A chance to get back to winning ways?Venue: St James’ Park, Newcastle. Date: Sunday, 17th November. Kick off: 3:00pm Referee: Phil Dowd. UK TV: None.
Good afternoon and welcome to our “match banter” feature for yet another home game, this time against eleventh placed side, Swansea City.
Newcastle United’s Silver Supremo, Alan Partridge Pardew will be looking to “bounce back” after a disappointing home loss against Big Sam’s West Ham last Sunday. Here’s hoping that he does as two home defeats in a row would not be good. Here’s hoping that this game will be more entertaing too, as our last game most certainly wasn’t!
One thing which should give us hope is that Swansea have been a little erratic in the Premiership after their exhilarating start to the season with a 5-0 defeat of Queens Park Rangers, followed by a 3-0 defeat of the abovementioned West Ham. Since then they have won only one one Premiership game, a 2-1 defeat of Wigan, though they have turned in some excellent performances against the likes of Chelsea for a 1-1 draw, as well as turning in another excellent performance to knock holders Liverpool out of the League Cup. But anyway, for all the pre match stuff you may wish to know such as team news, possible tactics and much, much more, may I recommend checking out my extensive match preview. (more…)
Benny’s 3rd round FA Cup goal against Blackburn Rovers from January 2012.
You may have heard already that Newcastle United’s Hatem Ben Arfa is one of ten candidates for the FIFA “Puskás Award” for the best goal of the year.
However, this competition is also up for a public vote on FIFA’s official website, and I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t encourage all you Toon fans out there to get on the site and vote!
To crib unashamedly from the Wikipedia, it is described thusly:(more…)
Nolan: Still Chicken dancing on a regular basis.Of course, Newcastle United’s game against West Ham on Sunday will see the return to St James’ Park of two ex Magpies, Kevin Nolan and Andy Carroll, and also an ex manager, Sam Allardyce.
In this piece I intend to concentrate on one of those, Kevin Nolan, who has received much undeserved flak from the less “gifted” sections of Newcastle United’s fanbase since his departure. Though Carroll has almost certainly received even more, that is undoubtedly a whole story on it’s own and as a Newcastle United blogger, I am still suffering from Carroll fatigue, and possibly you are too?
Getting back to Nolan though, below is one example of the kind of thing I’m writing about from so called “fans”. It is from the commments section below a story on the midfielder in local rag, the Chronic.
“Yes kevin Nolan, one word springs to mind that actually rhyms with “Fishbowl” when talking about the south….”**ithole” Thank you for your service, but sorry, you wouldn’t get into this squad ahead of Ben Arfa or Cabaye, get your head out of the smogg air son, big clubs have demanding, passionate fans, that’s why so many can’t handle the pressure up here and depart for debt laden clubs willing to overpay on salaries, smaller crowds, less expectation, and poorer playing standards installed by useless fat Sam!”(more…)
P45 for Georges Leekens this week.Venue: Jan Breydel Stadium, Bruges. Date: Thursday, 8th November. Kick off: 6:00pm Referee: L. Banti. UK TV: ESPN.
Well, alot has happened in the world of Club Brugge since since our 1-0 victory against them at St James’ Park two weeks ago.
Back in those dim and distant days, their manager was Georges “Mack the Knife” Leekens (that’s his nickname, honest!) and they were top of the league, having just suffered their first league defeat of the season (1-4 against Zulte-Waregem). Since then however, they have suffered a further three defeats (not counting the one at St James’ Park), and Mack the Knife has been given the order of the boot!
So, will all of this Belgian bedlam be a good thing for our quest to preceed to the next stage of the Europa League ASAP? Or will this make the planning for this game more complex for Alan Pardew? Leekens was sacked following their last game (another defeat to Zulte-Waregem), so our Silver Supremo will be facing a team which will be far more of an unknown quantity under caretaker, Philippe Clement, who is the club’s reserve team coach. Will it be a case of “business as usual” for the team under Clement, or will he strike out with his own tactical ideas to try and arrest the team’s slump in both the Belgian Jupiler League and the Europa League? Of course, there is always the old cliche about the “wounded animal.” Altogether, this will add a bit unpredictabilty to preceedings this evening, both for Pardew and myself in preparing this humble preview. I did as much homework as I could on Brugge in my previous preview, but who knows now?
