Another season?Newcastle United striker Leon Best shows a good attitude towards fighting for his place in the squad and this humble author feels he deserves another season at the club.
Leon Best’s career has been a mixed affair in terms of his goals to games ratios. Between 2004 and 2007 – up until he was 20 years old – he didn’t really do much to attract attention at all with just 5 goals in 43 games, but his loan move from Southampton to Yeovil produced 10 goals in 15 games. He then had a poor spell at Southampton and Coventry, netting just 17 times in 86 games.
After that he managed a fair 10 in 29 during his last season at Coventry before he moved to Newcastle where he didn’t score in 13 games for us during his first season at the club. However, last season he scored 6 goals in 12 games, which is a pretty good return for any striker. (more…)
C'mon Mike - what's the deal?What is Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley up to and is it time for him to let us in on his plans?
Mike Ashley still divides opinion at Newcastle. Some people like him and think he’s good for the club and others hate him and would have him hogtied, marched to the Bigg Market and placed in the stocks to be pelted with projectiles of choice. Then there are plenty of shades of grey in the middle of that – people who either think some of his ideas are bad and some are okay, or folk that are deferring opinion for now.
One thing Ashley rarely is, though, is predictable. Who, at the beginning of Ashley’s term of office, would have predicted he’d usher in the return of Keegan, precipitate Keegan’s unfair dismissal, put the club up for sale twice, receive accusations of being both cockney and Mafioso, appoint Chris Hughton as manager, sack Chris Hughton for no obvious reason, appoint Alan Shearer as manager, dig up Alan Pardew and make him manager, replace Chris Mort with a man of the owlish persuasion, oversee the team’s relegation, oversee the team’s subsequent promotion, rename St James’ Park to an email address and the plethora of other things he does that keep us guessing?
He’s certainly caused a fair bit of unrest in his time and I understand the sales of bedsheets in Tyneside shops have never been better. (more…)
Man kicks football - whatever next?Newcastle United latest: Liverpool allegedly closing in on Enrique, Swansea City make improved bit for Wayne Routledge, the US tour gets underway tomorrow at Sporting Kansas City and the FA are awaiting reports about the pitch invasion at Darlington.
The whole Jose Enrique situation is beginning to grind on me at the moment, so I’ll be brief.
According to press reports, Liverpool are ‘closing in’ with an £11.5m deal for the player, which – if true – must be a very recent move by Dalglish’s mob because just a few days ago Alan Pardew said this in relation to the Enrique situation:
“We have had no concrete offers.”
I’ll be disappointed if he does go to Liverpool after all his crowing about wanting Champions League football although, if he’s clearly not going to sign a contract for us, I’ll be glad to see the back of him so that we can recruit a replacement left-back well before the new season gets under way. (more…)
Newcastle's starting 11 against Darlington.Now being a Geordie expatriate in London, I wasn’t at the Darlington game personally, but from what I can gather, manager, Alan Pardew lined his troops in the increasingly popular ‘4-2-3-1’ formation.
When I say “increasingly popular”, I mean within the English Premier League as many overseas teams have utilised this formation for quite some time now. Since it’s inception some time around the 1980s, there has been some debate on whether this is what could be described as an ‘attacking’ formation, or merely a variation on the 4-5-1 system, making it more flexible in attack by allowing three of the central five to move forward to support an old fashioned ‘number nine’ type figure who can both hold the ball and shoot.
Anyway, in Newcastle United’s case on Friday evening, this line up involved the use of Leon Best upfront, supported by Hatem Ben Arfa in a kind of midfield playmaker / second striker type role. On either side of Ben Arfa were Haris Vuckic on the left with Joey Barton in his right sided role from last season. Playing the more defensive role further back in midfield there was Alan Smith and Danny Guthrie, with (L to R) Shane Ferguson, Steven Taylor, Mike Williamson and Danny Simpson making up the usual back four (see picture). Admittedly, the personnel were much changed later on as is usually the case in such friendly games, but the principle remained much the same throughout most of the game. In an interesting side point though, much vaunted new signing, Yohan Cabaye was later used in the more defensive midfield two after poor Danny Guthrie had to come off with an ankle knock sustained after only eleven minutes of the game. (more…)
Exit door loomsWith Enrique looking more and more destined to leave Newcastle United as each day passes and with Neil Taylor signing a new deal at Swansea, the left-back situation is now a priority for the club.
Newcastle are now pretty much resigned to the fact that they’ll have to hunt for a new left-back before the summer’s out. It seems fairly odds-on now that Jose Enrique will leave and last week Alan Pardew said:
“The noises coming out of Jose’s camp are that he wants to get a new club playing Champions League football.
“We cannot offer him that at the moment, so that seems to be his focus. Hopefully that will change. It is a moving feast. We have got to be ready because if he goes, it is going to leave a big hole in the team and we need to fill it quickly. But he does travel to the United States with us.
“It is not ideal for us, as you can imagine. It is difficult. We have offered him a massive contract for this football club and he does not seem to want to sign it, so it is a very difficult position.
“We have had no concrete offers, but we are going to try and have contingency plans in place so that if we do lose X, then Y comes in.
“We are going to have to give ourselves some sort of chance, so that the deadline-day struggle we had after selling Andy Carroll does not happen again. We not want to be in the same position as last time.” (more…)
