Ashley: A bit of a clown when it comes to football?In an interview for Sky TV, Alan Pardew expresses the depths of Mike Ashley’s confusion about football and erroneously claims the club has no debt.
Normally, I avoid the Daily Mail unless I have fires to light but this particular interview, originally for Sky TV, caught my eye.
In the interview, Pardew says:
“Mike is a strong character who has been a success in his whole business life and is a genius in that world – but when you come to football, the logic doesn’t quite fit.
“He loves football but he sometimes can’t understand how it works and it confuses and upsets him, and when he is upset, he does things that aren’t brilliant for the football club.
“That’s just Mike and he has funded the club, made sure we have no debt – other than to himself – and supported me, but unless we get a billionaire from deepest Russia we are probably not going to be able to compete with the likes of Man United, Man City and Chelsea, which is what our fans want.(more…)
Debuchy: Rift? What rift?What is it with Newcastle? First there is the Cabaye debacle and then there are constant mutterings about a rift in the dressing room. One of the French contingent, Mathieu Debuchy denied any rift of course, saying:
“It’s true that in the dressing room we talk a lot in French. We have a big group of French players. But we avoid always staying together, and we aim to speak in English with the other foreign players and the English ones. But it’s good. There are no issues.
“We have a big group of French players. But we avoid always staying together, and we aim to speak in English with the other foreign players and the English ones. But it’s good. There are no issues.”
Besides thinking that Pardew had put a stop to that sort of thing, this strikes me as odd. It is normal to want to speak to people with whom you’re fluent. If I went to a party that consisted of 11 Mandarin-speakers and Alan Pardew, I’m afraid I’d have to speak to Pardew. I don’t think I’d enjoy that party very much.
This would not mean I had a rift with the Mandarin speakers, merely that I can’t get to the finer points of conversation with them. If fact, I couldn’t even get to “hello.” (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…)
On it's way to three lucky winners soon!Hoolie wins the NUFC Blog prediction competition! We have another, smaller competition coming up during the summer break.
It’s all about those three-pointers!
The second NUFC Blog prediction competition ended with the Premier League’s last game on Sunday.
First place – and £100 – this time goes to Hoolie who was 4 points clear at the top.
Second place – and £50 – goes to GrandPoobah, who was also in the prizes in our last competition.
Third place – and £25 – goes to kav2011, who improved upon his 12th place finish last time.
