With Sunderland’s win last night against Reading at home, they move one place below Newcastle in the league table from their previous 3rd bottom position, and Newcastle are now just two points above the relegation zone, after being a more comfortable 4 points clear before Sunderland’s 3-0 win last night.
Vurnon Anita – we must start to win games
Here’s where we are in the league table at the moment:
UEFA Champions League Group F
Team | Played | Won | Lost | Drawn | GD | Points |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dortmund | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 11 |
PSG | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 8 |
AC Milan | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | -3 | 8 |
Newcastle | 6 | 1 | 3 | 2 | -1 | 5 |
And it doesn’t look like many of our readers think we’ll do any better against Manchester City on Saturday with 71% thinking we’ll lose that game in the early voting.
Vurnon Anita is one player who seems to have the right attitude. although he’s never fought relegation in his football career, having been at Ajax before he arrived on Tyneside:
“We must win games but we haven’t done that a lot.” “On Saturday against City we must go at full strength to win the game at home.” “At home we know we have to give everything.”
“The fans expect that we put teams under full pressure but I don’t know how we’ll approach it yet. I’m going to wait to see what our game plan will be to surprise City at home.”
“They lost in the last minute against Man United so I expect them to be aggressive to try to win the game because they don’t want Manchester United to pull away from them at the top.”
“They will come full of determination but we must look at ourselves and bring our A game.” “We will be at home, so it’s going to be a great game.” “The crowd behind us can help us and I hope we can do our best on Saturday.”
It’s unlikely, but to turn our season around we have to start winning games, and that starts with Manchester City on saturday – we have to go for the points – there’s no other alternative.
Let us know how you think the game will go on Saturday:
10 comments so far
spitfire_
Dec 12, 2012 at 10:26 AM
Comment #1Pardew’s quote… I “love” this guy…
“We’ve got the Man City and QPR games – they loom large. There’s no reason why we can’t win both of those.”
Nufc-83
Dec 12, 2012 at 10:30 AM
Comment #2Tsunki // Dec 12, 2012 at 9:44 AM
All this talk of reality is nonsense – since when have reality and supporting nufc been compatible?
Jonas is being pegged back to cover santons runs forward, its a mutually hampering style. They should work out which half they are going to be forward or covering not switching constantly, and away games santon should stay back. There – said it.
Lol if Santon never went forward and it was left to jonas to try and offer us something from the left we would look even worse going forward than we currently do (if thats possible). Jonas is finished end of story.
Beattie25
Dec 12, 2012 at 10:38 AM
Comment #3Seriously though, why do some think that buying players will get us out of trouble?
When has a side ever bought players and escaped a relegation battle?
The difference will be when Pardew (or somebody else) gets the best out of the players currently here.
The chance to sign Remy, Douglas and Debuchy has been and gone and now we will be looking at the Championship and lower level teams in football to buy players.
Yes Tiote is shite at the minute but who is going to replace him in January? Nobody looks ready to step up to the plate and I’d be intrerested to see what happens in Jan.
I’ve really got a feeling the Pardew will use the beggining of the season against Graham Carr. He’ll be blaming the purchases rather than the tactics and this may lead to Pardew having ultimate influence over who to sign.
I really have a feeling that players such as Kevin Doyle, Carlton Cole, Rhys Williams, Jean Beausejour etc… will be tageted so that Pardew can build a team of hard to beat, long ball specialists.
What we are not considering either is that next season will be the one that all players will truly try to shine. 2013-2014 in World cup season and so all our top players either in the sqaud or on the fringe will want to be playing at the highest level in order to get into the squads for Brazil.
If we are relegated then there is no way on earth we will keep the core of our team like last time, we’d be seriously fcuked. Likewise, if we dont finish near the top this season we could have a real problem come the summer and this window with agents warning their players away from NUFC.
It really is a mess and the only people to blame are the 3 goons in charge. Ashley for not being more forceful with OUR money, Llambias for knowing fcuk all about football and Pardew for playing the game so attrociously.
None of them can escpae any blame so how any of them can be defended is beyond me.
jesperfuglsang - captain of the lemon crew
Dec 12, 2012 at 10:38 AM
Comment #4Nufc-83…I don’t think Santon should stay back. In modern football overlapping fullbacks are very important and you cannot pull off a convincing 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 without them.
…Jonas should not be covering for Santon, that should be Tiote’s problem since he is suppose to be our anchorman, but he’s clearly gone missing.
It is all about clever runs and not how much you run during the game. We seem to make alot of stupid runs, cause we get us self it trouble.
The defense is a shamble this season and Tiote is probably the player who has dropped the most this season and since he adds absolutely nothing going forward it is very important that he safeguard the defense so a player like Santon can get forward!
Beattie25
Dec 12, 2012 at 10:42 AM
Comment #5Santon should stay back if the opposition have sustained pressure and should only go forward on the counter attack.
Santon should stay forward if we ever manage to apply pressure to the opposition leaving the defensive duties to the CB’s and the DM’s.
Thats the modern day formula.
However with Simpson our lines end up diagonal and we seem overly exposed at LB due to PArdews lack of knowledge of the modern game.
We need to build a delorean to take Pardew back to the 60’s and we will piss the leauge.
Lee Dodd
Dec 12, 2012 at 10:44 AM
Comment #6The Team Have to Show The Fans they ar eBetter Than The League Is SHowing. We have lost games we should have won and got well neaten against teams we won against last season. We need to Drop Ba or Put him on The Bench against man City SHola and Cisse up front. Drop Williamson and Put Perch in … Obertan in on the wing for a Bit of speed and Crosses.
Spoof
Dec 12, 2012 at 11:01 AM
Comment #7How anyone can blame Pardew is baffling, last season he had a mid-table side which due to good management and a little bit of luck over-achieved, this season due to a lack of support from the owner Pardew has got virtually the same squad, with Anita replacing Guthrie, however the good luck we had last season has turned into bad luck this season due to injuries, combining the bad luck with the additional work-load with the Europa league we find ourselves at the wrong end of the league table, with all due respect to Pardew, if you have an injury ravaged mid-table side with no quality in reserve you will struggle.
If Pardew had his way poor quality players such as Ferguson, Perch, Williamson, Sammy and Shola would not be his first choice reserves, they are his first choice due to Ashley refusing to buy reinforcements, how the hell can we blame Pardew for that
Sav
Dec 12, 2012 at 12:18 PM
Comment #8And the youngsters should be loaned out instead of padding out the squad numbers. At least that seems to be something Pards is keen on and is doing good for Tav, Dummett, Goode and Donaldson. Ameobi and Vukic (when fit!) should be doing the same.
flash
Dec 12, 2012 at 12:35 PM
Comment #9The fundametals are wrong! Our Central MF gets overrun with 1 pass or turn because we are too static and are in 1 line. This leads further to the gap in between back 4 and MF were we are exposed all the time. The wing Play simply does not happen and next to no overlapping but wingbacks- wingers take each others space. Front 2 are blocking each other and are probably to much alike to be able to play alongside with 2 strikers!I could go on and on but the main thing has to be that work has to be done to form a solid unit to goes forward and defends. This is basic and everyone knows that your Team should attack and defned as a compact unit of 35 Yards. once you do that you narrow space and are able to press with 2-3 players rather than 1 guy chasing a lost cause. a very good example is the german national side!
toonluvva
Dec 12, 2012 at 7:14 PM
Comment #10It’s simple mathematics, if we don’t get results then we get no points. If the teams below us start to get their acts together we can very quickly find ourselves in 18th place. On the bright side, I am fairly confident that QPR and Reading will finish below us. All we need to do then is to ensure that there at least 2 or 3 teams between them and us in May.