Very brief highlights of the very well attented (over 50,000) testimonial match for Steve Harper against a team of AC Milan legends, a tribute to his twenty years of loyal service to the Magpies. They mostly feature Paolo di Canio being booed, Harper and Alan Shearer being cheered then Harper missing his penalty when the game went into a shootout after a 0-0 draw. The Milan legends side won on penalties in the end.
Who made it? And who didn’t?Below you can see two Newcastle United “teams of the season,” which I have assembled based on player statistics from whoscored.com, OPTA and transfermarkt.co.uk.
The first (and most important) is based on performances in the Premier League, with the second based on performances in the Europa League. The figures below the player’s names are their ratings from whoscored.com, which are based on a range of performance metrics based on OPTA stats. To put these into some kind of perspective, whoscored’s most highly rated Premier League goalkeeper last season was Sunderland’s Simon Mignolet with an average of 7.0. In defence it was Tottenham’s Jan Vertonghen with 7.6 and in midfield the honours were shared between Arsenal’s Santi Cazorla and Tottenham’s Gareth Bale, both with 7.9. Finally, up front, Liverpool’s Luis Suarez narrowly pipped Manchester United’s Robin van Persie (7.8) with his 7.9 rating.
Getting back to Newcastle United though, although the goalkeepers, defenders and strikers were pretty straightforward overall, things became more complicated when it came to midfielders who had been played in several different positions during the season, gaining different ratings in different positions. However, after some work, I have finally managed to sort it out. (more…)
Pardew: Damning Hughton with faint praise?With today’s game against Norwich City seeing Alan Pardew’s predecessor, Chris Hughton, returning to St James’ Park for the first time since his sacking in December 2010, there has been far more of the usual pre match words from the managers on both sides.
On the Pardew side, amongst other things, he has been anxious to remind we fans that we shouldn’t get too carried away with any kind of appreciation for the man who returned us to the Premiership, not to mention bringing former Tottenham colleague, Graham Carr, to the club as his Chief Scout in the February preceding his sacking.
As with much of what Pardew says, there was a whiff of some kind of underlying agenda in his comments. In some double-edged words of “praise,” he sought to diminish Hughton’s contribution to the club as he not so subtly reminded fans of previous smear stories which circulated about Hughton, saying that much of the credit for leading the club back to the Premiership should actually go to Joey Barton, Alan Smith, Steve Harper and Kevin Nolan as it was they who were really running the first team after Hughton’s appointment. (more…)
Highlights from yesterday evening’s monkey hanger massacre at Victoria Park. There are also some other highlights here.
Hartlepool United were trounced 5-1 with Shola Ameobi opening the account for Newcastle after only 3 minutes, latching on to an irresistable low cross right across the face of the Hartlepool goal by new lad, Romain Amalfitano. Sadly though, the big lad picked up some kind of knock just before half time and was out of the game for the second half. (more…)
