Ba and Mr.T: Out for Africa.As most of you will no doubt be aware, the Africa Cup of Nations will be taking place next month.
This incredibly awkward competition is held bi-annually, unlike the European Championships which are held every four years. Also unlike the Euros, it is also usually held right in the middle of the bloody football season! This time the tournament will be jointly hosted by Gabon and Equitorial Guinea from January 21 to February 12 2012, but players will usually be called for duty by their national teams some time before that, even as early as the 8th of January for pre tournament training camps and warm up games.
Cheick Tiote and Demba Ba will definitely be there representing the Ivory Coast and Senegal respectively. Inspired by Manchester City, who also wish to hold back their talisman midfielder, Yaya Toure, from joining Tiote in the Ivory Coast team for as long as possible, Alan Pardew is now trying to delay Ba’s and Tiote’s departure until around the 15th January.
If Pardew and City manager Roberto Mancini fail in their quest to hold the players back until the middle of the month, the two Silver Supremos could be missing their important players for as many as six or seven games according to my calculation. Of course, this will almost certainly have a much greater effect on the Magpies than it will on moneybags Man City with their wealth of strength in depth. In Newcastle United’s case the potential games missed will be the following if Tiote and Ba depart on the 8th January: (more…)
Pardew's party finally hits the buffers.I think it would be fair to say that Newcastle United have had a rather poor run of results in our last six games.
Since our 2-1 defeat of Everton, we have picked up a mere two points in our last six games, 0.39 points per game. Despite our excellent start to the season which at one stage saw us in third place, if this form were to continue, we would only gain an extra 6.93 points between now and the end of the season, which would leave us with a total of only 33.93 points (OK 34 points) on the day of the last judgement in May after our final game with Everton. Dear reader, I probably don’t need to tell you that this was the same points total which saw us relegated at the end of the 2008/9 season, and that we would almost cartianly be staring relegation in the face once more if that were to happen again.
Of course, it is true that our recent bad run of form started with a terrible trio of fixtures against moneybags Man City, the current champions from the other side of Manchester, as well as moneybags Chelsea. However we also failed in a similar but less expected fashion against three other teams where we might have been expected to make up the ground lost in those previous three games, ie the Premiership minnows of Norwich City and Swansea City, and also the yo-yos of West Bromwich Albion most recently. Though we face another supposedly “easy” game against struggling Bolton next, we will then have two more clashes with big guns in the form of the leviathan of Liverpool, and then the mighty Manchester United once again. (more…)
AVB: "Show a bit more respect" says Pardew.I’ve always had my doubts about some Chelsea fans, most notably their intellectual ability and capacity for absorbing and understanding larger chunks of information. I mean, I can only speak as I find and the one’s I’ve met at various games haven’t really come across as the brightest buttons in the box.
Lately my fears have been confirmed by the London media, who have even had to dumb down the name of the Chelsea manager for them, as they just can’t cope with, never mind pronounce, his name. So the mightily named Luís André de Pina Cabral e Villas-Boas who is known in shorthand to the rest of the world as André Villas-Boas has had to be further shortened to simply AVB for the benefit of their poor fans.
Why is this significant?
Well, you may have noticed that there is a war of words going on at the moment between “AVB” and United manager Alan Pardew. If you have read some of the Chelsea fan blogs at the moment you will find the strangest, wierdest logic being applied to anything Alan Pardew has uttered on the subject. So my point is, when reading such blogs, bear in mind they are written by people who need to call their manager “AVB”. By the way, I’ve continued to use “AVB” here so that any Chelsea fans reading this can skip the big words and try to follow the story. (more…)
Llambias: Shameless Opportunist?As I reported yesterday on these pages, Newcastle United’s managing Director, Derek Llambias, has responded to Joey Barton’s allegations about himself and owner, Mike Ashley, with a threat of legal action.
This is almost certainly an empty threat by the perfidious M.D. as he knows what happened, and what would probably happen if he attempted to take it to law. However that is not the main subject of this particular piece, it is just the context. The main reason is the ineffably crass and tasteless way that Llambias began his statement. He attempted to use the recent tragic and untimely death of ex Magpie legend Gary Speed, as well as the name of the club, to assume the moral high ground in his and Ashley’s dispute with an ex-player. It did the excact opposite.
The statement began:
“In a week when one of Newcastle United’s most beloved footballers passed away, it is disappointing that once again Joey Barton makes the headlines.”(more…)
Joey Barton: Saying what he sees.Well, Joey Barton did promise on Twitter that he would “tell all when the time was right” and he’s finally kept his word.
Speaking in a long audio podcast interview for the Queen’s Park Ranger’s ‘blog “Open All R’s,” he finally lifted the lid on his time at Newcastle United and his strained relationship with the infamous Ashley / Llambias regime. In the interview, he revealed what he felt were the real reasons why he and other senior members of the squad have been forced out St James’ Park, how the club tried to force him to sign a contract on a fifth of his old wage whilst he was in Walton prison, what he feels were the real reasons behind the sacking of Chris Hughton, how despite his profound hatred of Mike Ashley and Derek Llambias, he still feels a strong affinity with the club and more…
Some (misquoted) sections of the interview have already appeared in the media and other ‘blogs, so I decided to make a more accurate and extensive transcription of all the sections which related to Newcastle United. I’ve have also included the mp3 podcast of the entire interview at the bottom of the piece.
Responding to a QPR fan’s question on what swung it for him to come to Queen’s Park Rangers, Barton began by outlining the reson’s why he had to leave his former club saying:
“I was obviously deemed by the board at Newcastle “Persona non grata” (Person not welcome). They didn’t want me because I asked questions.(more…)
