How does the run-in look?With four games left to play Newcastle United find themselves in 4th place and battling for a Champions League place. So how does the run-in look for us and the teams around us?
Saturday’s win against Stoke made it six wins on the trot and it saw us leap into 4th place, ahead of a Spurs side that seems to be going through an extremely rough spell.
It’s ours to lose, as they say. But we have a fairly tough last four games compared to most of the teams around us, so I thought I’d look at the run-ins of us and the various teams around us to see how things might affect us.
For us it’s:
Wigan – Away
Chelsea – Away
Man City – Home
Everton – Away
Hmm, I’m not keen on the fact that three of our four remaining fixtures are away and all of them could pose problems. Wigan will be fighting to avoid relegation, which could make this a tricky fixture, but out of all the remaining games I’d suggest this is the most likely to net us all three points. Chelsea away will be extremely tough as they’ll fancy their chances of a good finish too, although their Champions League involvement might serve as a distraction to them and give us a chance of taking a point at Stamford Bridge. (more…)
The fall and rise of Newcastle United?It is certainly fitting of Newcastle’s unexpectedly successful season that, on the night of the 12th March, after a 2-1 defeat to Arsenal at the Emirates, they trailed the 4th placed Gunners by eight points.
It looked like the wheels had come off the North East bandwagon and they would slip into the mid-table mediocrity that had been predicted after a summer of unrest at the newly named “S_____ D_____ A____.” However, under the stewardship of manager Alan Pardew, what has followed has been remarkable: Five straight wins means they close the gap on a now third-place Arsenal to three points, and have moved level on points with Tottenham Hotspur who occupy the last of the four Champions League spots. (more…)
A Contender?The English media are a fickle lot. They campaign long and loud for whatever issues they perceive are popular with the public, whatever will get them readers, listeners or viewers – yet reserve the right to change their minds overnight and start saying the exact opposite without so much as a “by your leave”.
They bend with whichever breeze is blowing at the time, or whoever is shouting the loudest. Newspaper Journalists, Studio pundits on TV and Radio – we’ve heard it all and seen it all so many times. Many people now are immune to it, just as we are to the drivel that comes out of the mouths of politicians.
This curious way in which the media do their stuff is never more apparent than when they are discussing the poisoned chalice that is the job of England Football Manager. We’ve all seen in the past, examples of the media bellowing to have certain individuals installed as England Manager, only to spend the entire time the unlucky individual is in the job taking him apart, screaming about his ineptitude for every draw or defeat and explaining why he should never have been appointed in the first place! (more…)
Happy? Reasonably so it seems.Newcastle United striker Demba Ba was allegedly ‘unhappy’ when he was taken off against Bolton but there was little hint of any unhappiness in Ba’s recent interview.
There has been a bit of speculation about whether or not Demba Ba is happy to play on the left of a front three but the man himself has come out and said that he his. Sort of.
Ba said:
“The coach told me he would put me on the left and, for the team, I thought, ‘Let’s do it’. I know the qualities of Papiss as a finisher.
“As a striker, you like to be in the striking position but now the coach has made the decision – he has decided Papiss will be there.
“I do what I have to do to balance the formation for the good of the team. If I can be in the finishing area, I do everything to be there. If I cannot be there, we do the work for Papiss.”
So it’s obvious he’d prefer to be playing right in front of goal but he seems to be prepared to do a job wherever he has to play, which is what I’d expect of a professional like Ba. (more…)
Dare we dream?European qualification is now looking very possible for Newcastle United, so what is involved in terms of games and what sort of pay-off can we expect from a decent run?
With European qualification looking ever more likely for Newcastle, it’s probably worth having a look at what qualification would mean to us in terms of the games we’d need to play.
The Europa league consists of 3 qualifying rounds, a play-off stage, 48-team a group stage, a round of 32, a round of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals and a final. Astonishingly, if a team from the first qualifying round gets to the final they’d have played 23 additional games in their season.
The first two qualifying rounds need not worry us though as the English League is ranked number 1 according to the UEFA coefficients and we can thus enter the competition at a higher stage. We have 3 places allocated to us for the Europa League. The most prestigious place goes to the FA Cup winners, who enter at the group stage. Then the 5th placed side in the Premier League enter at the play-off stage and the least prestigious place goes to the League Cup winners who enter in the third qualifying round. If a team qualifies more than once for a Europa League place they take the most prestigious slot they qualified for and the ‘reserve qualifier’ gets the less prestigious slot. (more…)
