Demba Ba: Newcastle United’s hottest hitman in recent times.Below is a table comparing the main statistics of all of Newcastle United’s main strikers who have played in the Hughton / Pardew years. There are six, Shola Ameobi, Peter Lovenkrands, Andy Carroll, Leon Best, Demba Ba and most recently of course, Papiss Cisse.
Please note that this is for Premier League games only. Championship stats have been excluded as they would obviously give the players who played a full season in the lower division an unfair advantage. As well as that, cup games have also been escluded too to make as level a playing field as possible (if you’ll pardon the pun). I think you might find one or two surprises in there, which was partly the reason I did this post in the first place.
I suppose I could have included Kevin Nolan too, as his goalscoring and assist figures would also stand up with the names below after Chris Hughton moved him further forward into the “hole” as they say, however this one’s for strikers and Nolan has always been a midfielder, albeit a highly attacking one in recent seasons. (more…)
Back in black and white?Newcastle United appear to be interested in a couple of strikers if press reports are to be believed, one of which could be Andy Carroll.
The big news to hit the press today is the rumours that Newcastle may be trying to strike a deal to bring Andy Carroll back from Liverpool.
Our friend the Daily Mail says that a top agent rang Newcastle to offer them Carroll for just £20m, which we refused, and then the agent came back and offered him for £15m plus add-ons (whatever they may be), which again was refused by Newcastle. The Mail goes on to suggest that Newcastle are prepared to offer £10m for the player – substantially more than Derek Llambias’s previous estimate that he’s worth “eff all” – as long as Carroll takes a substantial cut in his £90k/week salary.
Carroll has only managed 6 goals in his 31 appearances for Liverpool since his £35m move a year ago in contrast to the 11 he scored for us in 20 games in the half season before we sold him. He has had to content himself with coming on as a substitute for Liverpool more often than getting a place in the starting XI. (more…)
£13m+, allegedlyNewcastle United may need to find £13m+ if they want to bring Pappis Demba Cisse to the club in the January transfer window.
Having allegedly had a £10m bid for Papiss Demba Cisse rejected in the summer transfer window, it would seem that Newcastle will have to find more than that if they want to bring the striker to St James’ Park in January. Furthermore, we’d find ourselves competing with the Mackems for his signature from Freiburg.
Cisse definitely wants to move on from the German club and recently told German radio:
“I want to leave. I want to try to play at a different level.”
And Freiburg chairman Fritz Keller is fairly pragmatic about the matter, saying:
“We are all still pretty calm, the boy has been doing a little in-house advertising, that’s legitimate.
“As long as he is scoring goals for us, then things are very well.” (more…)
Up to the task?Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew says we have to find new ways of scoring goals now that we’ve sold all the people that scored them for us last season.
It already seems like a geological time era has passed since the last Newcastle match and we still have to wait until Monday. There seems to be a general feeling of post-transfer window depression amongst Toon fans and we need a match to – preferably a winning one – to help lift the gloom.
Whilst Alan Pardew has allegedly ‘got over’ the disappointment of not signing the striker he was after in the transfer window, he does still seem a little unsure where our goals are going to come from. Pardew said:
“We are going into the unknown to a certain degree because a lot of the goals we created and scored last year are not in this team.
“But we have got a lot of new talent and that new talent is exciting and they have shown that in games. We are going to be leaning on them to make us look a little bit different and to create a different type of goal.” (more…)
Another season?Newcastle United striker Leon Best shows a good attitude towards fighting for his place in the squad and this humble author feels he deserves another season at the club.
Leon Best’s career has been a mixed affair in terms of his goals to games ratios. Between 2004 and 2007 – up until he was 20 years old – he didn’t really do much to attract attention at all with just 5 goals in 43 games, but his loan move from Southampton to Yeovil produced 10 goals in 15 games. He then had a poor spell at Southampton and Coventry, netting just 17 times in 86 games.
After that he managed a fair 10 in 29 during his last season at Coventry before he moved to Newcastle where he didn’t score in 13 games for us during his first season at the club. However, last season he scored 6 goals in 12 games, which is a pretty good return for any striker. (more…)
