Toon number 2 striker?Birmingham City make a bid for Newcastle United’s Shola Ameobi. Meanwhile, Alan Pardew has to consider letting the striker attend to his international duties.
According to The Daily Mail, Birmingham City have lodged a cheeky £1.5m bid to buy Shola from us which, The Mail speculates, we’ll ‘firmly rebut’.
Shola does – to put it kindly – elicit a ‘mixed response’ from fans and pundits alike and is often on the end of some fairly harsh criticism. Even so, £1.5m for our third highest scorer this season does seem a bit insulting (assuming The Mail’s report is true of course).
The 29 year old has 18 months left to run on his contract and is arguably our number 2 striker after Andy Carroll as he often gets the nod ahead of Best, Lovenkrands, Ranger and Xisco.
I can’t imagine Alan Pardew will be keen to let him go, particularly with Andy Carroll yet to come back from injury.
That’s a point that’s backed up by Pardew’s apparent reluctance to free up Shola for international duty for Nigeria’s friendly against Guatemala on February 9th. The game comes between our fixtures at home to Arsenal and away to Blackburn and it’s doubtful whether Shola would be available to play for us against Blackburn after a midweek international and the associated transatlantic travel. (more…)
Toon target?Rumour has it that Alan Pardew is looking to bring Stephen Ireland to Newcastle United if problems with the player’s wage demands can be resolved.
It seems this rumour was started by The Journal, although there are no quotes and no official source is mentioned, so for the second article in succession I suggest caution.
The story has us looking to bring Stephen Ireland to Newcastle from Aston Villa. The midfielder transferred to Villa from Manchester City in part exchange for James Milner at the start of the season.
Ireland scored 16 goals in 138 first team appearances for Manchester City, but he is goalless in 10 starts for Villa and Gerard Houllier has publicly stated that the player ‘must work harder’.
Villa of course have recently splashed out on Darren Bent and it’s feasable that they might consider letting Ireland go in order to offset the cost, particulary if the player is unpopular with the manager. (more…)
£60,000 a week?Newcastle United are allegedly going to double Andy Carroll’s wages to make sure he stays at the club.
Warning Will Robinson! The story comes from the News of the World, which is somewhere between Viz and The Beano in terms of reliable, factual information, so treat it with extreme caution.
On the back of Alan Pardew’s “I will says this one more time – Andy Carroll is not for sale” statement in response to alleged interest in the player from Spurs, it now seems that the club are prepared to double Andy Carroll’s wages in order to fend off interest from a brace of Manchesters.
This would apparently take the player’s wages from £30,000 a week to £60,000 a week and help to stop Carroll from being tempted by Manchester City and Manchester United, who are both – allegedly – interested in acquiring Carroll’s services. (more…)
Our match correspondent is no David Bailey!Injury time sees us give up a goal for the second week running as Spurs hold Newcastle to a draw at St James’ Park.
Given that I live in Somerset, I don’t get to many home games these days, so I was keen to take advantage of my 4-day spell in Newcastle by taking in the match against Spurs. I had a swift pint in Fluid and then made my way into the ground to find that I’d once again forgotten my specs, which seems to be something of a tradition for me these days. So I watched what could have been Bruce Willis, John Cleese and Meryl Streep warming up on the pitch and then it was game on.
The first half was a fairly even affair. Spurs seemed to have plenty possession without threatening but, whilst we didn’t see quite as much of the ball as them, we looked the more dangerous in front of goal.
Jermain Defoe took a few punts at goal in the opening 10 minutes but they were neither here nor there, Enrique easily blocking one and the other flying wide. Gareth Bale then got himself crocked. I’m not entirely sure what happened but he clearly wasn’t fit to play on so he was swapped for Sebastien Bassong, who was of course roundly booed as he came on and every time he got the ball thereafter. (more…)
Threatening the top 10 already!At the start of the season, finishing in 17th place was considered enough of a target for Newcastle this season. It is now clear, however, that we can aim a little higher than that..
Alan Pardew recently claimed that he wanted to eventually threaten the top ten, but I’m not too sure we’ll be all that far away from it this season.
We would surely have to suffer an almighty collapse of form or an unprecedented number of injuries (even for Newcastle) to consider a 17th place finish anything but disappointing.
I thought I’d take a look at the games we have left and try to estimate how many points we’ll end up with. Don’t trust my estimates though. I once ‘estimated’ that a Christmas tree I saw at a garden centre would fit in my house. It did, but only after I chopped 4ft off the top and 2ft off the diameter. It was more of a Christmas bush by the time I finished.
Nevertheless, I’ll have a crack. We have 16 games left to play – 8 at home and 8 away – and the following are my guesstimates as to how those games will go on a month by month basis:
January
Spurs (H) … draw
1 point from 3 for the remainder of the month. (more…)
