Same old Shearer, always scoring.Andy Carroll looks set to start for England tomorrow where he will pick up his first senior international cap against France at Wembley.
Fair play to the lad as he deserves his chance. I just hope he doesn’t pick up an injury that will keep him out of action for his club!
Anyway, I digress. It’s been a pretty meteoric rise to the top for the Gateshead lad. Just twenty months ago he was a was a benchwarmer, a young whipper-snapper with a bad reputation. At 21-years-old, he still is a whipper-snapper, and he remains as controversial now as he was back then, but his stock on the football field has risen rapidly, to the point where he is about to become the next Newcastle player to lead the line for England.
Newcastle have been blessed with English goal-scorers, certainly in recent years anyway, and it’s those years that I am going to cover in this article. I will, of course, be looking for your input on this, which will hopefully lead to a good healthy debate about England forwards that Newcastle have had on their books in years gone by. So, where do we start? (more…)
Carroll 'touch and go' for debut.There are many reason why the England team gets right on my nerves.
The World Cup shambles is one reason. The lack of passion is another, but those aren’t the only reasons why the England national side annoys me.
What we have witnessed over the last few days has been an awful torture for Newcastle fans as we await news on the extent of Andy Carroll’s groin injury. My gut instinct would be to not risk him in a friendly that has no real importance and serves only to make the FA some more money. The FA also annoy me!
I don’t want this article to be misconstrued as a rant against England. I am English myself and like to see the team win, but first and foremost I am a Newcastle United fan, and I don’t want one of our leading lights, who is carrying an inury, being risked in a meaningless friendly when there is no real need for him to play. (more…)
Haris Vuckic - Edging closer to the first team?Well here we are, a third of the way through our season, sitting in eighth place. Arguably we could be even higher, but eighth place isn’t bad at all, and is more than I expected anyway.
Of course, being a third of the way through the season also has it pitfalls. It’s a well used cliche, but it is a long, hard season, and injuries and suspensions soon mount up.
Newcastle are going through a little spell of injuries and suspensions themselves at the moment. The suspensions to Joey Barton and Chieck Tiote have added to what seems to be a growing injury list, with Andy Carroll being the latest player to encounter some form of injury problem after he picked up a groin problem in the 0-0 draw against Fulham at the weekend – An injury that could hamper bigger lad making his England debut on Wednesday night.
Few can deny that losing Carroll will be a massive blow to the team, if we do end up losing him to injury of course. The Gatsehead lad has established himself as a key figure in th Newcastle side, and losing what he brings to the team is far from ideal. The exact same thing can be said for Cheick Tiote who has been largely excellent since his he made his debut against Everton back in September. (more…)
Joey Barton and his latest transgression.Last week we saw the red mist descend on Joey Barton once more as he lashed out at Blackburn’s Morten Gamst Pederson.
Whether you call it punch, dig, slap, tickle or whatever, the fact remains that Joey Barton raised his hands on the football pitch. Regardless of what other players at other teams get away with, what Barton did was wrong.
The video evidence was damning, and the fact that the referee missed the incident completely left Joey open to retrospective punishment from the FA. This punishment has, of course, been delivered, and Barton started off his three-match ban against Fulham at the weekend, which is a real shame as he was beginning to make people change their opinions about him. Even if they weren’t changing their opinions on him, he gave them no reason to get on his back. He could just simply play his football. (more…)
The dynamic duo is no more.It’s been around about a month since Colin Calderwood left his post as assistant manager at Newcastle to become the new manager of Hbernian.
Fair play, wish him all the best and all that malarkey, but his departure has left a rather sizeable hole in what was already a limited backroom staff setup.
As it stands we have only Chris Hughton and Paul Barron who are dedicated to working with the first-team, and the latter one of those is actually supposed to be a goalkeeping coach. Then we have Steve Stone and Peter Beardsley in the background floating around with the reserves and youth setup, which is all very good, but even if they pitched in and helped with the first-team it would still leave us stretched.
What Chris Hughton is missing, more than anything at the moment, is an assistant that he can rely on, and that man has to be someone of his choosing as he needs to be able to trust him and work with him. Perhaps something can be sorted in that department this week? (more…)
