Has been Fab-ulous this season!Here I continue with the second of four installments of my player reviews for the title winning season just gone.
Last time out we had at look at how our goalkeepers had been getting on throughout the season, which was pretty easy by all accounts as there isn’t that many of them. Now we step up the difficulty and broaden our review to feature our whole defence and look at how they have performed this season. The back four has been a very strong area for us this season, a strange thing for a Newcastle fan to say following year after year of shabby backlines that nobody really seemed to be able to sort out. Granted we may have been playing against weaker opposition, but we have come out on top of them, miles on top in fact and we head to the Premier League with best defensive record in The Championship safely in the bag. I know we have had loan players in the shape of Patrick van Aanholt, Fitz Hall and Zhurab Khizanishvilli but I am going to discount them for this as they aren’t technically our players and only really played a handful of games for us. (more…)
Taylor: Muckraking hypocrite.Football’s most risible muckraker, The Guardian’s North East football correspondent, Louise Taylor, has declared war on football supporters with computers who have the nerve to queer her own pitch; spreading specious tittle tattle and general nastiness about virtually anyone associated with Newcastle United football club.
Obviously distressed by the competition, her latest piece of astoundingly hypocritical venom is entitled “Blog standard lies in the gutter”. It concentrates on Louise’s latest hobby horse, the alleged incident between Andy Carroll and Steven Taylor and also a recent rumour about Aston Villa’s manager, Martin O’Neill which have allegedly been doing the rounds on Aston Villa sites recently. I’ll leave that section for the Villa fans to get furious about, and concentrate on the latest chapter of Taylor’s hateful screed about Newcastle United, it’s staff and it’s supporters.
After casually describing football supporters (her own readers) and the ‘web as an “increasingly noxious mix” who should have their fingers taped together every time they go near a keyboard, she then smears us all by association with the tags of racism and homophobia. As she has in all her stories in the past few weeks, she then moves on to her own latest smear story, which she simply will not shut up about, her mischief making about the “ALLEGED altercation” between Andy Carroll and Steven Taylor. In what could be a remarkably accurate description of her own jaundiced drivel, she rants: (more…)
Taylor: Has he had enough? The inevitable speculation has started already surrounding the future of Newcastle defender Steven Taylor and his desire to stay at the club. The claims made by The Guardian and The Mirror are that 24 year old Taylor has been left disillusioned over the apparent defence and acceptance of Andy Carroll, with one paper claiming there is a hate campaign against the defender and the other questioning whether Chris Hughton is really the man to take Newcastle forward.
On the face of it, the reports of Taylor leaving may not be far wide of the mark. Out of contract in 14 months he would be the prime candidate to be moved on should he not want to sign a new contract extension as the club would seek to gain a fee for the player rather than risk losing him on a free transfer. That said, we simply must remember that this is more than likely just the press trying to stir things up, something that they haven’t had much of a chance of doing so far this season. (more…)
Thou shalt not pass!Two months (and a bit) on from the last review, with the transfer window looming, I thought it might be worth having another look at how the players are doing. With off-field sagas taking a backseat for now, the focus is thankfully on the pitch and given our recent blip, does it add significance to the opportunity to invest this month?
We’re just about halfway through our first season in The Championship since our untimely relegation, and as we sit proudly at the top of the table, it goes some way to proving the quality and endeavour that we have available in the squad.
There is still that underlying fear that our position owes much to the lack of quality elsewhere in the league, an argument which holds some water. Much of our good start to the season is undoubtedly owed to a tremendous defensive record, which was something surely none of us expected.
For what it’s worth here’s my own term review of the keepers and defenders. I’ve only included the lads who have played at least a couple of games so far and I’ve just added to my initial review from back in October. (more…)
Tyneside bound? According to online reports in The Mirror, Matt Kilgallon is on the verge of joining Newcastle from Sheffield United. We were linked to the defender in the summer, and indeed reports suggested we had a deadline day bid for him turned down.
The rumours have persisted in the press that Hughton would make him a priority signing in the January transfer window. And The Mirror is claiming that we were ‘in negotiations with The Blades last night about taking the 25-year-old defender on loan, ahead of a full transfer in January’.
Kilgallon has continued to attract suitors and notably, several from the Premiership, however it seems that considering his contract runs out at the end of the season, The Blades will seek to take a cut on the £5m-7m that he is currently rated at, after contract talks collapsed.
Having watched him have a steady game against us this season, and after reading reports he seems like a canny acquisition, even if an initial loan deal from now until January seems a little unorthodox. I guess a propostion may have been put to Sheff Utd and this forms part of the sale agreement for January? What we would need to pay would be anybody’s guess, so I’ll go for a couple of million, which might not be a bad bit of business on our part. (more…)
