Gunners are our visitors on Saturday.Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for the 2011/2012 Barclays Premier League season to begin. First up for the Magpie’s is the visit to St James’ Park of Arsène Wenger’s Arsenal. This game of course was the same fixture last season which has gone down in Premier League history after the two sides ended up sharing a 4-4 draw. Can we expect the same drama come Saturday afternoon this time?
If you’re not heading to St James’ Park for the game, you’ll be able to find it via ESPN, kick-off time is at 5.30pm (BST). Undoubtedly ‘Mr. Happy’ Craig Burley will probably be co-commentating this fixture, so you may want to mute your television sets, or you could tune in to radio Newcastle while watching the action unfold. I’m also sure Robbie Savage is now a ‘pundit’ for ESPN, so you might want to tune in 5 minutes or so before kick-off. (more…)
Square pegs...The most unexpected transfer of pre-season is finally close to conclusion, with Newcastle United’s Jose Enrique getting his wish granted to strut his stuff in the UEFA Champions League next season by joining Liverpool. Wait a second…Are Liverpool competing in Europe next season?
Anyway, Mr Pardew has given a rare interview with the ‘Chronicle’ in regards to Jose’s exit and potential replacement to the left-back position. He rambled:
“Jose showed no motivation to sign a new contract and when a player is in the last year of his contract it is a difficult situation when it comes to accepting a fee.
“A replacement is ongoing as we speak. We need to put in place our back-up plan now but I think it’s unfair to name names in public.”
Maybe I’m misinterpreting our Alan here, but “we need to put in place our back-up plan now” seems pretty obvious. I’d have thought we would already have a back-up plan done and dusted before we had agreed to let Enrique leave. I mean that’s just sensible, but we all know who’s calling the shots don’t we? In fairness, Enrique hasn’t exactly helped matters either by refusing to talk about his future with the board (allegedly).
I suppose our “back-up plan” was Neil Taylor a few months back, but Swansea ousted our attempts to lure him to St James’ Park and he decided to stay on at Swansea. (more…)
Time for certain individuals to keep quietSoon after Newcastle United’s 3-2 defeat to Leeds United at Elland Road, Midfielder Joey Barton decided to once again share his opinion on the politics at St James’ Park, via his soon to be world famous ‘Twitter’ account.
Not content with sharing his knowledge on actual government politics, how clever he actually is, his GCSE results, or how rubbish American immigration are, Joey had this to say:
“If only we as players could tell the fans exactly how it is, without them above fining us lots of money. There will be a time and a place.
“If it wouldn’t effect team morale and cause unrest within the dressing room, am certain Jose’s comments would be the tip of the iceberg…..
“And again it would be left to those magnificent fans to pick up the remnants of their once great football club.
“If I wanted to leave, I’d just come out and say ‘I want to leave’. Things need addressing as am not prepared to go through a relegation again.” (more…)
Smokescreens or lack of information?Everton striker Jermaine Beckford is now the latest striker to be linked with a move to Newcastle United, if you are to believe the latest edition of the ‘Sunday Sun’.
The same paper is reporting that Newcastle have not reached any agreement over PSG striker Mevlüt Erdinç, in fact, a PSG ‘spokesman’ had this to say:
“The fax machine is on, the door is open, but no-one has made a bid.”
If the above quote is true, it kind of contradicts the noises coming from Pardew, unless of course he has been talking about someone else this past week…
So, using the favourite word of this seasons transfer window ‘allegedly’, United are allegedly looking at once former target Beckford. Newcastle tried to sign Beckford in the January of their Championship winning season, when Chris Hughton was at the helm, but couldn’t reach an agreement with his former club Leeds United. Beckford eventually did get a move in the summer of that season though, as Everton snapped him up on a free transfer.
Beckford had a slow start to life in the Premier League, but eventually towards the later months of the season, started to show his talent, and finished the season with 8 goals to his name. One of his 8 goals came on the last day of that season, in a home tie against Chelsea, where he demonstrated his pace and skill, by running over half the length of the pitch to score for the Toffee’s in a 1-0 win. (more…)
Could Ba and Erdinç be an explosive partnership?As rare as a chance to see Halley’s Comet, Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew has given an interview with the ‘Shields Gazette’ in regards to new striker Demba Ba.
Ba featured in 2 of the 3 games over in the states this last week, and Pardew has been quite happy with the Senegalese strikers overall performances thus far. More notably, Pardew has been talking about Ba’s most recent performance, in our 3-0 win against Columbus Crew, saying:
“I really enjoyed Demba’s play.
“He played slightly withdrawn. His link-up play was excellent, and his movement caught us out at times. He’s so quick, he made a move, and then a different move by the time the pass had gone.
“It was a shame he didn’t get a goal, but he was a real highlight for me, as was Dan Gosling.
“Marveaux also played well, and it was a good night for us.”
From the highlights I’ve seen, it looked very much like Dan Gosling was our star performer against the ‘Crew’. Demba Ba though, played an important role in a couple of the goals, and also was the man brought down when through on goal to earn Columbus’ ‘keeper Andy Gruenebaum a straight red card, effectively ending the game as a contest. (more…)
