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

NEWCASTLE'S FLANK PAIN

We finally got the 4-5-1 formation we've been clamoring for from Alan Pardew. It didn't matter. It wouldn't have mattered what formation Pardew drew up for his Newcastle United charges against Liverpool on Friday.

Newcastle's wide players were simply outclassed by their Liverpool counterparts in the 3-1 defeat, which extended United's losing streak at Anfield to seven.

Craig Bellamy and Stewart Downing dominated Danny Simpson and Ryan Taylor. On the flip side, Jonas Gutierrez and Gabriel Obertan did little to trouble Glen Johnson and Jose Enrique. It was the clear difference in a match that saw the teams cancel each other out in the center of the midfield.

Pardew is already being ripped on Twitter for opting to start youngster Haris Vuckic as an attacking midfielder rather than Monday's goalscoring hero, Hatem Ben Arfa. But that decision had very little effect on the game. Vuckic may not have made much of an impact, but he also didn't see enough of the ball to realistically be able to significantly influence proceedings. Yohan Cabaye, who got away with a poor challenge on Jay Spearing, and Cheick Tiote weren't at their best and were held to a stalemate in their matchup with Spearing and Charlie Adam in the center of the midfield.

That allowed Liverpool's overwhelming advantage on the flanks to be decisive. Liverpool didn't need to bother with trying to build through the crowded center of the midfield. It could simply funnel the ball to either Downing or Bellamy and let them go to work against Newcastle's overmatched fullbacks. Davide Santon's introduction in place of Taylor improved the situation on Newcastle's left flank, but that only seemed to encourage Liverpool to attack Simpson even more.

By contrast, when Newcastle tried to utilize Gutierrez and Obertan, they were able to make little headway against Johnson and Enrique. Gutierrez and Obertan both covered plenty of ground, repeatedly tracking back and drifting inside at times to get on the ball. But they failed to provide any incisiveness going forward - and it's not the first time this season that's been the case.

It's worth reminding ourselves that Newcastle still sits seventh in the Premier League table as we enter 2012, a fairly remarkable achievement. There's still a legitimate chance of qualifying for the Europa League. Newcastle has a terrible record at Anfield over the years and Liverpool has spent big money in the last two transfer windows, so this defeat wasn't at all unexpected.

But it was the most glaring example to date that if Newcastle wishes to continue to progress, improvement on the flanks - both in defense and attack - is required.

LIVERPOOL-NEWCASTLE: WHAT TO EXPECT

Even after a month filled with plenty of injuries, questionable managerial decisions, and missed opportunities against weaker teams, Newcastle still have hopes of playing in Europe next year. Tonight’s trip to Anfield is a golden chance to help make those European dreams a reality. And as my co-blogger Bob controversially explained earlier in the week, it’s also past time for Alan Pardew to make a tactical switch.

Fortunately, Newcastle won’t have to worry about Luis Suarez: he’s been banned for his gesture to Fulham fans in a match earlier this month. (Of course, Liverpool also face the prospect of Suarez being out for several more games because of the Patrice Evra incident.) That means a virtually guaranteed start for the £35 million man, Andy Carroll.

Carroll’s taken so much criticism at this point that his manager felt the need to defend him in the press--which will intensify the scrutiny on him even more. We all know what Carroll is capable of at his best. But for most of this season, Newcastle’s former number nine has looked like Leon Best at his worst: totally out of sync with the rest of the team, with a poor first touch, and presenting absolutely no threat to the opposition goal. Although Carroll’s a shell of the player he was this time last year, it’s nice to have Mike Williamson back in the lineup to watch him on set plays. I’d cringe at the thought of James Perch trying to mark him on a corner.

Meanwhile, Jose Enrique has looked every bit as good as he did while patrolling the left side of the field in a black and white shirt. He’ll almost certainly be battling Gabriel Obertan, and it’s a bit ironic: after months of wishing that Obertan would use his pace to go after opposing left backs, he finally does it on Monday. Flush with confidence, he now runs into a player in Enrique who seems totally impervious to that approach. Of course, given that Obertan’s attempts at trickery have mostly been fruitless, I don’t see much good coming down Newcastle’s right side tonight.

So how should Alan Pardew set Newcastle up for victory? Exactly the way the three of us have been advocating all along. (Since I’m still a newcomer to the site, just trust me that I’ve been in total agreement with Bob and Tom on tactics.) The slick passing of Cheick Tiote, Yohan Cabaye, and Hatem Ben Arfa can help slice through a Liverpool midfield that hasn’t looked especially impressive, and present scoring chances for Ben Arfa and Demba Ba.

Despite Ba’s height, he’s better with the ball at his feet than as an aerial threat, and ditching the 4-4-2 gives Newcastle’s creative players more opportunities to get the ball to Ba for a blistering shot. While Ba and Leon Best seemed to have established a good partnership earlier in the season, Best hasn’t been the same since returning from injury two weeks ago, and Pardew has cause to send him back to the bench after Monday’s nightmare performance.

Reviving a creative passing game in the center of midfield will also relieve the pressure on Obertan and Jonas Gutierrez, neither of whom is much of an attacking force. Though Davide Santon has apparently recovered from his knee injury, it’ll help immensely tonight if Gutierrez can use his tireless defensive work to aid Santon in bottling up Glen Johnson’s attacking forays. It will be even more of an imperative if Pardew decides to go with Ryan Taylor, as this would be the sort of game to expose Taylor’s defensive deficiencies.

That being said, Pardew still seems in no mood to switch tactics. In fact, his quotes after the Bolton match were pretty much exactly what those of us advocating change didn’t want to hear. In particular, he cited an “important meeting” which allowed the team to “get back to a few things that we’re good at.” And after this meeting, the team set out to aim punts at the heads of Best and Ba for the first hour of Monday’s game before making any adjustments.

In another Bolton postmortem, Pardew seemed to discount the chances of Ben Arfa returning to the starting lineup, saying that “at the moment he’s limited to cameos for us.” So while a formation change would seem to make sense, expect the standard Pardew 4-4-2 once again, perhaps with Shola Ameobi partnered with Ba, if Best’s Monday outing was deemed sufficiently disappointing.

Though Liverpool have yet to lose at home this season, they’ve not been terribly impressive either, with six draws in nine games. The right approach by Newcastle could certainly produce a victory. But there has to be more of a sense of purpose in Newcastle’s attack for that to happen, and I’m not sure that’s something we’re likely to see tonight.

LIVERPOOL: THE ANTI-NEWCASTLE?

In physics, antiparticles have more or less the same general properties as their ordinary counterparts, but with an opposite electrical charge. In other words, they’re very much the same in most respects, but totally different in one key attribute. As Newcastle look ahead at Friday’s trip to Liverpool, they see a club that’s similar in many ways, but operates completely differently. 

Both clubs play in legendary venues packed with vociferous fans, and are backed by a passionate international following. Both have mixed historical success with recent failure.
(Unfortunately for those of us on the Newcastle side of the ledger, the historical success is smaller and more distant, the recent failure more prominent.)

And while Liverpool, being owned by John Henry, who also owns the Boston Red Sox, has been talked about for its supposed “Moneyball” transfer philosophy, it is Newcastle who embodies the principles laid out in Michael Lewis’s wildly successful book. Namely, teams looking to win with less need to find players undervalued in the market. There’s no place for sentiment, either: if someone offers you more than you think a player is worth, make the deal and don’t look back.

There’s no better place to start than the man who grew up supporting Newcastle and after sporting the club’s iconic number nine shirt, now wears the same in red and white. A physical center forward in the classic British style, Andy Carroll was expected to be England’s next big star. His ₤35 million transfer was celebrated as a show of ambition by Liverpool, and a capitulation by a Newcastle management not serious about winning.

Now, a year later, it’s clear that Newcastle cashed in at the peak of Carroll’s market value, as persistent rumors bringing him back to the club for half-price (or less) will attest. To replace the erstwhile local hero, Alan Pardew managed to snag a striker with twice the talent for free, in the form of Demba Ba.

Both lineups on Friday will be full of players embodying their clubs’ currrent transfer policies. Liverpool’s Kenny Dalglish has bought big-name players from the Premier League, spending the big cash that goes along with it: Carroll, Stewart Downing, Jordan Henderson, Charlie Adam, and another old friend, Jose Enrique. That quintet went for about ₤80 million, a figure many Newcastle supporters would salivate to have at the club’s disposal.

Meanwhile, Pardew’s men currently sit just one point behind Liverpool in the table, despite their penny-pinching approach. Ba, Cheick Tiote, Yohan Cabaye, Hatem Ben Arfa, Jonas Gutierrez, Gabriel Obertan, and Fabricio Coloccini (the one big-money buy in the bunch) cost just a bit less in transfer fees than Carroll alone, if the widely reported figures are to be believed.

While there’s much for Newcastle fans to be frustrated with about Mike Ashley’s stewardship of the club, he has somehow managed to build a successful team on a meager investment. The seemingly bottomless supply of cash that Liverpool sits on has not bought them any more success than Newcastle in 2011. And going into Friday’s game, there’s probably no player on the field that will frighten the opposition more than Demba Ba should scare Liverpool’s defenders. For the first time in years, Newcastle head to Anfield with a genuine chance at a meaningful victory. And that win--the victory of the club over the anti-Newcastle--would definitely be priceless to behold.

PARDEW SURRENDERS TO THE OBVIOUS, AGAIN

Soccer tactics quiz: You have one top-quality striker and a surplus of midfielders, including a natural hole player healed from a devastating injury and desperate for playing time. Do you:

A) Play the star striker solo and insert the hole player as an extra midfielder?

B) Pair the star with an average strike partner and let the hole player rust?

If you said A), you're probably responding to common sense, rather than the pressures and expectations of being a Premier League manager.

Managers and coaches at the highest levels of professional sport aren't paid top dollar to make easy decisions. They are paid to have Ideas and Methods and Systems and Philosophies that are more sophisticated than, say, having the fans vote on the lineup, which would be a lot cheaper, and usually wrong.

Once in a while, though, a manager - especially a successful manager - gets so wedded to a particular set of Ideas and Methods and Systems and Philosophies he disdains a solution that appears almost ridiculously obvious to everyday people with a more distant but broader perspective, i.e., the customers in the stands. Such was the case during Newcastle United's recent six-match un-winning streak, until Monday at Bolton, when Alan Pardew did, for the second straight match and in less desperation, what fans have been reduced to begging for: Abandon a 4-4-2 that has become more boring and predictable than a North Korean military parade, and unleash Hatem Ben Arfa behind the sizzling Demba Ba.

It took but 10 minutes for the visibly rejuvenated squad to produce two decisive goals, the first from Ben Arfa himself, producing a hurricane-force gust of joy and relief from the full-throated Toon Army contingent at Reebok Stadium and their compatriots dancing in front of TV sets and computer screens around the world. The 16-year-old schnauzer we're dog-sitting still hasn't forgiven me from interrupting his daily 20-hour nap, which isn't easy to do.

I've come to believe Pardew is one hell of a manager, and not just from the results. Unflappable doesn't begin to describe him. (Can you imagine having to be Mike Ashley's PR director on the side?) But the man is awfully conservative sometimes. This is the second time this season his team has responded instantly to a change the fans - and judging from the undeniable boost of energy on both occasions, perhaps even the players - have been praying poignantly for him to make. Remember Wigan back in October, and the overdue insertion of Sylvain Marveaux? What would you have said if you'd been told that Gabriel Obertan, whom Marveaux replaced on that autumn day, would take until past Christmas to get a shot on goal? With Marveaux on the shelf and Ben Arfa cooling his heels all the while?

But Obertan is important to the club, so I'll lay off, and encourage everyone to do the same. The only tool he appears to lack is belief, and booing is the opposite of what he needs. What he needs - what the whole club needs - is something to take the pressure off. That something was buzzing from hole to wing at Bolton wearing a 10. He may not be a tight fit for the manager's carefully considered, experience-tested scheme. On a successful team, however, in the end everyone has to adapt to the resources at hand - including the leader.

DON'T BET ON VERTONGHEN, DOUGLAS OR SAMBA

In the past week, Newcastle United has been linked with Chris Samba, Douglas and Jan Vertonghen.

Newcastle is blatantly in need of a center back after Steven Taylor's season-ending Achilles tendon injury (and could have used one even before Taylor limped off against Chelsea). And Samba, Douglas and Vertonghen would all be quality additions (who we've added to our transfer guide). But are they realistic ones?

All three have price tags of around £10 million. Newcastle has only paid out that sort of figure once since Mike Ashley arrived in 2007 - for Fabricio Coloccini in Aug. 2008. That, of course, was before relegation and the subsequent belt tightening.

Then there's United's insistence on buying players who can be sold for a profit. Samba will turn 28 in March, so it's hard to envision Newcastle turning a profit on him. Douglas (24 in January) and Vertonghen (25 in April) are both significantly younger, but would have to play quite well to guarantee a higher resale value.

Maybe Ashley will surprise us. Based on past experience, though, a less flashy defensive addition - someone like James Tomkins - seems more likely.

CORGNET DISCOUNTS MOVE TO NEWCASTLE, SORT OF

In the wake of last week's report in the French sports daily L'Equipe that Newcastle United was investigating a bid for rising Dijon midfielder Benjamin Corgnet, the player has downplayed - though not in the strongest terms - a January move to Newcastle. The comments came in a radio interview with another dependable media source for transfer news in France, RMC (Radio Monte Carlo).

"I read things in newspapers, but there's nothing concrete on my agent's side, so I'm going on vacation in peace," Corgnet told RMC when asked about Newcastle, as relayed today by various online sources out of France. "I'm in a club I like. We'll see. Ideally I'll stay at Dijon at least the rest of this season." As rumor denials go, that ranks higher than the minimum a player would say to keep his current club and/or fans happy, but not by much.

Corgnet scored yet again on a right-place-right-time goal in Dijon's 2-2 draw Wednesday at Auxerre, moving him to 7th on the Ligue 1 scoring list. As a developing 24-year-old scorer not widely known outside France - though he's reportedly been scouted by Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United - Corgnet would seem to fit Newcastle's current transfer mold. However this blog's most trusted personal source for French football observation, the Twitter maven known as @El_Mantis, opines that since Corgnet was plying his trade on France's fifth tier only two years ago, his readiness for the Premier League is an open question at best. We'll keep trying to get peeks at Corgnet ourselves to see if this Dijon sensation could cut the mustard - ha! ha! - in England.

TIME FOR PARDEW, AND EVERYONE, TO LOOSEN UP

As a former sports reporter and lifelong Cubs fan, I've seen a thousand down streaks, and Newcastle United's current edition is classic: team encounters adversity, presses, makes it worse, repeat cycle. Bad clubs often lack urgency, but this is a good club in a bad run, and if anything, Newcastle United had too much urgency in Wednesday's loss to West Brom - not enough patience, not enough belief. "We've got to get this win, and that was probably playing on our minds a bit tonight - the fact that we wanted it so much," Alan Pardew said post-match. "We looked a little bit desperate at times, and you cannot do that in the Premier League."

The manager gets it. The question is, what's he going to do about it? Especially as the type of detail-obsessed, perfection-mongering leader who may be prone to over-tightening a team in the first place? I winced to see him quoted, "We lost a bit of discipline in our shape." Really? Who, exactly, was freelancing? Who was switching? Shola's out there trying to be a winger. If that 4-4-2 was moving up and down the field in much stricter formation it'd be a marching band.

To our eyes it looked yesterday like, if anything, Newcastle could use a little less discipline and a little more variety in its play. Our co-blogger Matt wrote Tom and me after the match, "High line made sense against Norwich, when you were up against two big slow strikers with no actual center backs. Tonight? No way. You've got a world-class (but slow) defender paired with...well, James Perch, and your opposition has two quick forwards, so yeah, let's work that offside trap. Ugh." Tom pointed out that if you're absolutely wedded to the high line, you have to at least go after the ball with aggression, which Newcastle didn't seem either permitted or motivated to do, much less equipped to do without Yohan Cabaye in middle tandem with a struggling Cheick Tiote. Instead the club was reduced to a spectator role in relentless counterattacks from an opposition that otherwise was outmatched. 

The tightness may not be limited to the players. While Tom and I were watching the match in one of the many Wisconsin bars that have been polluted by satellite jukeboxes, Matt reported from Boston that the crowd on TV sounded as nerve-ridden as the team looked, cheering mainly at the goals, as if in relief. That's the curse of a club that hasn't won and wants it too much, having gotten a taste - again, a Cubs fan would know. 

As Newcastle United prepares for an ill-timed choke-inducing match at relegation-ripe Bolton, everyone associated with Newcastle - manager, players, fans - must loosen up. Just saying that won't help, of course. What makes people more nervous than telling them not to be nervous? So let me close by recommending one of my favorite recent articles about sport, from Wired of all places, entitled "The Tight Collar: The New Science of Choking Under Pressure." The article talks about "explicit monitoring," which is basically the act of thinking too much about what you're doing, and "useful distraction," which is something to do to stop you from thinking. One proven remedy for explicit monitoring, interestingly, is singing. It's worth a try. If ever a club needed less prose and more melody, from manager and fans, it's this one, right now.

HATEM BEN ARFA: MAKING AN IMPACT OR AN EARLY EXIT?

Another match, another 90 minutes on the bench for Hatem Ben Arfa.  After immediately endearing himself to the Newcastle faithful with a brilliant performance against Everton last October, the Frenchman has become more mythical creature than man at this point. Though Newcastle dominated the ball and threatened the goal for practically the entire first hour of today’s match at Swansea, their attacking approach had started to become a bit predictable. 
 But even in a game that seemed ideal for Ben Arfa’s influence, you’d probably have been more likely to see Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster strolling onto the pitch in a black and white shirt.

In truth, Ben Arfa’s omission from the Newcastle starting lineups is not much of a mystery. Alan Pardew clearly prefers having two strikers working together, and the partnership of Demba Ba and Leon Best has been a bright spot all season. The same goes for the center midfield pairing of Cheick Tiote and Yohan Cabaye, two excellent possession players who can take the ball off the opposition and start a quick counterattack with a well-chosen pass.

It’s been more frustrating for fans that Pardew’s refused to slot Ben Arfa in on the wing, especially in place of the equally frustrating Gabriel Obertan. It’s debatable how much defensive support Obertan (or his frequent replacement, the young Sammy Ameobi) actually offers, but that support is certainly something Pardew values in his wingers. He doesn’t trust Ben Arfa to show the same commitment to the defensive side of the ball, as indicated by his blunt comments in an October interview: “My view is that he can’t play out wide. He has not got the relish for it and his best football comes through the middle.”

So when evaluating Ben Arfa’s place in the team, there’s really only one conclusion to draw: his manager sees him as a classic, play-making number 10, while not using an approach and formation that suits such a player. And given the notoriously frugal Newcastle ownership, that quickly leads to a prediction--the talented 24-year-old will be on his way out of the club soon. Like many of the team’s stars, he was originally bought at a relative pittance, likely somewhere in the £5 million range. Because of his undeniable quality, it's easy to imagine a club offering Newcastle something like £8 million for Ben Arfa. It's even easier to imagine Mike Ashley signing off on such a deal if it were offered.

With the departure of Ba to the Africa Cup of Nations in late January, I’d expect Newcastle to hold onto Ben Arfa in the upcoming transfer window. Whether he starts during that stretch, or continues to watch from the bench as Leon Best partners Shola Ameobi up front, remains to be seen. Before today, I would have thought it crazy that he wouldn’t be given a temporary starting nod while Ba is away. Now, I’m not so sure. And I'd be quite surprised if he remains at St. James' Park next fall.

DREAMBOAT 2? NEWCASTLE EYES DIJON'S CORGNET

According to a report today from the French sports daily L'Equipe, Newcastle United is leading the pursuit of Dijon sensation Benjamin Corgnet, a 24-year-old attacking midfielder who has broken out this season with 6 goals in 16 matches to keep his club above the Ligue 1 relegation line. The item is only a brief, but L'Equipe has proved to be the gold standard of transfer news reliability since Newcastle trained its scouting sights on France, and the briefs in L'Equipe tend to be a bellwether of more news to come. The timing seems logical, as several bigger Premier League clubs, most recently Chelsea, have been reported to have scouted but cooled lately on the player. "Les Bleus are really too far away so far," Corgnet told Sky. L'Equipe reports that Aston Villa and Blackburn are also on Corgnet's trail.

As he plays for a club that isn't a force in Ligue 1, we don't know much about Corgnet (though we'll be trying to find out more soon). We do know he's represented by the powerful and somewhat dark figure Jean-Pierre Bernes, who served time for his role in the Olympique de Marseille bribery scandal during his days as No. 2 to Marseille president Bernard Tapie and is now considered among Europe's more influential agents, with a roster that includes, among others, Samir Nasri. We also know Corgnet is fast outgrowing Dijon. From Sky: "If I go on this way and Dijon get salvation, the best solution would be for me to leave."

All we can find for highlights thus far is the rather ridiculous piece of video below, entitled "Benjamin Corgnet, a crazy talent in the Gentlemen's tournament room." But if the stats and still photos are any indication, Corgnet could make an attractive bookend for Yohan Cabaye in the Newcastle middle.

 

NUFC NO LONGER SHOPPING IN DISCOUNT BIN

We probably should have expected the unexpected with Modibo Maiga's all-but-official transfer to Newcastle United. This is Newcastle, after all.

L'Equipe broke the news Friday that the deal was off after the Malian striker failed his medical earlier in the week. And with that, apparently, a transfer four-plus months in the making went up in flames. We've reshuffled our January transfer guide as a result.

So where does Newcastle go from here? It will be hard pressed to find another frontline striker for the kind of money United was expected to pay for Maiga (€7 million was the figure most widely reported, which would be less than £6 million). The likes of Olivier Giroud and Luuk de Jong might be more impressive captures than Maiga, but they'll also come at significantly higher costs.

Same with Wilfried Zaha, Crystal Palace's highly rated 19-year-old striker who was linked with Newcastle on Friday after the Maiga news broke. We haven't yet added him to our transfer guide because we haven't seen consistent reports of United's interest in Zaha. If the rumors continue, though, we will.

Of course, Newcastle could still go back to Sochaux with a smaller offer for Maiga or try to arrange a loan with an option to buy.

If that doesn't happen, though, it looks like United will need to spend some serious cash if it wants to strengthen its strike force.