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Another disappointing home defeat for the Magpies as they were sunk by two goals, with Swansea’s leading goalscorer Michu getting his seventh of the season in the 58th minute. A disastrous sliced clearence from Tim Krul in the Newcastle goal fell to the Swans’ Spanish international winger Pablo Hernandez, who then proceeded to bang in an excellent cross straight on to the head of his fellow Spaniard, who headed powerfully past the hapless flying Dutchman. (more…)
Pardew's long balls against West Brom.As it starts to dawn on more fans that Alan Pardew is not bringing a more attractive, “fluid” style of play to Newcastle United after all, the Magpies continue to extend their lead as the biggest long ball team of the Premiership.
Using OPTA statistics for the Premiership season so far, which define “long balls” as passes which are over 25 yards, these long passes account for over 17.7% of Newcastle’s total passes on average, which is a hell of alot (see table below). To put this into some kind of perspective, Newcastle United are even beating Pardew’s own “Alma Mater”, Reading, currently managed by Pardew protege, Brian “long balls” McDermott into second place (16.3%). Meanwhile, the established high priests of “Route One” football, Tony Pulis and Sam Allardyce, currently occupy the third and fourth places respectively with 16.2% of Stoke’s passes, and 15.1% of West Ham’s being over 25 yards. At the other extreme we also find the usual suspects, with Arsenal occuping the bottom place in the table with only 7.7% of their total passes being long balls. Behind them we then have Manchester City (8.1%), Manchester United (9.7%) and Swansea City (9.9%). (more…)
Pardew: Explains reasons for West Ham defeat.Newcastle United’s Silver Supremo, Alan “Pardiola” Pardew has been explaining the reasons for the Magpies’ somewhat disappointing performance against West Ham on Sunday, giving several reasons for the team’s capitulation to the visitors.
Speaking to Lee Ryder for today’s Chronic, he began by blaming the failure to get the crowd behind them in the first twenty minutes of the game, and West Ham’s ex Magpie captain, Kevin Nolan, for scoring a goal saying:
“The first 20 minutes we were not at our best. We need to get the crowd behind us and get them involved and we did not. We kicked ourselves for going behind.”
Moving on, he then put the spotlight on his own teams failure to get a goal, something which football experts such as Pardew know is an essential ingredient when it comes to winning football matches. Also making a passing reference to a headed Demba Ba effort in the 47th minute of the game, which was clawed away from the goal line by Jussi Jaaskelainen, he continued: (more…)
