Cabaye: Have we been conned again by Newcastle United?As I wrote at the time, with Newcastle United, the club of smoke, mirrors and downright lies under current owner, Mike Ashley, there are things we still do not know about the Yohan Cabaye kerfuffle at the start of the season.
In an interview as part of the France squad at the side’s Clairefontaine HQ, Cabaye made some rather suggestive comments about what Alan Pardew called “the situation” at the time. If you recall, Pardew made a series of simlarly suggestive statements, implying that Cabaye refused to play in early season games in order to allegedly force a move to Arsenal. However, he steadfastly refused to mention it outright under the pathetic pretence that he was “protecting” Cabaye, even though he was actually hanging him out to dry with innuendo. When interviewers did ask for a direct answer, interviews were quickly halted by a female press secretary and they quickly got the message.
However, the fleet-footed Frenchman has now cast doubt on the Pardew’s and the club’s narrative, suggesting that only he and Joe Kinnear know the truth of what really happened, challenging Kinnear to play “Deep Throat” and finally come clean on what really happened in the ‘Cabayegate’ scandal.
Below is the full exchange about Cabaye and the Newcastle United imbroglio (translated by myself):(more…)
Santon: Totally settled in now (but misses his Italian scran)Davide Santon has given another fairly extensive interview for the Italian CalcioMercato.com (Football Market), which was published on Monday.
When I saw how snippets of it had been taken out of context elsewhere (as is usually the case with such interviews), with even the title of the original interview suggesting that the young wing back was angling for an immediate move to AC Milan, I decided to do a translation of the full interview for you delectation and publish the full transcript on here so you can judge for yourselves.
In the interview, he gives a very positive message of how he’s raring to go for the new season, how happy and well supported he feels by his colleagues and the fans on Tyneside, how he’s now overcoming his language problems and adapting well to the different style of the Premiership, how he’s glad Newcastle united said “no” to Roma and much more.
The interview was held by Calcio Mercato’s Simone Togna, and like the last Santon Calcio Mercato interview I translated on here, many of the questions seem to be designed with the intent of making him say he wants to come back and play for an Italian team, which is understandable I suppose on an Italian site. However, he also revealed that he is now engaged to an English girl, which could indeed be an important factor in keeping him on Tyneside. After all, I’m sure that she would be very reluctant to give up the delights of Metro Centre and the glorious Tyneside weather for somewhere like Milan with all it’s shoddy clothes shops and second rate restaurants! (more…)
White rice is the secret!Newcastle United number 9 Papiss Cisse has been talking about his (half) season with Newcastle and claims the best is yet to come.
Whilst I was browsing around some French sites I came across an interview with Papiss Demba Cisse. I found it on a site called ‘Furturs Medias’, although I’m not sure if that’s where it originated.
Anyway, I ran it through Google Translate and it came back with something vaguely resembling English, which I’ve then tried to ‘tidy up’ with my grade 4 CSE French. That sounds like recipe for disaster but I hope the result is something close to what he actually said.
Talking about his first game for the club, he said:
“Honestly, I did not wish Best was injured. I did not even know I was going to play, because there was Ameobi, another great striker of the club, who has been there for a long time. I even call him ‘Mr Ameobi’ because he’s such a nice guy who works for the team.”
He then says something about Jonas that I can’t translate but I like to think it was about how he parts his ponytail. Then I picked up the translation when he says:
“When Demba scored the first goal I thought ‘it’s going well’ and at the end of the second half I scored the second goal and we won 2-1. The ball eluded Demba and came to me and I tried not to think too much about, I just reacted and it’s in the net ‘goal!’” (more…)
Teamwork is the key to Toon successYohan Cabaye states in an interview that he believes teamwork has been responsibly for a lot of Newcastle United’s success this season and that it’s teamwork that can help us compete even with clubs that have better players.
Yohan Cabaye has been assessing the season for French site Sport24.com and this is what he had to say:
Interviewer: “Yohan, what is your assessment of your first season at Newcastle?”
Yohan: “I think the outcome is very positive. Early in the season, if we were told that Newcastle would finish 5th, nobody would have believed it. Our results have been beyond the expectations of the fans.”
Interviewer: “You have near caused a big surprise by getting qualification to the Champions League … ”
Yohan: “As the season progressed, we found ourselves playing in 3rd or 4th place. There is a little disappointment that we didn’t finish there but it is quickly forgotten because we had a good season anyway. And to qualify for Europe and the Europa League was really important for the fans and the club. This has been a very successful season.” (more…)
Cisse: He's here! He's gone! But he'll be back!First of all dear reader, I would like to apologise.
I meant to have this posted yesterday evening. However, due to a certain bearded Newcastle United shirt sponsor, his chronically unreliable Broadband and constantly engaged customer service (who’s existence I am beginning to doubt), that sadly wasn’t possible in the end. As a certain Mr.J.Rotten once (rightly) said in regard the fellow in question:
“Never trust a Hippy.”
But I suspect that you don’t really want to read any more of my enraged rambling (unless perhaps, you want to know which Broadband provider to avoid like the plague) so I’ll get on with it!
Below is the interview given by Papiss Demba Cisse to “NUFC TV” after his signing was confirmed yesterday, along with additional verbiage from Alan Pardew and Derek Llambias (Booooooo!)
This is what Cissé had to say on his signing: (more…)
