Carved out his niche?Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew has baffled fans for a lot of the season by not playing Hatem Ben Arfa, but Pardew has now explained his reasoning and how Benny’s work on Saturday may just have earned him the free attacking role he craves.
Until recently, Alan Pardew has seemed reluctant to start with Hatem Ben Arfa, much to the frustration of the player himself who had a few choice words to say about Alan Pardew’s tactics last week.
However, in a recent interview in the Journal, Pardew has explained how he sees the Ben Arfa situation developing on the pitch. Talking about the weekend’s game at Blackburn, Pardew said:
“It’s all about balance. His work-rate was quite good, it’s just sometimes intensity that’s the difference. It didn’t help in the first half that Mehdi stepped off a little bit and was a little bit too deep and therefore that didn’t help Hatem either. It all sort of combined.
“I was really pleased with his attitude when he went on to the right. He could have gone, ‘What am I doing out here?’ but he attacked the position. That’s really pleasing.
“I knew if we got the ball to his feet he was going to cause the full-backs a problem.“
Spidermag returns to save us!A tale of absent friends made this cup tie somewhat less of an occasion than it could otherwise have been.
We knew that Demba Ba and Cheick Tiote wouldn’t feature in this game, but when Blackburn lined up without Yakubu and Samba – that was a bit of a bonus. Also missing was Paul Clement, the now ex-Blackburn Assistant Manager who clearly decided he’d had enough of the abuse from the Blackburn fans and joined Paris St Germain last week. Finally, there were the 20,000 or so United fans who didn’t turn up, for whatever reason.
Newcastle actually made four changes to the side that started against Manchester United in that glorious win (just wanted to mention it one more time!). Two were enforced of course, with some of our stars off to light up the African Cup of Nations. Abeid, Obertan, Ben Arfa and Best were brought into to the team with Shola Ameobi and Ryan Taylor returning to the bench.
The Silver Supremo and Dreamboat - My men of the match (apart from the Toon Army that is).Firstly, let me just start by saying Newcastle thoroughly deserved their win and it was a win by United more than a loss by Manchester.
They were never allowed to settle on the ball, from the off. Newcastle also took the game to them, showed no fear whatsoever, gave no respect and pressed on with their own game regardless of what Man U brought to the party.
It wasn’t as if they had a depleted team, or even squad. When you looked at the team sheets, you would be forgiven for feeling pretty apprehensive, if not a little queasy. That didn’t seem to bother the Lads one iota though as they showed their intension to play a quick passing game, pushing forward as often as possible. The recent overuse of the long ball game was quelled, but it was used to good effect to catch the visitors on the break. (more…)
Cabaye and Ba get a goal a piece.A goal from Demba Ba, a free kick from Yohan Cabaye and – to add to Man Utd’s misery – an own goal by Phil Jones sees Newcastle United take all three points at St James’ Park.
The match started at a lively pace and it was pretty much box-to-box stuff for the first half.
The first decent chance fell to us on about 4 minutes when Simpson put in an excellent cross along the ground to Demba Ba, who was right in front of goal. Unfortunately it was slightly behind him and he couldn’t gather it for a shot.
Just over a minute later, Cabaye tested Anders Lindegaard after Ba nodded the ball down to him just outside the box. Unfortunately it was straight at the keeper and turned out to be an easy save.
Man Utd came close after 14 minutes though when a Berbatov header took a deflection and bounced off the post.
After 19 minutes an accidental handball by Cabaye led to a Man United free kick in a dangerous area. Fortunately Rooney’s free kick deflected off Tiote for a corner, which itself came to nothing.
Hope he lhas a face like this after the game!Venue: St James’ Park, Newcastle Upon Tyne Date: 4th January 2012 Kick Off: 8.00PM Referee: Howard Webb Hair by: Rooney of Croxteth
Manchester United make their seasonal pilgrimage to St James’ Park in what could be viewed, for them anyway, as a tough game – particularly as they seem to be in relative disarray.
Wayne Rooney and a couple of the club’s lesser lights (Darron Gibson and Johnny Evans) allegedly went out for a meal and a few drinkies on Boxing Night. This wasn’t against any of the Manchester club’s rules. However, they subsequently committed the crime of looking decidedly shabby and putting in a poor performance in training.
As a result manager Alex Ferguson threw a strop and dropped them for the home game against Blackburn Rovers. ‘Ol Red Nose was rewarded for his tantrum on his 70th birthday by a defeat from the second-bottom club.
If rumours are to be believed, Mr Rooney is hopping mad about being dropped and fined £200,000 but has managed to “keep his hair on”. (more…)
