One of the things Alan Pardew did not do well at Newcastle were in the cup compositions – the FA Cup and the League Cup – and then there were the Newcastle – Sunderland derbies which he also did not excel at.
But Steve McClaren has said that Newcastle will be going all out to win the FA Cup despite a major fight we have on our hands to avoid relegation.
We’ll see how we do at Watford in the 3rd round on Saturday, but we’d be very surprised if we can reach the 4th round this year.
Steve McClaren – confident we can have a go at FA Cup
If we do lose in the 3rd round it will not be anything unusual since we’ve gone out at the first stage the last three years.
All that presumably changed at the beginning of the season and last May when owner Mike Ashley said he wanted to win something at Newcastle.
Lee Charnley – who is running the club for Mike Ashley – then issued a statement in early June saying that cup competitions were now a priority.
Presumably that meant they were not a priority before and in the same statement it also said our goal this season was a top eight finish in the Premier League.
What’s happened is that we’ve been struggling with relegation all season and currently we are 3 points from safety in 3rd bottom place with 17 points from 20 games and that’s the worst we have ever done in the Premier League at this stage of the season.
This is what Steve McClaren said:
“I’m absolutely confident we can have a go at the FA Cup.” “We’ll play a strong team and every game is important.”
“The FA Cup is as important as any other game. It’s another game we want to win.”
We thought we’d get hammered at Arsenal on Saturday and we were wrong on that and we think we will lose to Watford on Saturday.
But maybe not – and certainly a win would give the lads confidence to go in and beat Manchester United at home next Tuesday night.
Maybe I’m just suffering from defeat fatigue – with 11 defeats in our first 20 league games?
But we really need to pick up points in the league very soon and that next league game at home next week is so very important against a beatable Red Devils side.
We cannot lose again for the 4th time in a row and have then taken one point from the last 15 points played for – and then have Steve tell us we are playing extremely well.
🙁
What do you think?
Comments welcome.
42 comments so far
sparky55
Jan 5, 2016 at 7:17 AM
Comment #41lilongwe
No doubt most of the players we get in the next three weeks will be on loan which means they’ll be fringe players from other clubs which pretty much means they wont be much better than what we have.
Ashley wont buy more than a couple of players because he knows he’ll take a hit when they’re sold when we go down in May.
It’s looking well dodgy mate
catchy in norway
Jan 5, 2016 at 7:27 AM
Comment #42I do think players will come , and to be honest I don’t think it matters to much where they come from as long as they get played in the right position and have an established winning mentality from the club they come from, the must be playing regular football too,
If we do go for the likes of Remy or Austin j think we are buying problems for the future as they are not the most reliable players , the only thing we have in our favour right now is the EC in France and players want to be there for it, but one that is over Remy for sure will only play half a season at best.
I don’t care about what people say about young Armstrong and that he should stay away for the rest of the season, I’d have him back right now and made our no1 striker, he is on fire and some of the goals he is scoring are out of this world and the big thing for me is he prefers his left foot, most of our chances come from the right which favours a left footer.