Stevie Taylor – It’s good to talk.
Posted on January 17th, 2010 | 115 Comments |
Things have been going better than expected but we still aren’t out of the woods yet. There are still many issues at Newcastle. It’s just a case at the minute of results masking some issues. However, this period of calm is welcomed by Taylor. He said:
“I think we’re on an even keel now though, we’re stable. The club’s turned round, Newcastle United’s changed for the better.”
As I have mentioned before, it will be a while before we can say that the club has turned around, but the Greenwich born Geordie believes Chris Hughton is a major factor behind this current feel good factor, with Taylor praising the gaffer’s approach to the player’s saying:
“Chris is always chatting to all of us, always explaining things – and you can talk to him about anything.”
“His door is always open to everyone and the lads love him for it. He’s a real players’ manager who has had nowhere near the praise he deserves. You’ll never, ever, hear anyone moaning about Chris around this place. It makes a big change at Newcastle United but we all respect him far too much for that.”
“The lads here always sat around in three groups: foreign, young and older, but that doesn’t happen anymore, we all just mix in.”
I’m glad Hughton is getting some deserved respect, but lets not forget that as a manager he is still learning and relatively inexperienced, and there will be time when he has to read the riot act to the lads. Taylor thinks though, that squad are their own harshest crtics. The former England Under-21 added:
“One of the reasons we’re successful is that we’re being honest with each other now. In the past some lads got upset about things but kept their feelings back and then didn’t perform on the pitch. It caused rivalries but this season, under Chris, it’s been great because we’ve been encouraged to talk about things as a team, to get it all off our chests. We’ve learnt the best way is being honest with each other.”
Relegation almost feels like a fresh start, a chance to build again, or maybe that is being used as an excuse to hide our dissapointment? Most of the fans had forgot the winning feeling, but that has returned now and personally I’m enjoying going to matches a lot more. Don’t get me wrong, the football in this league has been poor at times, from all teams, but pretty football doesn’t put points on board whereas winning does. Taylor spoke on relegation and added:
“There were players in the past here who didn’t give their all, but but now we all definitely feel a sense of responsibility for what happened last season. We want to fight for each other, if someone gets tackled we’ll help them out.”
“In the past silly things were always going on but we don’t have those problems anymore, probably because certain people aren’t here. The newspapers are more interested in Big Brother than Newcastle United now. And we’ve got what this club always needed, players who really want to play for it.”
Sound words from a player who a majority of fans feel an affinity towards. Taylor was one of the players who you could see was visibly distressed on the final day of last season at Villa Park. As a fan, it’s always nice to see the players caring and wanting to play for the shirt, and that’s something very few of us can deny that we are seeing so far this season.
Steven Taylor turns 24 next Saturday but is now a part of the fixtures and fittings at St James’ Park, and surely the lad has to be a candidate for at least the vice-captaincy, maybe the full capataincy given time? At times he has been error prone, but the pairing of him and Coloccini have been very solid this season, and have been major contributers to us standing top of league!
It’s nice to see us making some nice headlines for a change. Long may this work ethic, determination and calm continue!
NUFCBlog Author: toonsy
toonsy has written 643 articles on this blog.
Players always come out with these comments, it must be a standard practice.