Highlights from yesterday evening’s monkey hanger massacre at Victoria Park. There are also some other highlights here.
Hartlepool United were trounced 5-1 with Shola Ameobi opening the account for Newcastle after only 3 minutes, latching on to an irresistable low cross right across the face of the Hartlepool goal by new lad, Romain Amalfitano. Sadly though, the big lad picked up some kind of knock just before half time and was out of the game for the second half. (more…)
What went wrong?“We do not want to put prices up. People might say we have put membership up on the season tickets. But that is going straight into the Academy. It was discounted for the first year but that is going into the Academy because we need to find the money from somewhere.”
Said Derek Llambias defending the introduction of compulsory membership to buy season and away tickets, and also it’s subsequent increase from £15 to £25 after only a year.
There was also much bragging about the huge sums being invested in the Academy, with Newcastle seeking to emulate the Barcelona “la Masia” model started by Johan Cruyff, which has acheived so much success for the Catalan club. As we predicted back in June, and now know for sure, when it came to attaining “Elite Player Performance Plan” Category One status, it turned out that they didn’t even manage to emulate the Wolves, Stoke City and Blunderland models, with even Championship neighbours, Middlesbrough looking likely to achieve what Newcastle United couldn’t. The other clubs who have now been informed they have been successful are Fulham, Southampton and West Ham, Chelsea, Manchester City and Manchester United, with Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham, Everton, Aston Villa, Reading, Bolton Wanderers, Norwich, West Brom and Watford still waiting to be audited by the organisation carrying out the inspections, “Foot Pass England.” Troubled Blackburn Rovers and Crystal Palace are the other clubs who have been told they have failed in their repective attempts to obtiain the highest designation.
Douglas: Nutter.Speaking in an interview for “talksport” radio, their consultant on matters of Dutch football, Marcel van der Kraan, suggested that Newcastle United’s alleged pursuit of FC Twente centre back, Douglas Franco Teixeira, has been complicated by the fact that he is a Brazilian who is owned by three Brazilian agents, who will all want “a big share of the pie” as van der Kraan put it.
After explaining that both Newcastle United’s manager and scouting department have been in the stands at Twente closely checking out the “big unit” centre back, van der Kraan went on to outline the difficulties of signing Brazilian players in general due to the highly complicated ownership of players by agents rather than clubs, saying:
“The tragic thing about this is that Brazilian players are owned by three different people in their own country. When they’re young, they sign contracts for agents instead of clubs – The agents hold the ownership of the player. It’s a card, what they call the player’s pass, and that is usually signed by the player and his parents for about ten years or even longer. They’re sold to the agent, and the agent has ridiculous power over the player for so many years. (more…)
Two evenings, two games, two Newcastle United teams!Date: Friday, 27th July. Venue: Estádio Algarve, Faro, Portugal. Kick off: 8.45pm local and UK time. UK TV: Live on ESPN UK.
Hello, good evening and welcome to our match banter feature for this evening’s game, which sees the Magpies facing current Greek Superleague champions, Olympiacos, at the Estádio Algarve, Faro, Portugal.
This will be the first game for the Magpies in the pre season “Guadiana Torneo,” with the next, against SC Braga taking place tomorrow. With two games so close together, our Silver Supremo, Alan Pardew, will be fielding two almost entirely different teams for each game, and on this his assistant, John Carver said:
“It’s a little bit different to last week, we’re now three weeks into the pre-season training. Now we go into a competition format and the manager will play two different teams each night.
“Everybody will play some part. Some will get 90 minutes.”(more…)
Santon: Totally settled in now (but misses his Italian scran)Davide Santon has given another fairly extensive interview for the Italian CalcioMercato.com (Football Market), which was published on Monday.
When I saw how snippets of it had been taken out of context elsewhere (as is usually the case with such interviews), with even the title of the original interview suggesting that the young wing back was angling for an immediate move to AC Milan, I decided to do a translation of the full interview for you delectation and publish the full transcript on here so you can judge for yourselves.
In the interview, he gives a very positive message of how he’s raring to go for the new season, how happy and well supported he feels by his colleagues and the fans on Tyneside, how he’s now overcoming his language problems and adapting well to the different style of the Premiership, how he’s glad Newcastle united said “no” to Roma and much more.
The interview was held by Calcio Mercato’s Simone Togna, and like the last Santon Calcio Mercato interview I translated on here, many of the questions seem to be designed with the intent of making him say he wants to come back and play for an Italian team, which is understandable I suppose on an Italian site. However, he also revealed that he is now engaged to an English girl, which could indeed be an important factor in keeping him on Tyneside. After all, I’m sure that she would be very reluctant to give up the delights of Metro Centre and the glorious Tyneside weather for somewhere like Milan with all it’s shoddy clothes shops and second rate restaurants! (more…)
