch some numbers and see what we can learn.
As well as the results, one other thing I have used to assess Pardew’s performance is Transfermarkt’s table of Premier League clubs ranked by the value of their squads. I have been consulting this for quite a few years now, and when Newcastle United were first promoted from the Championship under Pardew’s predecessor, Chris Hughton, Newcastle had the 12th most valuable squad, worth around £90 million like Aston Villa or West Bromwich Albion today. However, some astute signings whose value increased such as Hatem Ben Arfa and Chieck Tiote took this up to around ninth by the time by the time Hughton was replaced by Pardew. With a further influx of cut price talent, mostly from France, they soon rose a couple of places higher to seventh. Since then Newcastle have slipped back to eighth behind Everton, who have been the closest side to Newcastle United squad wise over the last few seasons. Basically over that period there has been a top six of Manchester City, Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham. After that there is something of a gap until you find Everton and Newcastle. Then, after another fairly large gap there is the rest. (more…)
Two teams needing to bounce back.Venue: Old Trafford, Manchester. Date: Sat 7th Dec, 2013. Kick off: 12.45pm. Referee: Andre Marriner. UK TV: BT Sport.
Well both teams go into this one still reeling from defeats in midweek.
For the Magpies, Alan Pardew’s four game winning streak was brought to a shuddering halt after a tactical masterclass in adversity from Swansea’s Michael Laudrup. After losing their third striker Alvaro Vazquez to a groin strain, Laudrup reacted by bringing on Nathan Dyer and using Jonjo Shelvey in a so called ‘false nine’ role. They went on to transform the game with a goal each, with Shelvey also forcing Mathieu Debuchy into scoring an own goal for a 3-0 defeat.
Newcastle United are still roughly where they should be in the league though, seventh. Meanwhile, Manchester United certainly aren’t after their midweek defeat to Everton. The Red Devils thought they’d try a grumpy Glaswegian as manager for a change, but now find themselves languishing two places below the Magpies in ninth place with only six wins from their fourteen Premier League games so far. (more…)
Swansea: The victims of some pathetic refereeing this season.Venue: Liberty Stadium, Swansea. Date: Wed 4th Dec, 2013. Kick off: 7.45pm. Referee: Howard Webb. UK TV: BT Sport.
Hello, good evening and welcome to our latest ‘match banter’ feature for this evening’s game against Swansea City at their place.
Poor old Swansea haven’t had much luck recently. Amongst other things they have been the victims of some of some of the most awful deciosions, and it has usually cost them points, as it did against Valencia and Stoke most recently.
Personally, I think Michael Laudrup needs to be a little more like Alex Ferguson or Jose Mourinho. They know that match officiating, like parking enforcement is one of those jobs that just attracts the wrong kind of people mostly, little Hitlers. They know that there is no point whatsoever in being nice and respectful to them as that will just make them respect you even less, you have to make them fear you. Swansea are too nice and Laudrup and his players really need to start getting in their faces a bit more. Having written all that, I do hope that the Magpies win this game fair and square this evening, rather than having to rely on some dreadful decision. (more…)
Can we throttle the Throstles for four in a row?Venue: St James’ Park, Newcastle. Date: Sat 30th Nov, 2013. Kick off: 5.30pm. Referee: Phil Dowd. UK TV: Sky Sports 1.
Could we be celebrating four wins in a row this evening?
If the Magpies do manage to wrestle a juicy three point worm from the Throstles at tea time, it would be the first first time they have managed such a feat since March and April of 2012. Back then, they beat Norwich, this evening’s opponents, Liverpool, Swansea, Bolton and finally Stoke in a 6 match winning run, before finally succumbing to a 4-0 hammering at Wigan.
Although that was in the Spring before last, the side had an unseasonal 4-3-2-1 ‘Christmas Tree’ formation with a potent ‘delta force’ of Demba Ba, Papiss Cisse and Hatem Ben Arfa up front. During the West Brom game in that run I jokingly referred to Alan Pardew as ‘Alan Pardiola.’ The Guardian’s North East football correspondent, Louise Taylor, actually took me seriously and the phrase stuck amongst spme fans for a while. (more…)
