Pressure is on tonightNewcastle United manager Alan Pardew has the job of picking up the mood of fans tonight after a disappointing end to the transfer window, but does he deserve a bit of sympathy?
How about a bit of sympathy for Alan Pardew? Yes, I know he blabs rubbish a lot of the time and he doesn’t always seem to engage his brain before doing so, but he’s been let down in the transfer window as much as we have and the pressure is now on him to come up with some good results.
A bad run now would just add to that air of depression a lot of fans are currently feeling and Pardew will know that.
On the weekend, Pardew was lamenting the relationship between Mike Ashley and the fans and intimating that it doesn’t really help him do his job. Pardew said:
“It’s difficult at Newcastle and I don’t think the owner’s relationship with the fans helps. That’s obvious. I don’t think there’s anything I can say or do that will improve that.
“Hopefully over the next three or four years, if I bring some success to the club, maybe that can be looked at in a different light. But certainly not in the short term.” (more…)
French flair or English doggedness?How important is an English spine to a Football Club?
The thought crossed my mind the other day, after pondering the comings and goings from this transfer window:
“Just how important is an English spine to NUFC?”
Many sports pundits have criticized Arsenal over the years for a weak English showing in their teams, and cite this reason for the failure over recent years. On the same sort of note how will our recent shift to cheap foreign imports play out in the long run?
I have to admit, last year looking at the group of Carroll, Barton, Nolan and Harper (to name a few) I always felt that we would stay up. The guys had been through the relegation, bonded in the Championship and knew what had to be done in order secure our Premier League status. But now with the French Revolution going on with the club, how much passion and desire do these guys have? (more…)
"Greed is good. Greed is right."Dear reader, my estteemed colleague Hugh has already touched on this story earlier today and presented his own viewpoint on the matter. However, I am so incensed that I also feel compelled to register my extreme displeasure at the latest utterings of our unesteemed Managing Director, Derek Llambias.
In case you are still wondering what I’m gannin’ on about, in the responses to Chronicle readers questions on Mike Ashley’s intentions for the club, Derek Llambias responded to “Is Mike Ashley considering putting the club up for sale?” with the quote below amongst other things. At the end of the answer, he wrote:
“I’d like to make a further point here. This club can’t support itself without the financial backing of Mike Ashley; we still rely heavily on the owner. To date Mike has invested over £280m into the club, including £140m in interest-free loans. For him to continue to support the club, he has to be interested and enthused to do so. He deserves credit for his financial support but a section of supporters don’t make him feel welcome at St James’ Park, or when he attends away games. Criticism is part and parcel of the job, abuse is not. This makes life uncomfortable and certainly doesn’t make Mike feel more inclined to put his hand once again in his pocket. That’s not stubbornness, it’s human nature. I think most of us would feel exactly the same.”
Does the sheer gall of this little cipher and his fat controller know no bounds?(more…)
Don't call me fattyNewcastle United owner Mike Ashley appears to be fed up with the abuse he gets from some of the fans. So fed up in fact that he implies the abuse must stop or he will not do the right thing by the club.
No doubt you’ve all seen the questions The Chronicle put to the NUFC board and the answers they received from them? If not, you can see them here.
Most of the answers are along the lines we would have expected, so there aren’t really any surprises. An interesting point though was the suggestion that we have to stop abusing Mike Ashley if we want him to continue funding the club. It came as part of the answer to the question: Is Mike Ashley considering putting the club up for sale?
Apparently he’s not unless an incredible offer comes along, although quite what classes as ‘incredible’ is anybody’s guess. But the answer is followed by this:
“I’d like to make a further point here. This club can’t support itself without the financial backing of Mike Ashley; we still rely heavily on the owner. To date Mike has invested over £280m into the club, including £140m in interest-free loans. For him to continue to support the club, he has to be interested and enthused to do so.(more…)
Up to the task?Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew says we have to find new ways of scoring goals now that we’ve sold all the people that scored them for us last season.
It already seems like a geological time era has passed since the last Newcastle match and we still have to wait until Monday. There seems to be a general feeling of post-transfer window depression amongst Toon fans and we need a match to – preferably a winning one – to help lift the gloom.
Whilst Alan Pardew has allegedly ‘got over’ the disappointment of not signing the striker he was after in the transfer window, he does still seem a little unsure where our goals are going to come from. Pardew said:
“We are going into the unknown to a certain degree because a lot of the goals we created and scored last year are not in this team.
“But we have got a lot of new talent and that new talent is exciting and they have shown that in games. We are going to be leaning on them to make us look a little bit different and to create a different type of goal.” (more…)
