Speaking on the Athletic’s podcast Pod On The Tyne, local reporter George Caulkin questioned the impact of last month’s three signings.
All three players – Nabil Bentaleb, Danny Rose, and Valentino Lazaro – started our last two games. Both games were defeats and came on the back of an eight-game unbeaten streak in all competitions.
While the performances over that stretch were far from acceptable, the lads were able to do enough to avoid defeats.
However, that has changed over the last two weeks. While George Caulkin doesn’t lay the blame with the new signings, he does ask the question of what they add to the team.
“I think the players that they brought in in January if you look at it now, they haven’t addressed any of the big issues that were in the squad. Apart from the fact that they needed cover at left back. That was a sort of emergency signing.
“The other two haven’t noticeably improved things, and they haven’t answered the questions that were there.
“We talked about Bentaleb last week about what he does, and he’s not driving the team forward. If anything, he’s holding the team back because of the way he plays.
“The positive thing about a signing is it can bring a freshness to a squad that is struggling. It can lift everyone else around them because there’s more competition for places.
“The negative side is that it can disrupt something that you already have. The signings haven’t improved anything. That is a concern.”
Steve Bruce maintained before the January window that he wanted quality added to the squad. His stance was that he would only bring in a player that improves the team.
At first, it looked like he had done that with three quality additions. However, he did not add any goals in the winter window. The only creative player was Valentino Lazaro, who has been deployed at right wing-back.
One mistake we think Bruce has made is in his team selection over the past two games. Starting all three loan signings and dropping players like Isaac Hayden and Matt Ritchie seems to have negatively impacted the team.
Bruce may look to bring both Hayden and Ritchie back against Burnley on Saturday. Then choose to ease the new signings into the side over the next few weeks.
37 comments so far
#BoycottAshley ( OP)
Feb 26, 2020 at 12:46 PM
Comment #1The Corona virus?
geordiemark
Feb 26, 2020 at 12:52 PM
Comment #2what have they brought eh ……………………. nowt ……………… next article 🙂
#BoycottAshley ( OP)
Feb 26, 2020 at 12:53 PM
Comment #3Barring ASM it would be a struggle to say any of 2019/20 signings have brought anything to the squad.
Definitely haven’t strengthened it.
geordiemark
Feb 26, 2020 at 12:53 PM
Comment #4#BoycottAshley ( OP)
i wonder if they can infect ashley with that 🙂
droppy in Wallsend
Feb 26, 2020 at 12:55 PM
Comment #5OP
Controversial.
Weirdly on that subject did you see that the Horror/mystery writer Dean Koontz predicted corona in a book he wrote in 2004?
He wrote about it being a flu like virus but more sinister and that it first started in Wuhan province. Weird.
hibbit
Feb 26, 2020 at 12:55 PM
Comment #6Rose looks far from match fit which is a big disappointment from a player i was very happy we signed
#BoycottAshley ( OP)
Feb 26, 2020 at 12:56 PM
Comment #7Droopy
No, I’ve read a few of his books, never that one
Spooky 😉
fairscup
Feb 26, 2020 at 12:56 PM
Comment #8Jackie Milburn, Len White both better than Shearer.
Jib
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:00 PM
Comment #9Because they were (arguably) better than Shearer
doesn’t make Shearer shite
fairscup
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:01 PM
Comment #10Never said it did.
droppy in Wallsend
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:02 PM
Comment #11OP
Just looked it up on google.
The book was originally published in 1981.
It also says it was a biological weapon and with a much deadlier mortality rate but the similarities are weird.
droppy in Wallsend
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:03 PM
Comment #12Fairscup
Sadly never saw them play.
My Granda always said Len White was the best he ever saw.
My Dad says Supermac or Tony Green.
#BoycottAshley ( OP)
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:03 PM
Comment #13Droppy
Which book is it?
He re wrote Frankenstein, a series of books, never finished them as far as I’m aware, great read.
geordiemark
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:03 PM
Comment #14droppy in Wallsend
it could end up just as bad as the spanish flu in 1918 which started in america and they allowed it to spread into europe when america was fighting ww1 in the latter stages of course, over 40 million dead with that outbreak, i do think these viruses are controlled by governments the world over though
geordietom
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:08 PM
Comment #15https://youtu.be/S6Ngkd4dLEg check this out about dean koontz …
the book Droppy is on about is called The Eyes Of Darkness…
droppy in Wallsend
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:09 PM
Comment #16OP
It’s called The eyes of darkness.
Read quite a few of his books they’re not bad.
droppy in Wallsend
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:10 PM
Comment #17Geordiemark
Nothing would surprise me with governments mate.
As for corona it’s scary alright.
Jib
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:13 PM
Comment #18It’s such a shame we never got more from Tony Green
cyprus
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:13 PM
Comment #19Obviously. Two defeats and disruption since they came. Unless we had brought in real Ben Arfa type game changers, this was expected. They’ll need time to blend and adapt to our boring 😉 style. (Actually, they adapted pretty fast)
Anyway, survival first. Then, exciting expansive all out football will follow. Newcastle never fails to surprise – even us.
fairscup
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:13 PM
Comment #20Yea droppy – Tony Green was fantastic in his short career but I was talking about centre forwards after JimIley said Shearer was the best since 1927.
Len White was a mate of my dad, he had everything a centre forward required he is said to have scored the best goal ever for the toon, google it. Tremendous player with a terrific engine, a human dynamo.
droppy in Wallsend
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:15 PM
Comment #21Jib
Exactly what my Dad said about him. Complete game changer.
hibbit
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:15 PM
Comment #22UPDATED:MAR 7, 2019 ORIGINAL:MAY 22, 2018
Why Was the 1918 Influenza Pandemic Called the ‘Spanish Flu’?
In World War I, neutral Spain was the first to report flu deaths in its newspapers, so commentators soon nicknamed the pandemic ‘Spanish flu.
The ongoing devastation of World War I engulfed much of Europe in spring of 1918 as soldiers – crowded onto military bases in the United States and along the Western Front in Europe – began to fall ill.
Droves of otherwise healthy young men reported to camp infirmaries with typical influenza symptoms like fever, aches and nausea, though doctors soon realized this was no ordinary flu.
Many who suffered from it developed a deadly form of pneumonia, and their lungs filled with bloody fluid. They choked on the pinkish froth as they gasped for their last breath.
The flu outbreak was shrouded in secrecy.
These terrifying early reports were kept secret. Americans had joined the fight in 1917, bringing the Allies ever closer to victory over Germany and the Central Powers by the spring of 1918.
The war had reached a turning point and neither side wanted to divulge any weakness, says Jim Higgins, a Spanish flu historian at the University of Houston-Victoria in Texas.
The Spanish king fell victim to the flu.
By May of 1918, influenza had reached the neutral nation of Spain, decimating the capital city of Madrid. Newspapers there – unfettered by any need for wartime censorship – began publishing reports of the deadly new virus.
Even the king of Spain, Alfonso XIII, became ill, helping to give the impression that the pandemic had started in Spain.
The U.S. and European media soon began calling it the ‘Spanish flu,’ though in Spain, people nicknamed the new influenza strain Soldado de Napoles or “Soldier of Naples,” after a song in a popular Spanish operetta. The hit song was so catchy it was said to spread like the flu.
“We now know that the Spanish flu didn’t start in Spain. In fact it probably started far from the Iberian Peninsula,” says Higgins. Yet the exact origins of the global pandemic remains a mystery.
Where did the Spanish flu really originate?
For many years, medical historians and epidemiologists hypothesized that the outbreak could have started at a British army base in Étaples, France, or at Fort Riley in Kansas, where the first American cases of this new strain of flu were recorded in March of 1918.
More recently, experts have proposed a third hypothesis: The Spanish flu originated somewhere in northern China in late 1917 and swiftly moved to western Europe with the 140,000 Chinese laborers the French and British governments recruited to perform manual labor to free up troops for wartime duty.
Regardless of its origins, the Spanish Flu was an unprecedented global catastrophe.
By the spring of 1919, the influenza pandemic had sickened an estimated one-third of the world’s population and may have killed as many as 50 million people, claiming more lives in a single year than either the First World War or the four-year-long Black Death bubonic plague outbreak that swept Europe and Asia in the Middle Ages.
BY LINDSEY KONKEL
droppy in Wallsend
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:16 PM
Comment #23Fairscup
My Granda used to always say “he’s canny but he’s nee Len White”
Would love to have seen some of them play.
fairscup
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:19 PM
Comment #24Yea droppy he was right but he’s still with us in my avatar haha.
geordietom
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:21 PM
Comment #25153 goals
White is currently the third highest goalscorer in history of Newcastle United with 153 goals. He is behind Jackie Milburn with 200 goals and Alan Shearer with 206 goals. White died in Huddersfield in June 1994.
Anglo Saxon
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:23 PM
Comment #26On that happy note let’s speak all things NUFC.
fairscup
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:24 PM
Comment #27from The Mag
As far as I’m concerned, and I’ve seen some crackers, it has to be Len White’s goal – that goal is etched in my memory. I was only about 13 or so sitting on the wall in the middle of the ‘Popular side’ as it was then. Len waltzed past five or six Man City players and drew Bert Trautmann out and feinted one way and swerved past the other way and planted the ball in the net – simply magnificent!
geordiemark
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:37 PM
Comment #28hibbit
i watched a video about it just the other week and they said it started in the american army quarters in america where the head doctor couldnt control it yet they sent the men to fight in ww1
geordiemark
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:42 PM
Comment #29hibbit
china i should have known
Jib
Feb 26, 2020 at 1:50 PM
Comment #30Chinese labour was used to dig many of the trenches on the Western front
jimiley
Feb 26, 2020 at 2:33 PM
Comment #31The gate next season wlll be sure interesting.
Even Geordies can only be mugged off for no more than 13 years. Surely????
These takeovers at times of season ticket renewals are into double figures. The latest guy bid 3 and a half billion yes billion for manure but could not find 350 million (that’s ten per cent of manure price) to buy SD.
How much longer will the crowd allow themselves to be treated like c….?
magpie0722
Feb 26, 2020 at 2:54 PM
Comment #32For me the best striker we ever had was Andy Cole, a bargain price paid for a player that should never have been sold. Was responsible for Man Utds success, without him they wouldn’t have been the team they became. I appreciate we brought in Shearer, but just think how great we may have been with both strikers in the same team, the mind boggles.
pheasant plucker
Feb 26, 2020 at 3:16 PM
Comment #33They might have the 350 million but don’t want to until we are safe
JohnJ
Feb 26, 2020 at 4:01 PM
Comment #34I just missed seeing “Wor Jackie” but I’ve seen them all including and since Len White and he was first class. However I think Alan Shearer tops the lot! Wyn the Leap was brilliant, Super Mac was excellent, Wor Les was a cracker! Andy Carroll would have been in the mix if he’d stayed fit and stopped with NUFC…… but for sheer guts, determination, and class Big Al comes out top of the class for me! His goalscoring record speaks for itself!!!
JohnJ
Feb 26, 2020 at 4:03 PM
Comment #35Oooops missed Andy Cole he was pretty good as well…..
JohnJ
Feb 26, 2020 at 4:04 PM
Comment #36Just wonder how Demba Ba could have been if he’d stopped around?
JohnJ
Feb 26, 2020 at 4:21 PM
Comment #37Fairs cup – Re Len White!
Newcastle were attacking the Gallowgate end in a midweek game against Manchester City. Bert Trautmann was in goal for City!
Len White received the ball on the wing (popular side inside Leazes end) the kids were on the wall eating peanuts. Len took the ball over the halfway line on the wing. He cut in and beat a man, cut in beat another man.
I think he beat maybe five City players ’till there was just him and Trautmann left. He fainted to his left, and sold the keeper a dummy, pulled the ball past the keeper on the right and smashed it into the empty net. That goal will always live in my memory I’ve seen some cracking goals since from some top players but that one takes some beating!!!