Big Sam's tactics board, or Alan Pardew's?Venue: St James’ Park, Newcastle. Date: Sunday, 11th November. Kick off: 3:00pm Referee: Mike Dean (the Wirral). UK TV: None.
In case you are one of those who have successfully deceived yourselves that our manager’s real name is Alan Pardiola, and today’s fixture will be a match between a cultured, elegant passing side of fancy foreigners against big, “long ball” Sam, well think again!
As we go into this game Newcastle and West Ham are currently the two biggest “route one” sides in the Premiership. Looking at my OPTA stats, which defines long balls as passes of over 25 yards, Newcastle United and West Ham are the two biggest long ball merchants, with 17.5% of Newcastle’s total passes being long balls, and 17.9% of West Ham’s.
To put this into some kind of perspective, the percentage for Swansea City (our next opponents incidentally) is 9.7%, which is even bigger gulf than it sounds. Of course, this is not to say that the lower the percentage, the better it is or any nonsense like that. As the great Mackem Buddha of football, Bob Paisley, once said (and also Michael Laudrup more recently), “it’s not about the short pass or the long pass. It’s about the RIGHT pass.” Though the great Dane could say that as he could pass a ball 30 yards on to a team mates foot (and from a tight space too) effortlessly! (more…)
Nolan: Still Chicken dancing on a regular basis.Of course, Newcastle United’s game against West Ham on Sunday will see the return to St James’ Park of two ex Magpies, Kevin Nolan and Andy Carroll, and also an ex manager, Sam Allardyce.
In this piece I intend to concentrate on one of those, Kevin Nolan, who has received much undeserved flak from the less “gifted” sections of Newcastle United’s fanbase since his departure. Though Carroll has almost certainly received even more, that is undoubtedly a whole story on it’s own and as a Newcastle United blogger, I am still suffering from Carroll fatigue, and possibly you are too?
Getting back to Nolan though, below is one example of the kind of thing I’m writing about from so called “fans”. It is from the commments section below a story on the midfielder in local rag, the Chronic.
“Yes kevin Nolan, one word springs to mind that actually rhyms with “Fishbowl” when talking about the south….”**ithole” Thank you for your service, but sorry, you wouldn’t get into this squad ahead of Ben Arfa or Cabaye, get your head out of the smogg air son, big clubs have demanding, passionate fans, that’s why so many can’t handle the pressure up here and depart for debt laden clubs willing to overpay on salaries, smaller crowds, less expectation, and poorer playing standards installed by useless fat Sam!”(more…)
Mike Williamson: You're simply the best!He is according to football stats site “whoscored.com” anyway, where he is Newcastle United’s only representative in their Premiership team of the season so far.
In this he joins players such as Robin van Persie, Juan Mata, Gareth Bale and other top players, just nudging out Tottenham’s Jan Vertonghen as best centre back, and tying with Everton’s Leighton Baines as best defender in the league full stop, with an overall rating of 7.6 out of 10.
Like Danny Simpson last season, Williamson is a vastly underrated player who may confound some of his armchair critics within the Newcastle United fanbase with his excellent defending statistics. It won’t confound Newcastle United’s Silver Supremo, Alan Pardew though, who recently said of the big lad:
“Willo’s been brilliant. People forget I’ve never favoured anybody over anybody else, and Willo put in one of his great performances (against the Mackems -wt). He was brilliant for us.”(more…)
Pardew: More hot air.Alan Pardew has revealed to the Shields Gazette that though he feels that Mike Ashley has found the manager of his dreams at last, he’s going to need players who can pass the ball better to improve the team.
Although some of us might say that the teams problems in possession might have something to do with Pardew’s direct style with lots of very long passes to go astray, Pardew has chosen to blame the quality of the players in his current squad. Newcastle currently make the third highest amount of passes over both 25 and 35 yards in the Premiership, behind his Reading protege Brian McDermott, and of course, Stoke City.
Speaking on the recent eight year contracts handed to himself and his assistants recently, and how he feels Mike has found his dream manager at last after being let down by predecessors such as Chris Hughton and Kevin Keegan, Pardew reflected: (more…)
Vampires.“And how the poverty of these unfortunates, among whom even thieves find nothing to steal, is exploited by the property-holding class in lawful ways.” – Frederick Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England.
It is no longer news that Internet loan shark “Wonga” will be the club’s sponsors from next season for a period of four years.
I was going to write this piece a few days ago, but on reflection, I decided to leave it for a short while to see what emerged in terms of further details about the deal itself, and also the level of opprobrium which was inevitably going to follow the announcement. The exact amount is still shrouded in secrecy, though a figure of £24 million for the four years (£6 million per year) was bandied around in the media after the announcement was made, then the Telegraph claimed that the figure is more like £8 million per year (£32 million over four years). When this was put to the Managing Director, Derek Llambias, he suggested that the £8 million figure was “not far off.” As it’s Llambias though, this may not be true, but it is all we have to go on. As well as this, it is also been claimed that Wonga will be investing a further £1.5 million in the club’s Academy.
Llambias had the following to say on the new deal: (more…)
