Sigurosson and Pino - alleged Toon targetsNewcastle United look like a team going places – well, at least to Europe – and they’re sure to need to strengthen the squad to cope with it. Cue a string of rumours about alleged interest in various players.
According to The Daily Mirror, Alan Pardew has made ‘discreet enquiries’ about the availability of Gylfi Sigurðsson. So discreet were these enquiries that The Daily Mirror could offer no evidence of them taking place other than their say-so, although we were apparently interested in the Hoffenheim player before his loan move to Swansea so it’s possible that there’s some truth in them.
The 22 year-old, Icelandic midfielder has spent a lot of his professional career in England. He was on Reading’s books from 2008-2010 during which time he was also loaned out to Shrewsbury and Crewe. Then he joined 1899 Hoffenheim in 2010 only to come back to England for his loan spell at Swansea this season. All-in-all, he has 128 first team appearances to his name and 44 goals with his spell at Swansea being particularly good where he’s bagged 7 goals in 15 appearances. (more…)
Happy? Reasonably so it seems.Newcastle United striker Demba Ba was allegedly ‘unhappy’ when he was taken off against Bolton but there was little hint of any unhappiness in Ba’s recent interview.
There has been a bit of speculation about whether or not Demba Ba is happy to play on the left of a front three but the man himself has come out and said that he his. Sort of.
Ba said:
“The coach told me he would put me on the left and, for the team, I thought, ‘Let’s do it’. I know the qualities of Papiss as a finisher.
“As a striker, you like to be in the striking position but now the coach has made the decision – he has decided Papiss will be there.
“I do what I have to do to balance the formation for the good of the team. If I can be in the finishing area, I do everything to be there. If I cannot be there, we do the work for Papiss.”
So it’s obvious he’d prefer to be playing right in front of goal but he seems to be prepared to do a job wherever he has to play, which is what I’d expect of a professional like Ba. (more…)
Vertonghen - too expensive?Newcastle United are allegedly interested in Ajax’s Jan Vertonghen but is he a realistic target given the interest of some fairly big clubs?
According to The Chronicle the latest player of interest to Newcastle is Ajax captain Jan Vertonghen but, personally, I reckon he might be a bit pricey for us.
The 6ft 2.5in, 24 year-old, left-footed Belgian international is estimated to be worth £10m+ and the Dutch press seems to be reporting interest in him from Arsenal and Man Utd rather than us. Furthermore, one article suggests Arsenal’s interest stretches to €18m, which is nearly £15m and, I would suggest, well outside what we’re likely to pay for a player.
If there’s any truth in it though, we’d be after a fairly experienced player with 233 club games and 30 goals to his name, and 36 appearances for Belgium in which he’s scored twice.
His preferred position is as a centre-back but apparently he can play as a defensive midfielder too and pretty much anywhere on the left side. This sort of versatility does seem to be the sort of thing Alan Pardew likes and at 24 he seems to fit the profile of the sort of player we employ these days. (more…)
For puposes of illustration onlyNewcastle United striker Demba Ba undergoes cryogenic treatment and tweets accordingly.
I can remember a time when it was all the rage for ‘eccentrics’ to have their head removed and stored in freezing conditions. After death that is. It’s definitely not recommended before death as heads can be useful to living beings, not least as a place to keep a hat. The premise was that in some far-flung future the technology would be available to either transplant the head onto a new body or somehow ‘download’ the brain’s data into a computer and carry on a life within some technical reality.
Personally I have no truck with ‘far-flung futures’. When I was about 12 or 13 – which would be at a time when flares, fizzy cola bottles and Earth Wind & Fire were the vogue – my maths teacher told me that, by the year 2000, technology would have replaced much of the work people do and that we’d all just turn up for work two days a week and live a life of leisure the rest of the time.
Needless that turned out to be the single most inaccurate thing I learnt at school and I’m sure my professional life would have been completely different if I hadn’t been taught that by the year 2000 I could loll around on beaches all day and still collect a fat pay-cheque.
Anyway, that’s all padding for a post that is about nothing more than Demba Ba’s recent cryogenic treatment. He didn’t remove his head but instead removed his clothes and spent 3 minutes in a room cooled to -110C, which is exceedingly chilly, and tweeted thusly: (more…)
Dare we dream?European qualification is now looking very possible for Newcastle United, so what is involved in terms of games and what sort of pay-off can we expect from a decent run?
With European qualification looking ever more likely for Newcastle, it’s probably worth having a look at what qualification would mean to us in terms of the games we’d need to play.
The Europa league consists of 3 qualifying rounds, a play-off stage, 48-team a group stage, a round of 32, a round of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals and a final. Astonishingly, if a team from the first qualifying round gets to the final they’d have played 23 additional games in their season.
The first two qualifying rounds need not worry us though as the English League is ranked number 1 according to the UEFA coefficients and we can thus enter the competition at a higher stage. We have 3 places allocated to us for the Europa League. The most prestigious place goes to the FA Cup winners, who enter at the group stage. Then the 5th placed side in the Premier League enter at the play-off stage and the least prestigious place goes to the League Cup winners who enter in the third qualifying round. If a team qualifies more than once for a Europa League place they take the most prestigious slot they qualified for and the ‘reserve qualifier’ gets the less prestigious slot. (more…)
