Exit door loomsWith Enrique looking more and more destined to leave Newcastle United as each day passes and with Neil Taylor signing a new deal at Swansea, the left-back situation is now a priority for the club.
Newcastle are now pretty much resigned to the fact that they’ll have to hunt for a new left-back before the summer’s out. It seems fairly odds-on now that Jose Enrique will leave and last week Alan Pardew said:
“The noises coming out of Jose’s camp are that he wants to get a new club playing Champions League football.
“We cannot offer him that at the moment, so that seems to be his focus. Hopefully that will change. It is a moving feast. We have got to be ready because if he goes, it is going to leave a big hole in the team and we need to fill it quickly. But he does travel to the United States with us.
“It is not ideal for us, as you can imagine. It is difficult. We have offered him a massive contract for this football club and he does not seem to want to sign it, so it is a very difficult position.
“We have had no concrete offers, but we are going to try and have contingency plans in place so that if we do lose X, then Y comes in.
“We are going to have to give ourselves some sort of chance, so that the deadline-day struggle we had after selling Andy Carroll does not happen again. We not want to be in the same position as last time.” (more…)
Barton acted as peace-makerTrouble at the Darlington v Newcastle United pre-season friendly receives condemnation from the press and the clubs themselves.
It seems the Darlington nonsense has (rightly) received a fair bit of condemnation. Pitch invasions are never welcomed these days and it does nothing good for the reputations of either Newcastle United or Darlington.
From what I can gather it started as a ‘light-hearted’ invasion with smiles all round and then turned nasty. The rozzers reported it as follows:
“There has been a crowd of more than 9,700, which is significantly more than expected based on ticket sales.
“Everything was peaceful until Newcastle scored their second goal and a pitch incursion occurred which was high spirited but not violent.
“A further pitch incursion of around 20 to 30 people followed – a Newcastle supporter being escorted from the ground and three Newcastle supporters were arrested for pitch incursion.
“The game ended without incident and crowds have subsequently dispersed.” (more…)
WindyAlan Pardew thinks Newcastle United’s upcoming tour of America is the ideal preparation for the new season.
Alan Pardew has been talking again, which will come as no surprise to anyone, but this time he’s been extolling the virtues of the pre-season stint to the US of A.
It’s mid-season for Americas football (‘soccer’) leagues, so we’ll be facing players who are well into their competitive stride. This will be a hard test of our fitness as we look to complete a yankee triple over Sporting Kansas City, Columbus Crew and Orlando City.
Pardew feels the tour will set us up nicely for the new season though, saying:
“It is not a money-making exercise by any stretch of imagination.
“It is purely a break-even tour, which we feel is beneficial for the team.
“We go there because the facilities will be first class. It is going to be hot, so it will test us.” (more…)
Tiote chuffed to be as Newcastle United.Newcastle United midfielder Cheik Tiote says he has committed himself to the club and has a positive attitude towards the coming pre-season games.
I can only presume all the gloom with Toon supporters is due to my unplanned absence from article writing of late (more of which later). Or possibly not.
Anyway, there is some good news coming from the mouth (which is presumably attached to a head and body in the usual fashion) of Cheik Tiote. The Ivory Coast superstar is nuts about Newcastle and would chop off his left leg to play for them, although of course that would perhaps hinder his footballing capabilities.
First, Tiote addresses the rumours that might be heading to another club, specifically Chelsea:
“It is only the journalists who have talked about Chelsea – I haven’t said anything.
“I am a Newcastle player, and I will do my job in Newcastle. I have a contract, and that’s the most important thing for me.
“I’m happy – if I wasn’t happy, I wouldn’t have signed for six years.”
So that should be the end of any speculation about a move anywhere else. (more…)
What's a 'huge fee'?Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew has indicated that a huge amount of fees go to agents for transfers and such, but just how much classes as ‘huge’?
One of the things I picked up on in Workyticket’s transcription of Alan Pardew’s interview is that he (meaning Alan Pardew rather than Worky) claimed we pay huge sums of money to agents as part of any transfer agreement.
What Pardew said was:
“I was listening earlier when you was talking about the money being spent and I just want to sort of make something clear. When you sign someone like Demba Ba and someone like Marveaux there’s huge fees involved in that, it isn’t just transfer fees. This is unfortunately how the Premier League works and a lot of money in those deals doesn’t come back through the system. Ideally, in the old days we would sign someone from the Championship and it would go back into the English game but this money’s going out through agents and stuff like that.”
So I thought I’d do some investigation to try and find out just how much money is spent on things like agents’ fees. (more…)
