The Magpies enter the Dragon’s Lair!Venue: Cardiff City Stadium, Cardiff. Date: Sat 5th Oct, 2013. Kick off: 3.00pm. Referee: Kevin Friend (Leics). UK TV: None.
As I mentioned in my match preview for this game, this could be a decisive game in the career of our current manager if the Magpies are defeated today as our current form simply cannot go on for much longer. As I already pointed out in that same preview, Alan Pardew’s form in our last 38 games has seen a points return of only 39 points and a win percentage of only 28.95%!
Of course, every game is a ‘must watch’ for many of we fans, but this one even more so as the great Toon soap could go into overdrive once again if we are defeated again, but we’ll see.
As you can already read all the news in the run up to this game in the aforementioned preview, I will once again keep this one brief. But I’ll remind you as I usually do that I will also be posting match highlights, as well as a full match video when the game is over. (more…)
Confused Cardiff fans (thanks to Mike at Urban75.com).Venue: Cardiff City Stadium, Cardiff. Date: Sat 5th Oct, 2013. Kick off: 3.00pm. Referee: Kevin Friend (Leics). UK TV: None.
No matter what Alan Pardew or the club say, the sharks have started to circle around Alan Pardew now, and if the Magpies lose this one we could well be be seeing a Sky Sports sacking special live from St James’ Park before long. If he wins, it will be a case of Pardew on probation, but the club will then face a nightmare series of games against four of the Premier League’s top clubs, ie Liverpool, Sunderland (ok, maybe not them!), Man City, Chelsea and Tottenham. Poor Pardew, it might be a good idea for him to have Noda Cabs on speed dial?
If it does happen, it can’t be said that it is a huge overreaction to a handful of disappointing result as it was with his predecessor, Chris Hughton. As site reader ‘tunyc’ rightly pointed out on these pages yesterday (I checked), if we look at Pardew’s Premier League record over the last twelve months it has been P38, W11, D6, L21. That’s a shocking total of only 39 points from a season’s worth of games, with a Goal Difference of -27 and a win percentage of only 28.95%.(more…)
Sports Direct: Only using ‘unused’ advertising space.Inspired by members of the NUFC board saying Sports Direct only takes up unused advertising space at SJP, as well as Newcastle United’s lousy commercial revenue figures, I decided to do a little number crunching and research.
Referring to figures from other clubs using Deloitte’s “Annual Review of Football Finance” and all the other sources I could find, as well as looking at other revenue streams for the club using the club’s last published accounts. I estimate that as per Newcastle United’s last published accounts (for the 2011-12 season), the club is only getting just over half the commercial revenue it should be.
According to my research, if Newcastle United were an average Premier League club with around 27% of the club’s revenue coming from commercial sources such as shirt sales and sponsorship, we should be getting around £25 million per season in total when we are actually only getting only a paltry £13.8 million. Having written that, with the third highest average attendances in the Premier League, some might say that these figures could be skewed somewhat as Newcastle United might be expected to get a higher percentage than normal from matchday revenue. However, they were exactly the same as the average for the whole Premier League, around £21.5 million of £93.3 million, or 23% of total turnover. (more…)
