On The Air: Youth Movement (Or Lack Thereof)

On IWIWAG's latest Cast of Pod, the four Blogpies examine the new look of NUFC's squad, from Mitro to in vitro. Is Flauvin the new Ben Arfa? How many options are too many? If Austin came, where would he go? Hear Matt and Tom break down academy players we hope you've never heard of, while Phil and Bob talk amongst themselves. Plus: Feltz has a chance to get Colback at his critics. Click below to listen, or download your personal copy on Stitcher.

 

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Comments

[GeordiePat]

A good listen as usual. Just a couple of thoughts of my own:

Regardless of Colback the individual player (who still got forward to score 4 league goals and plenty of assists in a crap season) we already seem to be fixed on a Anita/Colback partnership - or at least 2 dedicated deep lying/defensive midfielders. I get why McClaren's instinct is to protect our porous defense but, for e.g. Chelsea (Matic/Fabregas), Arsenal (Coquellin/Cazorla), Swansea (Ki/Shelvey), City (Fernandinho/Toure) - good teams are going with one true sitting player and one dynamic box-to-box match-turner. Anita's renaissance is the most surprising development this season so far. It would be hard to drop him at the moment, which has consequently left us looking slightly overstocked in the 'attacking' 4. My gut feeling is that a midfield partnership of Anita OR Colback next to Sissoko or Wijnaldum would over time match up better with the top teams in the division, and also our historical (relative) success as a team which always does best on the front foot .. and an emphasis on attack. That would leave an extra space for one from Aarons, Perez and De Jong - who are currently fighting over a none-starting place.

I would keep Cisse all day long. A reliable scorer - regardless of all-round game - is gold-dust and trying to sell on a player still in their peak years who managed almost a goal a game in a terrible team strikes me as vain glorious. Mitrovic or Cisse is a nice master/apprentice option, whereas adding Austin could actually limit McClaren's freedom to rotate, as both the new boys will insist on starting positions. Let's be realistic.

Obertan is a useful enough squad player and I have no problem with him on the bench - but not as a longterm starter. The outrage of online fans who don't want him picked is pretty embarrassing.. obviously the club are keen to upgrade hence dropping another £12m on Thauvin... who actually reminds me of Dyer or Robert more than Ben Arfa- in the way he will stretch the pitch out and increase the overall tempo of the team.

If Armstrong achieves his 20+ goal target this season, he could return to the club as Mitrovic's bonafide understudy (course a lot can happen between then and now). On the other hand, players like Abeid and Vuckic who smashed recent loan opportunities, have come back to find it translated to nothing in terms of match day openings.

So far, we haven't clicked yet.. and have been trying to find a way to survive three very tough league games while we do. Rotating up front and of course defense selections take care of themselves. In midfield - where games are won and lost - I personally think we'll see a greater longterm points yield by going with the extra attacker in home games... on the basis that De jong or perez will nick more goals than 2 outright ball winners would prevent from deep midfield.

[Mister Sterling]

Beacon! Nice ghost town and ghost cemetery there. It doesn't get much prettier on the Hudson. Good luck, Phil.

[Mister Sterling]

Oh, and about your production - I agree there should be an opening theme. It doesn't have to be all music. The podcast has gotten to the point where it could have segments:

- Catching-up / warmups - how's everyone doin'
- Newcastle United news
- Analysis
- Listener feedback / Twitter banter
- Predictions

Not like you have a ton of free time, but listening to other podcasts, you can see how other guys have figured out a system. I will pick three very geeky podcasts as examples.

Over at Mintcast (the Linux Mint padcast), the 2 guys, who have never met each other, try to do it live with a streaming server (later converted to MP3 a few days later). They take a while to warm-up (or as they say, wafffle). But they have original intro music and even news music.

Over at Hooniverse, the guys have 2 advantages. First, they rent a tiny studio in LA, so they can be in the same room (they don't mic it correctly). And second, they use a cheap-but-good hosting service called ShoutEngine. I always thought that the host, Jeff, sounds a little like Phil.

And if you want an exercise in obsessiveness, listen to a few minutes of Linux Luddites. These guys in London have their own original intro music, and Joe (the really grumpy sounding guy who also did the music), edits each MP3 file to eliminate silences. So each team member takes time to say what he wants to say, and the edits make it sound like they are radio professionals. And they do it all remotely on higher quality microphones. Joe tells me it takes hours to edit their show into one tight hour.