Highlights of this evening’s Europa League match between Newcatle United and Metalist Kharkiv at St James’ Park.
Better ESPN highlights (opens in new window).
Newcastle United vs Metalist Kharkiv full match video.
Score / Goalscorers. (more…)
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…)
Speaking in the wake of a 1-0 Champions League victory for Wenger’s foreign mercenaries over Real Madrid, a game where not a single English player was fielded for Arsenal (though Madrid had two, Jonathan Woodgate and David Beckham), Pardew fumed:
“I saw a headline saying Arsenal are flying the flag for Britain, I kind of wondered where that British involvement actually was when I looked at their team. It’s important clubs, especially top clubs, don’t lose sight of the that. It’s the English Premier League and English players should be involved.”
While Pardew acknowledged the contribution foreign players have made to the Premiership, he feared that things were now getting out of hand, adding: (more…)
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…)
“‘Phenomenal’ was all a breathless Fred Rutten (Vitesse Arnhem’s manager) could say. A word so rarely uttered in the Eredivisie it took many by surprise. Phenomenal you say? In truth no other superlative could do justice to the display of incredible forward play he had the pleasure of witnessing from one of European footballs most in form strikers. Wilfried Bony.”
Oranje Wednesdays: The extraordinary swagger of Wilfried Bony.
Vitesse Arnhem’s 24 year old muscled magician, Wilfried “Daddy Cool” Bony is currently the Eredivisie’s highest scorer and with very good reason. Cheick Tiote’s Ivory Coast team mate is now seen as a natural successor to Didier Drogba with his great strength, dynamism, hold-up play, aerial threat, great finishing abilty and importantly, superb techinique on the ball – He also has a good injury history too. (more…)