I Wish I Was A Geordie - The Blog of Newcastle United in the US

FRAGILE STOKE FACES WEEK OF RELENTLESS SOCCER

A host of medical and psychological professionals are on stand-by as Stoke City F.C. embarks on a grueling week of relentless, terrifying soccer.

"This is a completely new and unique season for us in respect of playing Saturday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday... Monday!" manager Tony Pulis told ESPN* in advance of Stoke's potentially soul-crushing clash with Newcastle United tonight at the Brittania Stadium. It is not known exactly how Stoke's players have coped thus far with competition on so many different days of the week, much less how or if they will survive matches on three completely contrasting days of the upcoming week. Pulis is said to have enlisted a team of calendar counselors to head off confusion and depression among his squad.

"We've given them a program on different things we think they should be doing for rest and recovery, which we think is important," Pulis continued. "They have individual instructions on what to do, what not to do, especially after the flights. It'll be over five hours to Tel Aviv." Pulis did not say whether he would seek to put his team under hypnosis or suspended animation to counter the physical and emotional devastation that could result from sitting in padded airplane seats and being doted upon by caring, attractive flight attendants for nearly an entire morning. Moreover, a full time zone lies between Tel Aviv and Stoke, raising fears of exhaustion for a club that will face a Maccabi team with two additional hours to prepare in theory if not reality for Thursday's Europa League match.

Pulis himself has been under extreme pressure in a league where fans often prefer success over failure. "We have to manage people's expectations because there'll be periods when we're not going to do well, because of all sorts of reasons," Pulis said, preparing Stoke supporters for the worst. "You know what it's like, people expect you to win and keep winning." 

*actual quotes

JUST HOW VALUABLE IS A TROPHY?

We hear it every time Newcastle United plays an FA Cup or Carling Cup match. At some point or another, the announcer feels compelled to remind everyone that Newcastle hasn't won a major domestic trophy since 1955. That's usually followed by a comment on the peculiarity of that drought in light of United's considerable stature in English football.

The Carling Cup has been viewed as the most realistic target in recent years because of how the Premier League's leading clubs approach the competition. So when Newcastle valiantly fell 4-3 to Blackburn in the round of 16 on Wednesday, it was a blow to black-and-white fans who thought this might finally be the season that would deliver a trophy.

But let's just stop and look at the bigger picture for a moment. What is the value of a trophy?

That might sound like a stupid question. Trophies are what successful clubs collect. But would winning the Carling Cup mean a successful season? What about the FA Cup? Would Newcastle fans be happy with, say, a 13th-place finish in the Premier League if it meant winning one of those tournaments? What if they experienced what supporters of Birmingham went through last season (the high of winning the Carling Cup at Wembley followed a few months later by the low of being relegated from the Premier League)? Would it be worth it to end United's trophy drought?

I wonder if there's a bit of a disconnect between American Newcastle fans and their English counterparts when it comes to this topic. We simply don't have the same appreciation for the domestic cups. How could we? We didn't grow up traveling around the country to watch Newcastle play at grounds big and small. So how could we care as much about the trophies the tournaments are played for?

They don't really compare to the Premier League, which is pretty much the be-all and end-all of an American Toon supporter's fandom. We depend on success in the Premier League because it allows us to continue watching our team the following season. A Carling Cup or FA Cup title doesn't hold the same value in that regard.

So I'll ask again: What is the value of a trophy?

THE SECRET LIFE OF A NEWCASTLE FAN IN AMERICA

I try to arrange my life to maximize Newcastle United match viewing, but the vagaries of distance, time zones, and broadcast contracts can make it difficult. Such was the case Wednesday, when Newcastle's untelevised Carling Cup match against Blackburn Rovers fell in the middle of the American afternoon, during a course I teach at the University of Wisconsin. When class was over I had only a short breath to check the score on my phone before heading across campus with one of my students to staff the journalism table at a university-wide fair where freshmen can roam from booth to booth and "shop" for their future majors. The phone flashed 2-0 for Blackburn in the 89th minute. Sad, but a relief - a match worth missing.

At the moment I settled into my post at the fair, my phone buzzed with an exclamation-filled text from my friend Mark in Cincinnati. Mark is an English soccer neophyte - he was infected unwittingly with a raging case of Toon-itis when, with nothing better to do on a Tuesday night, he drove over to Columbus to join co-blogger Tom and me for Newcastle's preseason match against the Crew in July. "This would normally not be my sort of thing," he said, gazing with wonder at the roaring, singing pregame crowd in bar-code shirts packing the 4th Street Patio bar. By the time he left Columbus, with the help of patient instruction in the stands and taverns, he knew most of the players' numbers, all the key chants and could do a credible rendition of the Coloccini song in a faux-Geordie accent.

Mark was texting me to ask about the tiebreaking rules in the Carling Cup.

I looked up from my phone at an earnest freshman perusing a flyer, waiting for my attention. I said something like: "HAHAHAHA WOULD YOU CARE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT OUR VERY EXCITING MAJOR?"

By a stroke of fortune the student alongside me was one of the few who share a passion for English soccer - an Arsenal fan, but otherwise personable and intelligent. I told him what had just happened, and he seemed to grasp instinctively there could be slack to pick up from what might appear soon to be an extremely moody teacher. A line of freshmen began to form - we are a popular department on our large campus - and by the time I had a break to open my laptop and check our blog's Twitter feed for an update, Blackburn had regained the lead. I reeled a profanity back into my brain before it hit someone. "Oh well," I said. "At least I can concentrate now."

My phone buzzed. Another text from Mark. It read, "Who is Lovenkrands and why do I love him so?"

I literally couldn't take anymore. Penalty kicks would be untenable for me in public. I shut the laptop and silenced the phone. By the time it was safe to look again, Newcastle's hopes, and mine, for one trophy were gone.

Walking back to my office, I pondered, why? Why is Newcastle like this? Why does this team, of all teams, have to make every match, every transfer window, every season into a soap opera? Do Newcastle fans really need melodrama? Why does the club with the most emotional following always pull on emotions so hard? 

After an evening of beer and a night of sleep, an answer has come: the club doesn't just pull on the emotions. The emotions pull on the club. It's a synergy. What player, arriving at Newcastle from somewhere else, hasn't remarked almost immediately on the spirit? It isn't always enough to make the results positive. But it's always enough to make them compelling - even for someone connected only by a pixellated electronic signal, in a place where only a small, secret society can possibly understand, thousands of miles away.

CARE AND FEEDING OF A YOUNG ITALIAN DEFENDER

Newcastle United fans, including us, have been calling Sylvain Marveaux's name for a while now, and on Saturday, it looked like we had it right. Now the buzz is building for another substitution, and while we've beaten that drum on this blog as well, I'm not as sure about rushing Davide Santon into a lead role at Newcastle.

Don't get me wrong: I think Santon can become a star at St. James' Park. But I'm also Italian - well, half-Italian, but for an Italian boy, the half that matters: the maternal half. Maturity doesn't come fast for us Italian males, and if you don't believe me, check out the scorch marks in Mario Balotelli's bathroom. It may be wise to bring Santon along the way an Italian mother would: incrementally, with lots of positive reinforcement and limited room to fail.

My first loves in soccer, thanks to my transnational roots, were the Italian national team and A.S. Roma, the closest big club (along with Lazio) to my family's hilltop village in southern Umbria. While the Premier League and Newcastle have surpassed Serie A and Roma in my heart, I still keep up with the Giallorossi, and I was intrigued by Santon's recent comments on a Roma web site, in an article about how close Santon came to joining Roma before his Newcastle transfer. In an interview with LaRoma.net Santon admits he was interested in going to Rome - the Italian press reported it widely at the time as his preferred choice - but he says he's happy having landed at Newcastle, in part because the Premier League isn't so hard on young players: "It's a problem in our country's league, while England is different. If you mess up in a match they don't massacre you. They try to help you instead."

I've never understood why, in a nation where 80 percent of males still live with Mama at age 30, Italian managers are so impatient with young players. Perhaps it's because the managers are themselves Italian males and eager to dispel the stereotype of the tender mammone or "big mama's boy." Perhaps this indicates Alan Pardew, who displays all the earmarks of a patient father, might have a better go with Santon than Roberto Mancini faces with Balotelli. Granted, Santon may not be as much of a challenge to begin with. But during his struggles after a flashy start with Inter, Santon came in for his share of criticism for immaturity, christened "Il Bambino" and chastened in the press for his "excess of notoriety" and "mistaken friends" - in English idiom, keeping not the best of company.

So here's hoping the staff and fans in Newcastle are gentle with a young, talented Italian who found it hard to live up to Maldini-sized expectations in his home country - someone who flew Mama in to cook while he was acclimating to Tyneside. There's a strong tactical argument for injecting Santon into the lineup now, just as had become obvious with Marveaux. But I remember being 20 and Italian, and I'm thinking it may be better to turn up the heat in Davide Santon's room, find him an Italian chef, and let him grow naturally into his spotlight.

NEWCASTLE ATTACK FINALLY BREAKS ENOUGH TO FIX

Sometimes a subpar performance is the best thing that can happen to a team.

Of everyone with an opinion one way or the other, Alan Pardew may have been the last to think Newcastle United's attack didn't need a makeover. We've typed about the statistics until we're blue in the fingers. My co-blogger was pleading for Pardew to replace Gabriel Obertan with Sylvain Marveaux a month ago. The fan-o-sphere has been calling ever more insistently for Hatem Ben Arfa to take the hole spot waiting for him; Tom fears he's still rusty, but to quote my orthopedist after a hockey accident in which I snapped one of the same bones Arfa did, "That leg's not going to finish healing until you skate on it." After a while the only place the rust will come off is in the lineup.

Saturday's yawn of a first half against Wigan, punctuated mainly by close calls from the visitors, was finally an argument eloquent enough to convince the manager. The world is done waiting for Obertan to show something other than pace. And 60-percent possession doesn't do a club much good when there's nowhere to take the ball. In came Ben Arfa at the half, a tick behind the play at times, as could be predicted. But when Marveaux joined in place of Obertan at the 77th minute, the lift in the squad was so palpable, even from our distance, that it could have been mental as well as physical - perhaps the players themselves had been pining for the manager to act. It took just four minutes for Marveaux to find some long-awaited working room, spin and feed Yohan Cabaye with a chance he could put against nylon instead of woodwork.

Fans are by nature impatient, and managers are by nature conservative - not surprising, considering whose posterior is on the line for the decisions. It's hard to blame Pardew for not wanting to mess with a formula that hasn't been beaten. The Wigan match provided Newcastle's manager and fans with the best of both worlds: a performance bad enough to fix, but good enough to win. With the toughest stretch of the schedule just ahead, we can hope now that Pardew is too conservative to change what, for 17 minutes at least, finally looked like an attack that befits Newcastle's spot on the league table.

A BETTER ARGUMENT FOR KEEPING RELEGATION

I was as stunned as the rest of you when I hopped on the blog this morning and read the latest post.

To put it mildly, I totally, utterly and completely disagree with my co-blogger's suggestion that doing away with the relegation and promotion system in English soccer is a good idea.

That system isn't about ensuring that each match has meaning; that's merely a byproduct of its larger purpose. It's a justice system for the sport.

The clubs that deserve to be punished are relegated and the clubs that deserve to be rewarded are promoted. Relegation might be painful to fans of the clubs that experience it, but they can't argue with their team's fate.

Newcastle United fans know this all too well. Years of overspending on players with big reputations but small backbones finally took its toll three seasons ago. Down United went into the Championship. Maybe the Premier League would have been better with Newcastle among its members in 2009-10 - although had United kept its relegation team together, the league would've been worse - but that's not the point. Bad teams are punished, and Newcastle had a bad team. Justice was served.

It was an adapt-or-die moment for Newcastle. That's the point of relegation. United sold off the dead weight from its squad, started spending sensibly, and has emerged as a healthier club. Other so-called big clubs haven't reacted appropriately - or at least not in a timely fashion - so their stay in the lower leagues has been much longer.

With the relegation and promotion system, those clubs have an incentive to change their ways. And, in the long run, that will benefit the most important people - their fans.

BEST ARGUMENT FOR END OF RELEGATION: NEWCASTLE

I can say this because I'm American: the relegation and promotion system in European soccer is dumb. And Newcastle United might be the best evidence.

An alarm sounded by League Managers' Association chief Richard Bevan that foreign owners are itching to end relegation and promotion in favor of an American-style franchise system has brought a fresh round of wailing and teeth-gnashing from commentators such as Sky Sports' Jeff Stelling, who, like many who cling to obsolete tradition, tries to mask the weakness of his argument with breathlessness.

Stripped of its shock-and-awe rhetoric, Stelling's argument is, "How many fans would still go and watch a match if it didn't matter whether their team won or lost?" Which on its face rings ridiculous to an American fan, who sees middling baseball franchises draw larger crowds than English soccer clubs while playing every night of the week for almost half the year. Or to someone like me who supports an NFL club that had nothing to play for throughout the 1970s and '80s, yet filled every seat for every game in a 60,000-seat stadium - in a town of 90,000. And is now the dominant franchise in the league, by the way.

But OK - that's America. A big country with more fans. Maybe England is different. Let's take the argument to England.

Two years ago, Newcastle United was punished for a bad season with relegation to the Championship. The club, while performing spectacularly at the gate by Championship standards, still drew approximately 5,000 fewer fans per match in that league than it would have in the Premier League. Was that good for English football? In a city with Premier-level history and support, was being in the second division much better than not having anything to play for in the first division?

Or could it have been far worse? What if the club hadn't bounced right back? What if it had foundered in its beautiful park, like Sheffield Wednesday, which now fills less than half a stadium it hasn't invested in for years? Is that good for English football? How many years of a Premier League club not having anything to play for does that represent? Or, to make an argument from the future instead of the past, what if West Ham United isn't back in the Premier League by the time it moves to its new Olympian home? Maybe that's unrealistic. But if we're banking the state of the sport on well-supported clubs like Newcastle and West Ham being promoted right back after relegation, why make it a question at all? Why relegate them in the first place?

The true speciousness of the not-having-anything-to-play-for argument lies in its assumption that promotion and relegation are the only reasons winning and losing matter. It's an especially absurd assumption in the Premier League. Because all but a handful of clubs have no hope of a title to begin with, Premier League fans take far more pride than their American counterparts in incremental gain and long-term improvement by their clubs. One element that attracted me to Newcastle United was the way its supporters obsess over every tick up and down the table, measuring their club against more than mere safety - 5under1and, for example.

Besides that, the franchise system does have a form of relegation and promotion, and one that's more effective in generating support, if darker, than the promise of a season up or the threat of a season down: the franchise itself. Clubs without top-level support lose their top-level franchise to some other city, for good. And cities that develop large support for minor-league franchises are rewarded with a permanent promotion to the majors. That's one reason professional sports thrive in America: promotion and relegation are determined by the support, not the victories and losses. That keeps the largest stadiums full and benefits every club and fan.

Here's an idea: maintain promotion and relegation in English soccer, but base it on attendance, not points. Imagine the boost the sport would receive, on and off the pitch. Imagine how many parks large and small would fill and expand. Imagine the noise, the excitement. And imagine a world in which the best fans in the league - Newcastle's fans - would be rewarded with top-flight entertainment every season. Now that's something to play for.

MAIGA THE MOST REALISTIC STRIKER PURCHASE

Modibo Maiga always figured to be the starting point for Newcastle United's January striker hunt.

After all, Newcastle and Sochaux were reportedly close to a deal late in the summer before things broke down. Maiga, of course, went on strike at the start of the season to try to push through a move, to no avail.

So Maiga would seem to be the most convenient target for United to pursue as we slowly creep toward the opening of the January transfer window. He's also the most realistic of the options that have surfaced so far.

Wednesday's report in the Journal offered four names from Newcastle's shopping list: Maiga, Twente's Luuk de Jong, Freiburg's Papiss Demba Cisse and Lille's Moussa Sow. Based on Mark Douglas' reliability in the past, we're inclined to trust what he reports. Plus, none of these are new names.

There are several reasons why Maiga would be the frontrunner to wear the No. 9 for United over the other three. For starters, he's the one who's most likely to be available.

Sochaux figures to be a midtable team in Ligue 1 this season. Keeping Maiga most likely won't lead to a European spot, and selling him probably won't mean relegation. The situations at Twente, Freiburg and Lille are drastically different.

Twente, a Europa League participant, is a challenger for the Eredivisie title. Lille is a weaker team than last season, when it won its first Ligue 1 title since 1954, but a second straight Champions League spot isn't out of the question (its current CL campaign hasn't started out well).

Freiburg, meanwhile, appears to be a major relegation candidate in the Bundesliga and selling its best player halfway through the season certainly wouldn't help its chances of beating the drop. Cisse also signed a new contract in September that's said to allow him to leave at the end of the season.

Then there's the financial aspect. The transfer fees attached to de Jong (contrary to some reports, he's not in the final year of his contract; it runs until 2014), Cisse and Sow all seem to be in the eight-figure range. In the case of Cisse, we know that will be the case based on the fact that Newcastle failed with a £10 million bid in the summer. The highest number we've seen associated with Maiga is £8 million.

Whether Maiga is the best player is a separate issue (so, too, is the fact that he'll be headed to the Africa Cup of Nations with Mali in mid-January; Sow and Cisse will be there to represent Senegal alongside Demba Ba). Given Newcastle's recent success shopping in France, though, it's sensible that they'd want to stick with that formula (and we should point out that the style of play in Ligue 1 more closely resembles that of the Premier League compared to the Bundesliga or the Eredivisie). And if we think it's down to Ligue 1 strikers, then I'll add that I'm not convinced Sow is worth his alleged price tag. 

Whatever your opinion is of their on-field ability, though, it's hard to argue against Maiga being the most realistic option at this juncture.

MAIGA RUMORS APPEAR CREDIBLE, FOR OCTOBER

Transfer rumors are getting to be like Christmas displays: they come so far ahead of the season it makes a person weary. And the earlier they are, the more absurd they tend to be - the thought of Liverpool forking out £10 million for Ryan Taylor, much as we like him, is enough to make us fall over a wall with laughter. So we're not going to dignify most transfer stories with posts at this point. However, current reports of Sochaux/Mali striker Modibo Maiga's January transfer to Newcastle are widespread enough for us to comment, keeping in mind our guidelines for transfer rumor evaluation that proved popular with readers over the summer.

While Luke Edwards and the Telegraph are trustworthy by English media standards, yesterday's Telegraph piece trumpeting Maiga's imminent arrival was short on detail and lacked even an unnamed source. But the Telegraph report was corroborated by the impeccable French sports daily L'Equipe, whose brief item yesterday was attributed to "a source close to the English club." That put the Maiga reports slightly ahead of the late-summer done-deal rumors regarding PSV's Erik Pieters, for example, which were greeted with skepticism in the Dutch press.

Today's report in The Journal by Mark Douglas confirms Newcastle's continued interest in Maiga - he's said to headline the club's list of potential No. 9s - while pumping the brakes a bit on the timeline for an agreement being reached. Sochaux's local daily L'Est Republicain, which was quick to discount the summer rumors of Maiga's transfer, reported negotiations for a winter transfer to Newcastle being underway two weeks ago, and acknowledged today in a reader Q-and-A column that the player's departure is likely. 

The problem, of course, is that the transfer window is still 11 weeks away. By that time Maiga could fade from his torrid early pace, or be injured, or be struck by lightning. Or his scoring tear could intensify to the point at which Liverpool would send Sochaux the £10 million it has set aside for Ryan Taylor. We just can't know. But, as far as Halloween transfer rumors go, the Maiga reports feel at least a little more like treat than trick.

CHAMPIONS BOUND? MORE SIGNS POINT UP THAN DOWN

We are not English, so as a public service to Newcastle United partisans around the globe, today we dispense with English reserve and display the following phrase with classic American over-enthusiasm:

Champions League.

We know one home draw with Tottenham isn't a direct pass to Milan. With only 11 goals out of 8 matches and a modest differential of plus 5, the club, statistically, still looks a bit like a penthouse intruder. My co-blogger qualified his praise Sunday evening with a list of flaws that still glare on the field, and he's right. He also wrote, as many across England seem to agree, that despite the current standing, "Newcastle isn't realistically going to challenge for a Champions League spot this season."

On that I think he may be wrong. While the current club may not have Champions League written all over it, as Buddha said, everything changes. And as this season goes on, Newcastle United is more likely to change for the better than for the worse.

A reader has pointed out - "You Americans and your statistics" were some of his exact words - that this club has yet to fully gel. That's true of lots of clubs in week 8. But others don't have as many new pieces, not to mention an entirely new style of play, to break in. In this respect alone, it's not optimistic but merely reasonable to believe the club is not yet near its best. And that's aside from the improvement we can anticipate in the players as individuals.

Last season's club lost Hatem Ben Arfa at this juncture; this season's club is just getting him back. Last season's club had a No. 1 goalkeeper who was capable, but 35; this season's club has a No. 1 goalkeeper who's just starting to turn heads at 23. What Joey Barton brought to the club, Yohan Cabaye already at least arguably equals, at a stage when most French imports haven't come near to hitting their English stride. Davide Santon is an unknown quantity, but it's hard to imagine him not being an eventual upgrade over Danny Simpson, who's been at best adequate, or Ryan Taylor, who's been game but miscast. We caught a glimpse Saturday of what Shola Ameobi might be with some pressure taken off him, or put on him, depending on how you look at it. Demba Ba can only get more fit. Promising young players like Sylvain Marveaux and Mehdi Abeid and Haris Vuckic haven't seen daylight. And there's a January transfer window ahead with missed targets from summer still in play.

All that represents the best that could happen. What's the worst? The new arrivals stay only this good? The chemistry develops only this far? We don't get the No. 9 that we already don't have? There's the threat of injuries, of course, but that's what every club faces every minute. Yes, the schedule is about to get tougher. But there just aren't many unwinnable matches in the league right now. The wealth of the top has withered the middle. Newcastle's toughest opponent most of the season is likely to be Newcastle.

Which brings us to the area in which Newcastle may have improved itself most: the manager. Of all the encouraging signs, the most encouraging, to me, is Alan Pardew's success in making the control football so many managers talk about into a reality. Any club can fall apart, but it doesn't feel likely somehow with this club, not to me anyway. The detail-attentive style of play Newcastle is maturing into looks almost scarily lapse-resistant. Other teams, on their day, are going to beat Newcastle. But I don't think they'll be able to dink the ball around until Newcastle beats itself. In this big-head-small-body league, that alone can get a club almost to elite.

America is a vast country with lots of roads. If nothing else we know how to read signs. No long journey goes exactly as planned. But this American fan of Newcastle United sees plenty of signs pointing in the direction of Europe. Without an A at the end.