Archive for category: Europa League.

Newcastle United vs Metalist Kharkiv match banter!

February 14th, 2013 | 131 Comments |

Newcastle United v Metalist Kharkiv.
“♫ Metal is tough, metal will sheen ♫”
Venue: St James’ Park, Newcastle.
Date: Thurs 14th February, 2013.
Kick off: 8.05pm.
Referee: Harald Hagen (Norway).
UK TV: ESPN.

Hello, good evening and welcome to our “match banter” feature for this evening’s Europa League game against Ukraine’s Metalist Karkiv.

As you may know already Metalist are a pretty strong team who are genarally regarded as the being the “best of the rest” behind the two Ukrainian giants, Dynamo Kyiv and Shaktar Donetsk. Hence, they won’t be any pushover. One piece of good news for the Toon however is that Metalist have recently sold their own Brazilian Benny, Taison (an excellent driblling winger / forward), to their rivals at Donetsk. Chelsea made a move for him priginally, however the club was then taken over by someone who disliked Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich so much, he preferred to sell him to one of his biggest rivals instead! (more…)

Does Pardew Know What He’s Doing Part II: Playing the Blame Game

January 22nd, 2013 | 71 Comments |

Alan Pardew points the finger.
"It's all your fault!"
It’s time for the long awaited second installment of this series looking at Alan Pardew’s role at the club, and if he know what he’s doing? (Hence the title). Because of recent events, I have decided to do a piece on his tendency to blame all and sundry other than himself for some disappointing performances this season so far.

Part II: Playing the Blame Game 

Because of all the success we had last season, anything that went slightly awry, (and there were many of them, but that’s for another day/blog) became difficult to criticise. Fans seemed to soften their opinions towards the fat man and Casino Derek (or at least turn them down to avoid derision from more optimistic supporters), and why wouldn’t they? The team was doing well and we looked like we had found stability and a vision for going forward into the future. This season however has been a different story.

The optimism gained from 11/12 was slowly eroded away, even the most committed Pardew apologists have doubts in their minds and most people now feel that he has overstayed his welcome. This deterioration in confidence doesn’t only effect the fans but also the players, the owners, but most importantly the manager. In an effort to avoid coming to terms with the reasons why his Newcastle career has gone so far downhill, Pardew now almost routinely blames different elements of the organisation (or at least ones that don’t have the platform to fight back) game to game. (more…)

Does Pardew Know What He’s Doing? Part 1: Transfers

January 6th, 2013 | 110 Comments |

Alan Pardew.
Its no longer a party with Pardew...
Alright, I’m “FarmerG” and this is my NUFCBlog debut post.

I’m going to start with a biggy; so big in fact that I’m going to split it up into bite size chunks for your digestion. Basically, this series of blogs will investigate NUFC head honcho Alan Scott Pardew’s role at the club, delving deep into the important issues surrounding the clubs fortunes since he took charge and pinpointing the deficiencies that have lead us to having not the best of seasons so far. This will be an attempt to put across my opinion that wor Alan doesn’t know the difference between what he does right and what he does wrong.

PART I: Transfers

Let me take you back to the end of May 2012, we’d finished 5th in the Premiership, our highest finish for 8 seasons, qualified for the Europa League, narrowly missing out on the Champions League, and our great leader had won both the Premier League “Manager of the Season” and LMA “Manager of the Year” awards. For a Newcastle United supporter their was nothing but optimism for the next campaign as we eagerly awaited the summer recruitment drive. And then the wheels began to fall off the bandwagon. (more…)