Pro-Ashley?Newcastle United’s Jonas Gutierrez did not celebrate his goal on Saturday with his trademark ‘Spiderman’ mask. This has already been covered, but it also appears he wasn’t too keen on the anti-Ashley demonstrations.
According to report in the Telegraph, Jonas did indeed leave the mask behind because he was unhappy about press speculation related to him wanting to leave the club, but he went on to say:
“We know the crowd were shouting out something to the owner but we try not to think about that because it can be difficult for us.
“The only thing we can think about is to win and get the three points. We know if we do that the crowd will be happy.
“We try to win for the crowd. When they are shouting to the owner we don’t think about it. I have met him and I think the owner is doing really good things for Newcastle. They want to stay. The team is good.
“It is good for Newcastle.
“We are going about things in the right way. We try to win all the games and the owner is now doing the right things. We know Chris Hughton is the manager now and that is very important.” (more…)
Fergie Junior.Speaking in his post match interview after after Newcastle United’s 3-1 triumph over Peterborough, Posh manager, Darren Ferguson, gave fulsome praise to Newcastle United, and unpopular London manager, Chris Hughton. He even went as far as saying that his Peterborough United team played the club who WILL win the Championship on Saturday.
Firstly though, he expressed some disappointment with his own team’s performance, saying:
“We didn`t give ourselves a chance and that is disappointing.”
Getting on to Newcastle United and Hughton, he remarked:
“You have seen the team that will win the league. The manner of losing the first two goals was awful. We left ourselves a mountain to climb. They are on a roll at the moment.
“Chris has done a good job and stabilised the whole club, so it was always going to be difficult for us.”
Ferguson, like Hughton himself, has been the subject of some criticism recently. (more…)
Still 2 points clearChris Hughton claims that the team’s focus was the key to Newcastle United’s win over Peterborough yesterday.
Cardiff lost away to derby rivals Swansea and West Brom managed to beat promotion hopefuls Leicester, which means a bit of a gap has opened up between the top 2 and the chasing back.
After the game, Hughton said:
“We have got a totally focused group of players who, from minute one, saw an opportunity for us to stay on top of the division, and very much took that opportunity.
“We have got used to getting on with the job. There are things we can’t affect, but I am very lucky that I have got a group of players who are focused on one thing, and that’s on staying where we are at the right end of the table with the ultimate aim of getting promotion.
“We are focused enough and it certainly hasn’t taken anything away from the victory.” (more…)
Open to offersAccording to the Mirror, Newcastle United legend Alan Shearer is available to manage other clubs with immediate effect.
Shearer was of course pointedly ignored for the Toon job despite his 8-week temporary appointment being called “the best decision I ever made” by Ashley. Even then though, Shearer was still in with a chance as it was widely believed that Barry Moat favoured him as manager if he had succeeded in buying the club.
However, just as Moat was nearing some sort of deal to buy Newcastle United, Ashley pulled the club off the market, appointed Chris Hughton as manager until the end of the 2011 season and that was the end of Shearer’s chances of managing the club for the immediate future.
Last month, Shearer claimed he was ‘open to offers’ from other clubs but the Mirror seems to be claiming that he’s now going to take a more active role in pursuing a new job. (more…)
One Gutierrez, there's only....At one point during this game, I thought my match write-up might be best illustrated by a big daft grinning smiley. Because at one point, that seemed to sum up the sort of mood around the ground today among Newcastle fans despite all of the ill-feeling toward the current incumbent. This also despite the fact that we should really have finished off Peterborough in the first half and that we allowed them a fleeting glimpse of hope in the second when we took our foot off the pedal.
The truth is though, that this was nothing short of a walk in the park, give or take a few nifty saves from Steve Harper. In fact a viewer might have been forgiven for mistaking this as being a football lesson to the minnows by the professionals in the FA Cup First Round today. If you ignored the 40,000 people in the ground, of course……
Perhaps we shouldn’t get too carried away though, because Peterborough are now rock-bottom and should the remainder of the season follow current form, there will be a full division between these two sides come next season. However, let’s focus on the plus points because there were quite a few. (more…)
