Mathieu Debuchy was one of five Frenchmen brought in a year ago, to help save Newcastle’s Premier League status, and the five of them – Mathieu Debuchy, Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa, Moussa Sissoko, Yoan Gouffran and Massadio Haidara helped us to do that – but only just.
Mathieu Debuchy – in action at Crustal Palace
And while all five struggled in the first few months on Tyneside, all signings a year later look to be good ones, and of the five – 28 year-old Mathieu Debuchy has been the most outstanding, and he is now one of the top right-backs in the Premier League and a French International regular, and he’s been in great form over the last four months or so for the Magpies.
Newcastle had tried to sign Mathieu in the summer of 2012, but we couldn’t agree a fee with his club Lille, but we got the lad through the door six months later, and his best friend Yohan Cabaye was a big factor in having Debuchy join the club.
And in the Chronicle a couple of days ago, Yohan has talked about his best mate:
“It was difficult for Mathieu when he first came here last January because the team was not doing well.” “It is always tough to change your country and your club.”
“He couldn’t speak English or understand it, so myself, Sylvain and Gabby used to translate for him.” “It took a bit of time for him to adapt, but now he understands what the Premier League is about.”
“He has a great mentality, great fight and great fitness, and is a big player for the team.”
The good news is that Debuchy will return to the side at Norwich City on Tuesday night, after serving his three match ban for being sent off for a dangerous two-footed tackle in the 1-0 defeat at West Brom on New Year’s Day.
We’ll probably have three of those five Frenchmen starting on Tuesday night – Mathieu, Moussa Sissoko and Yoan Gouffran with the other two – Haidara and Yanga=Mbiwa on the bench.
For the record Mathieu has played 36 times with one goal over the last year, and he’s an automatic starter – just like his best friend Yohan Cabaye.
We need to get all three points at Carrow Road on Tuesday night.
Comments welcome.
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10 comments so far
Black and White with an army lol
Jan 26, 2014 at 9:21 AM
Comment #1best RB in the premier league by my standards
Dannyo
Jan 26, 2014 at 9:22 AM
Comment #2Chuffed this guy is coming back against Norwich.
Super player who’s finally found his feet.
jesperfuglsang - captain of the lemon crew
Jan 26, 2014 at 9:26 AM
Comment #3For me it is funny sometime thinking that you can be 28 living France and not speak English at all 🙂
…I know I should not take that for granted! Just cannot help it at times (the kids here learn English in 1st grade)
Oleg G
Jan 26, 2014 at 9:32 AM
Comment #4repost:
Looking at our next 9 games. 20-22 points will be great! Even 18 points will be good in my opinion.
Under 16 is bad. We will be playing the likes of Fulham, C. Palace, Sunderland, Norwich. Also A. Vila and Hull are there.
The difficult games are Everton, Chelsea And Spurs. In these games between 1 to 3 points will be ok if we will get all points against the other teams. So it is like 6 wins, 1 draw, 2 loses. Or 5 wins, 3 draws, 1 lose.
Or another option is, we win At home against Everton and the other teams, which will be a massive 15 points at home, and get another 6 on the road.
But anything lower than 5 wins out of those 9 games, will be bad.
My prediction is, and no surprised here I think:
Norwich – W
Sunderland – W
Chelsea – L
Spurs – D
Villa – W
Hull – D
Everton – D
Fullham – W
C. Palace – W
18 points.
From the other 7 games of the season, I think it will be less % of points out of the possible 21. Maybe 10-12 points. Man U will be in form, Liverpool too. Arsenal. Cardiff, Swansea, Stoke and S’ton are the teams to beat. 10-12 points there.
Of course I expect us to win every time. But this is a realistic look from what I think we have in this team.
28-30 points in the 16 games left. Puts us to 64-66 points. Too optimistic even?
We have a rate of 54% success this season.
The 28-30 points is a bit above that.
54% out of 16 games would be 26 points actually. So I guess I am a bit optimistic than 🙂
Transfer Sage
Jan 26, 2014 at 9:32 AM
Comment #5jesper
It’s hard for us to comment in England on that as not many of us (as a % of the population) speak a second language as we take it fr granted most speak english where we go. (just in general, sure there are plenty exceptions).
I’m currently learning some german though and hope to be able to have a working knowledge, enough to get by, withing 2 years at most.
I remember languages at school, we did small bits of french at german for 1 hour a week, starting at age 11, and didn’t learn anything of real value, just kept doing random sentences, not linking things together well…almost learning blocks of words to pass a test and not learning the actual language…..that was only 8 years ago i left school but does’t seem to have changed going off what my younger brother has to learn.
Jail for Ashley
Jan 26, 2014 at 9:53 AM
Comment #6TS,
Throughout my life I have travelled the world extensively with both work and leisure and pretty much every where I’ve been a good ldvel of English has been spoken, people say it’s lazinezs that we don’t speak a second language, believe me, if Spanish, Greek and Turkish tourism only spoke French or German, and American movies were in either kf tge two we would all have a good knowledge of the language.
1949BH PROUDTOBEAGEORDIE
Jan 26, 2014 at 9:55 AM
Comment #7if jk stopped bringing in douglas and vaincour well done joe. we have enough problems getting rid of our average to poor players we dont want ie ober marv gosling we dont want or need any more .we are better off relying on our young players
Abdhammed
Jan 26, 2014 at 10:25 AM
Comment #8Fantastic player
FrankfurtMag
Jan 26, 2014 at 11:07 AM
Comment #9@Jesper,
A lot of French seem to speak German as a second language. Most also speak English but choose not to.
When I travel to France a combination of English and German seems to get me by.
FrankfurtMag
Jan 26, 2014 at 11:07 AM
Comment #10Forgot to mention that my school French helps also 😉