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On Saturday it will be 89 days since last season finished (you could
argue it finished at lot earlier than that) with a whimper at Vicarage
Road, so what has happened since then?
Normally with every off season, the black & white part of our brains can
switch off a bit, meaning we get our Saturday nights back where we can
get merely drunk and not have to worry about getting home in time for
the match. As usual though after a few weeks, our cravings for football
start to return, only for the realisation that our TV screens are
clogged up with the usual winter sports like AFL and NRL (we did have
some football with the Asian Cup this year but the less said about that
the better I’m guessing).
But this hasn’t been any normal off season for us, we have seen the
biggest change at the club since Sir John Hall came riding into town on
his white horse back in 1992. Enter Mike Ashley, Chris Mort and the
company St James Holdings Ltd. Between them they have shocked us all by
changing the Newcastle United landscape for the foreseeable future
by buying up 90 odd % of the clubs shares, removing Freddie Shepherd as
chairman and taking the club off the stock market.
And that’s not all, we have a new manager in Sam Allardyce, who has
started the squad rebuilding with immediate effect. The main players to
feel the chop have been Titus Bramble, Craig Moore, Olivier Bernard,
Antoine Sibierski and Scott Parker and some quality replacements have
been purchased (at the time of writing) in Joey Barton, Mark Viduka,
Geremi, David Rozenhal, Alan Smith and Claudio
Cacapa.
So going into to the first game of the season, away to Bolton (don’t you
just love the fixtures computer!), we all must be feeling a million
times better than 89 days ago? Yes is the overall consensus I would say
but at the same time let’s not carried away and set expectation too
high.
Pre-season signs have been encouraging and done a lot to confirm our
overall feeling of being happier but a new manager with a lot of new
players will need time to find their feet in the Premiership. I think
our first aim is to make St James’ Park a fortress again, making teams
fearful of coming to Newcastle. If we start to win a lot of our home
games and make ourselves difficult to beat away from home, it would be a
great start. For too many season’s we have been a soft touch away from
home and have rolled over far too easily and in the past couple of years
we have dropped far too many points at home, which has exposed our poor
away record.
I personally think Big Sam is the man to turn this around and I think
he’s signing’s reflect that. A team with Nicky Butt, Joey Barton, Alan
Smith and Mark Viduka in it will have plenty of tough battling spirit,
whilst still containing plenty of skill.
I think most of us will agree that the key to our hopeful resurgence
will naturally be our defence. Cacapa and
Rozenhal bring plenty of experience to our centre-half position, so does
Geremi if he’s used at right-back and with a new left back(s) signing
this week, it will certainly be a new look Toon defence.
However, despite all the good that has happened sums things look like
never changing. Our injury curse seems to have no end in sight, with
Joey Barton, Michael Owen, Shola Ameobi, Shay Given and Emre all getting
injured in pre-season games, with only Ameobi having any realistic
chance of playing against Bolton.
The icing on my pre-season cake was certainly ruined with the news
Kieron Dyer’s transfer to West Ham had fallen through at the 11th
hour. Mike Ashley’s late involvement in this transfer after a fee had
been agreed, again leaves us with a bad taste in mouths and gives the
Southern press another field day. The reasons for the transfer fee being
raised hasn’t fully been explain at the time of writing, rumours of Dyer
wanting a £2m pay out from the club, to the club just deciding he was
unvalued. Whatever the reason the whole affair smacks of a lack of
professionalism and deprives us of the opportunity to rid the club once
and for all of a player who has time and time again giving little back
to the club which his high wages deserve.
Well here’s to another season everyone, let’s hope it’s a successful one
and that we are all still smiling come May 2008. |
