One win and five points in the last seven games is the reason why Newcastle are in the position we are, when we had looked to be fairly safe in the league before that streak started – we were in 13th place after 29 games with 33 points.and 5 points above 3rd bottom – six with goal difference – which was then -10. It’s now -23.
Mike Ashley – no wonder he looks worried
The good news is that we now have Fabricio Coloccini back in the side, and the Argentine looked solid at the back in the game at West Ham on Saturday.
That followed Newcastle’s worst home defeat since 1925, when the players and manager shamed Newcastle United by losing 6-0, and some of our players gave up – and that is completely inexcusable.
And the manager is now saying we are playing with injured players – and why do we think these are messages meant for Mike Ashley’s and Derek LLambias – in an attempt to save his job?
This is what Alan Pardew said today:
“We have some problems,” “Ben Arfa has been struggling with this hamstring injury. He has a slight weakness in there and it won’t even be strong I don’t think for six or seven weeks.”
“He was terrific at West Ham and he’s a match winner.” “We’ve been bringing him on after halftime but we missed him when we took him off at West Ham. We missed that little thrust he gives us.
“Then, unfortunately, Shola hurt his knee with almost the first shot he had. So we were carrying him for the rest of the match. It was unfortunate we couldn’t totally push for the winning goal.”
“We knew the Wigan score so we were pushing where we could.”“ For Hatem another week’s work will get him closer and hopefully Shola is OK. But goalscoring is what wins games, and we’ve got to improve that area for next week.”
Whatever has happened when the final whistle blows in the Arsenal game a week on Sunday, in our very last league game – there will be a massive clean-out of fringe players.
The only difference between us being relegated and staying up will be who we will not sell this summer.
If we stay up we’ll try to keep all our best players, but if go down we’ll probably unload players like Yohan Cabaye, Ben Arfa, Moussa Sissoko, Papiss Cisse and Mathieu Debuchy – and maybe even Tim Krul – and ensure we have a side tough enough and good enough to come straight back up.
But we’ll need another manager – and maybe Roberto Di Matteo might be the right man for the job – if we are relegated.
If we stay up it will still be very difficult for Pardew to keep his job, after five French players and three of them French Internationals were brought in to strengthen the squad in January.
And where is Mike Ashley’s return for that – nowhere to be seen – and that will be the big problem for Pardew at the end of the season.
What do you think?
Follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook and +1 us on Google+:
You can also reach Ed at admin@nufcblog.com
=============================================
84 comments so far
Laurent Robert 32
May 7, 2013 at 9:20 AM
Comment #81I can’t blame some of the players for wanting to leave, if we went went down. A lot of them are full international calibre players, who have been managed appallingly.
Their careers are short and quite rightly they want to be the very best they can. They can’t do that by getting told to defend 1 nil leads at home against even bottom of the league opposition with the quality they have around them.
I’d be furious if I was a player and we continously played this way, yet was made to believe from the outset that we’d play passing, attacking football. No wonder why Ba and Colo were complaing to Pardew, and I bet Cabaye has said similar things in recent weeks.
sparky55
May 7, 2013 at 9:33 AM
Comment #82@68…Yes…only too well…but IMO a different set of circumstances…Shearer will never make a good manager and neither will Beardsley…but once we had lost to the makkems and then capitulated against liverpool I thought we needed a change purely and simply to lift the spirits of the team and in essence at that point in time we had two weeks to train to beat QPR. West ham should have a live training session of all out football and then taken that into the QPR game and Pedro IMO would have been ideal in that situation to get the players playing football again and going out on the park with a winning mentality rather than an ‘avoid a defeat mentality’. It was a 3 game gig but in essence setting up only to beat QPR.
Greebol1892
May 7, 2013 at 10:46 AM
Comment #83so….“Then, unfortunately, Shola hurt his knee with almost the first shot he had. So we were carrying him for the rest of the match. It was unfortunate we couldn’t totally push for the winning goal.”
… because no.23 got injured means we couldn’t create a goalscoring opportunity…
F@CK OFF MAN! Why still more excuses and relying on a non-footballer to rescue us!?!. Just shut up and keep us up.
toonluvva
May 7, 2013 at 5:19 PM
Comment #84I am repeating a question I posed some time ago.
Can Pardews selection policy of playing the same people time and time again despite their poor form be due to someone (DL?) putting pressure on him to continue selecting “purples”?
I’d appreciate your thoughts on this.
PS this is not an excuse for Pardew. If he is under pressure, and not happy with interference he should tell who ever it is to go forth.