The Magedia Thread - Sunderland suck trollolololol

[Ryan_Taylor]

In fairness to that 'easy fixture' line, we do have easier fixtures as we're the only team that doesn't have to play Newcastle United twice. 

[leffe186]

Newcastle - 2.5 pts per game

Everton - 2

Norwich - 1.71

Swansea - 1.71

WBA - 1.57

Aston Villa - 1.33

Sunderland - 1.29

QPR - 1.25

Bolton - 1.2

Stoke - 1.17

Wolves - 1.14

Fulham - 1

Wigan - 0.87

Blackburn - 0.5

 

 

 

....so we're still a long way ahead of everyone even if you take out everyone's "tough games".

 

 

class that

 

That IS class. Do the same for us, substituting Newcastle for Spurs in the Top 6, we're averaging 3 points a game. I'll take that.

[Ameritoon]

Redknapp somehow sounds incredibly ignorant despite complimenting us.

 

http://www.skysports.com/opinion/story/0,,18932_7290797,00.html

 

Also, what a horrible writer, style and ability wise.

[Sifu]

Redknapp is a dick.

[Interpolic]

He's the king of generalisations, guesswork and cliches.  Would be amazed if it wasn't ghost-written mind.

[binnsy]

Love the ignorance and laziness of the pundits in this country,  just because they haven't heard of the likes of Cabaye, Tiote etc they get dismissed as average no hopers.  We may not have spent loads of money but look at the players we have brought in,  Tiote came after winning the Dutch title,  Ben Arfa came with a bit of a reputation but throughout his career he's won title and title with Lyon and Marseille, Cabaye had just captained his side to the French title and establishing himself into the French team and Santon has come from Inter Milan with a few medals tucked in his pocket as well.  So the players we have splashed big(ish) money on have come with a winning mentality.  Even Obertan, while not playing regularly has spent time in and around the "winning mentality" of the Man U dressing room.

Then we have grabbed a few bargain freebies, mainly thanks to sketchy injury records, Marveaux comes with a big reputation and highly rated back in France and then Ba,  you look at his record in the last 2-2.5 seasons with Hoffenheim, West Ham and NUFC and he hasn't stopped scoring, you'd be delighted with his goals return even if you'd bought him for £10m!!

Add that to a side including Argentinian internationals Colo and Jonas, both hugely improved since they dropped into the Championship and one of the best young Keepers in the world is it really that shocking that we should be winning games of football??

[ponsaelius]

Love the ignorance and laziness of the pundits in this country,  just because they haven't heard of the likes of Cabaye, Tiote etc they get dismissed as average no hopers.  We may not have spent loads of money but look at the players we have brought in,  Tiote came after winning the Dutch title,  Ben Arfa came with a bit of a reputation but throughout his career he's won title and title with Lyon and Marseille, Cabaye had just captained his side to the French title and establishing himself into the French team and Santon has come from Inter Milan with a few medals tucked in his pocket as well.  So the players we have splashed big(ish) money on have come with a winning mentality.  Even Obertan, while not playing regularly has spent time in and around the "winning mentality" of the Man U dressing room.

Then we have grabbed a few bargain freebies, mainly thanks to sketchy injury records, Marveaux comes with a big reputation and highly rated back in France and then Ba,  you look at his record in the last 2-2.5 seasons with Hoffenheim, West Ham and NUFC and he hasn't stopped scoring, you'd be delighted with his goals return even if you'd bought him for £10m!!

Add that to a side including Argentinian internationals Colo and Jonas, both hugely improved since they dropped into the Championship and one of the best young Keepers in the world is it really that shocking that we should be winning games of football??

 

[Sifu]

Love the ignorance and laziness of the pundits in this country,  just because they haven't heard of the likes of Cabaye, Tiote etc they get dismissed as average no hopers.  We may not have spent loads of money but look at the players we have brought in,  Tiote came after winning the Dutch title,  Ben Arfa came with a bit of a reputation but throughout his career he's won title and title with Lyon and Marseille, Cabaye had just captained his side to the French title and establishing himself into the French team and Santon has come from Inter Milan with a few medals tucked in his pocket as well.  So the players we have splashed big(ish) money on have come with a winning mentality.  Even Obertan, while not playing regularly has spent time in and around the "winning mentality" of the Man U dressing room.

Then we have grabbed a few bargain freebies, mainly thanks to sketchy injury records, Marveaux comes with a big reputation and highly rated back in France and then Ba,  you look at his record in the last 2-2.5 seasons with Hoffenheim, West Ham and NUFC and he hasn't stopped scoring, you'd be delighted with his goals return even if you'd bought him for £10m!!

Add that to a side including Argentinian internationals Colo and Jonas, both hugely improved since they dropped into the Championship and one of the best young Keepers in the world is it really that shocking that we should be winning games of football??

 

Well said.

[madras]

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/chris-mcgrath-whisper-it-but-maybe-ashley-is-a-visionary-6257524.html

 

especially the bit i've boldened

 

 

With the possible exception of Liverpool, it is hard to think of

any club whose supporters are patronised quite so crudely as those

of Newcastle United. Somehow even the warmest admiration of their

fidelity and passion tends to be subtly infected with ridicule. The

foot soldier of the Toon Army is depicted as some kind of albino

walrus, basking on the broken floes of his dreams, his pale,

quivering girth and bosom exposed to the freezing northern winter.

If he sees the world through a glass darkly, it is because there is

still some brown ale in the bottom. And, above all, he wallows in

some antediluvian memory of days when a poor family could heat

their front room by sweeping up the fine layer of coal dust

bequeathed weekly upon the Gallowgate terracing by miners sharing a

ritual, fleeting release from the common doom that beckoned them

beneath the ground.

 

The least the rest of us can do, then, is to tread softly over their present bemusement. It's not so much their giddy position in the table, which we are often told – in perhaps the most specious misrepresentation of all – they imagine to be their ancestral right. They know perfectly well that there is still a long way to go, and that they will shortly be playing Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea on consecutive Saturdays. They know one swallow doesn't make a summer. No, the real problem is what to make of the bloke who instead equates one swallow, notoriously, to roughly three-quarters of a pint.

 

Ever since Mike Ashley tried standing among the fans, inhaling pints of lager as though blowing a fanfare for the common man, his every move has been rebuked as no less misplaced. He became perhaps the most reviled owner in the British game, apparently modelling his approach to the club's assets on that once popularised in these parts by the Vikings. He managed to sell that giraffe in a china shop, Andy Carroll, for the same price Barcelona paid for David Villa, and seemed brazenly to trouser the proceeds. His betrayal of their heritage caused an agonised separation between fans and the institution that gave their life meaning. Their one abiding comfort was a palpably decent man to manage the team, in Chris Hughton. Sure enough, Ashley discarded him and brought in another Londoner to join his mistrusted coterie of interlopers.

 

Now, all of a sudden, there appears to be a surreal, ghastly possibility he has been a model for all clubs torn between those twin curses of the Premier League, debt and delusion. Previous Newcastle owners may well have bled black and white, but profligacy will only ever be registered in the red. By selling high and buying cheap, Ashley has begun to staunch the debt. By hiring Alan Pardew and, plainly, some excellent scouts, he has moreover sold well and bought well. And perhaps Hughton was too meek to spot and stifle the dangers of player status in dressing rooms. A team shorn of Carroll, Kevin Nolan, Joey Barton and Steve Harper had an invertebrate look to many Newcastle fans. But Pardew and his promoted captain, Fabricio Coloccini, have reminded us that no backbone is external. And, however long this early momentum endures, you will not find many Geordies now yearning for Nolan when they have Yohan Cabaye.

 

Newcastle have shown that the distortions of a market that values Carroll as the equivalent of the entire Uffizi gallery are reciprocated in its backwaters. Distaste for Ashley was informed by his pile-'em-high fortune at Sports Direct, but here it seems as though he has shown that less really can be more. If only to that extent, other clubs could do well to follow his example.

 

In unearthing Cabaye, Tioté, Ben Arfa, Krul, Gutierrez and Ba, Newcastle have disclosed the irrational geography of the transfer market. And here, gratis, is the next trick for all clubs wanting to get one step ahead. If you look at where the Premier League spends its big money, you might well conclude that football is played only in South America, Africa and various outposts of Europe, from the Balkans to Scandinavia to Iberia. Nobody seems to have noticed that by miles the best group of young players in Europe, together developing the only conceivable threat to Spain, is assembling bang in the middle.

 

The only team to outclass Manchester City this season is Bayern Munich, for whom Mario Gomez scored yet another hat-trick during the week against Napoli. Two of his goals were poked in from the six-yard box, albeit he did try to compensate by shooting from just outside his own area as Napoli chased the game in the final moments. Gomez stands as one of the last bastions of traditional centre-forward play, combining Pippo Inzaghi's propensity for being in the right place at the right time with the sort of physical presence Geordies might find reminiscent of Alan Shearer. But those managers trying to evolve the more centrifugal tactics should note that much the richest seam in Germany's emerging generation is in midfield.

 

After seeing Ozil and Khedira at the World Cup, Jose Mourinho wasted no time in bringing them to Madrid, and along with Schweinsteiger and Müller they will guarantee a frightening core of energy and experience next summer. But so many young stars are emerging in their slipstream that it seems perplexing that Arsène Wenger broke the apparent Premier League boycott of German players on the outdated stereotype of their discipline, ostensibly represented by Per Mertesacker, instead of investing in the youth and flair of a Mario Goetze or Marco Reus.

 

Perhaps part of the problem is that the Premier League vogue for foreign managers has not extended to German ones. Or perhaps even football professionals have had their judgement retarded by the stale generation that yielded little more than Ballack, and provoked the sort of dynamic renewal craved for England. How perverse, then, that we should so disregard the tired old mantra: you can never rule out the Germans. Clearly it is not just the Toon Army, nor even Mike Ashley, who can be too glibly betrayed by their reputation.

 

[relámpago blanco]

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/chris-mcgrath-whisper-it-but-maybe-ashley-is-a-visionary-6257524.html

 

especially the bit i've boldened

 

 

With the possible exception of Liverpool, it is hard to think of

any club whose supporters are patronised quite so crudely as those

of Newcastle United. Somehow even the warmest admiration of their

fidelity and passion tends to be subtly infected with ridicule. The

foot soldier of the Toon Army is depicted as some kind of albino

walrus, basking on the broken floes of his dreams, his pale,

quivering girth and bosom exposed to the freezing northern winter.

If he sees the world through a glass darkly, it is because there is

still some brown ale in the bottom. And, above all, he wallows in

some antediluvian memory of days when a poor family could heat

their front room by sweeping up the fine layer of coal dust

bequeathed weekly upon the Gallowgate terracing by miners sharing a

ritual, fleeting release from the common doom that beckoned them

beneath the ground.

 

The least the rest of us can do, then, is to tread softly over their present bemusement. It's not so much their giddy position in the table, which we are often told – in perhaps the most specious misrepresentation of all – they imagine to be their ancestral right. They know perfectly well that there is still a long way to go, and that they will shortly be playing Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea on consecutive Saturdays. They know one swallow doesn't make a summer. No, the real problem is what to make of the bloke who instead equates one swallow, notoriously, to roughly three-quarters of a pint.

 

Ever since Mike Ashley tried standing among the fans, inhaling pints of lager as though blowing a fanfare for the common man, his every move has been rebuked as no less misplaced. He became perhaps the most reviled owner in the British game, apparently modelling his approach to the club's assets on that once popularised in these parts by the Vikings. He managed to sell that giraffe in a china shop, Andy Carroll, for the same price Barcelona paid for David Villa, and seemed brazenly to trouser the proceeds. His betrayal of their heritage caused an agonised separation between fans and the institution that gave their life meaning. Their one abiding comfort was a palpably decent man to manage the team, in Chris Hughton. Sure enough, Ashley discarded him and brought in another Londoner to join his mistrusted coterie of interlopers.

 

Now, all of a sudden, there appears to be a surreal, ghastly possibility he has been a model for all clubs torn between those twin curses of the Premier League, debt and delusion. Previous Newcastle owners may well have bled black and white, but profligacy will only ever be registered in the red. By selling high and buying cheap, Ashley has begun to staunch the debt. By hiring Alan Pardew and, plainly, some excellent scouts, he has moreover sold well and bought well. And perhaps Hughton was too meek to spot and stifle the dangers of player status in dressing rooms. A team shorn of Carroll, Kevin Nolan, Joey Barton and Steve Harper had an invertebrate look to many Newcastle fans. But Pardew and his promoted captain, Fabricio Coloccini, have reminded us that no backbone is external. And, however long this early momentum endures, you will not find many Geordies now yearning for Nolan when they have Yohan Cabaye.

 

Newcastle have shown that the distortions of a market that values Carroll as the equivalent of the entire Uffizi gallery are reciprocated in its backwaters. Distaste for Ashley was informed by his pile-'em-high fortune at Sports Direct, but here it seems as though he has shown that less really can be more. If only to that extent, other clubs could do well to follow his example.

 

In unearthing Cabaye, Tioté, Ben Arfa, Krul, Gutierrez and Ba, Newcastle have disclosed the irrational geography of the transfer market. And here, gratis, is the next trick for all clubs wanting to get one step ahead. If you look at where the Premier League spends its big money, you might well conclude that football is played only in South America, Africa and various outposts of Europe, from the Balkans to Scandinavia to Iberia. Nobody seems to have noticed that by miles the best group of young players in Europe, together developing the only conceivable threat to Spain, is assembling bang in the middle.

 

The only team to outclass Manchester City this season is Bayern Munich, for whom Mario Gomez scored yet another hat-trick during the week against Napoli. Two of his goals were poked in from the six-yard box, albeit he did try to compensate by shooting from just outside his own area as Napoli chased the game in the final moments. Gomez stands as one of the last bastions of traditional centre-forward play, combining Pippo Inzaghi's propensity for being in the right place at the right time with the sort of physical presence Geordies might find reminiscent of Alan Shearer. But those managers trying to evolve the more centrifugal tactics should note that much the richest seam in Germany's emerging generation is in midfield.

 

After seeing Ozil and Khedira at the World Cup, Jose Mourinho wasted no time in bringing them to Madrid, and along with Schweinsteiger and Müller they will guarantee a frightening core of energy and experience next summer. But so many young stars are emerging in their slipstream that it seems perplexing that Arsène Wenger broke the apparent Premier League boycott of German players on the outdated stereotype of their discipline, ostensibly represented by Per Mertesacker, instead of investing in the youth and flair of a Mario Goetze or Marco Reus.

 

Perhaps part of the problem is that the Premier League vogue for foreign managers has not extended to German ones. Or perhaps even football professionals have had their judgement retarded by the stale generation that yielded little more than Ballack, and provoked the sort of dynamic renewal craved for England. How perverse, then, that we should so disregard the tired old mantra: you can never rule out the Germans. Clearly it is not just the Toon Army, nor even Mike Ashley, who can be too glibly betrayed by their reputation.

 

Anyone else think he has written that in such a way that he hopes Geordies are too thick to understand it?

[MW]

I don't fully understand it

[relámpago blanco]

From what I under stand hes saying that we accept that this may be temporary but also that we demand and expect success, also that Ashle has done well and saying more football clubs should be run this way.

[Cajun]

Isn't he saying that is the patronising view of us?

[gazza ladra]

From what I under stand hes saying that we accept that this may be temporary but also that we demand and expect success, also that Ashle has done well and saying more football clubs should be run this way.

But what about the bit about German footballers?

A  couple of paragraphs missing? Or are Cabaye, Tiote, Krul, Marveux, and Jonas all secretly German?

 

Weird, stream-of-consciousness article.

[Guest Slarth]

From what I under stand hes saying that we accept that this may be temporary but also that we demand and expect success, also that Ashle has done well and saying more football clubs should be run this way.

 

I'm glad you explained it

[relámpago blanco]

From what I under stand hes saying that we accept that this may be temporary but also that we demand and expect success, also that Ashle has done well and saying more football clubs should be run this way.

But what about the bit about German footballers?

A  couple of paragraphs missing? Or are Cabaye, Tiote, Krul, Marveux, and Jonas all secretly German?

 

Weird, stream-of-consciousness article.

think hes saying clubs wont sign players that haven proven it at high levels, bundesliga is fine but there is a high risk in brining in players that may not adapt to the league, we signed some players who really had only consistently performed in leagues lesser or different to ours nd werent even stars of that league.  think he's saying more clubs should do this.  This makes no sense to me though as they already do plenty of shite players signed from france, holland, germany etc in this league.

[Guest diddimz]

From what I under stand hes saying that we accept that this may be temporary but also that we demand and expect success, also that Ashle has done well and saying more football clubs should be run this way.

But what about the bit about German footballers?

A  couple of paragraphs missing? Or are Cabaye, Tiote, Krul, Marveux, and Jonas all secretly German?

 

Weird, stream-of-consciousness article.

think hes saying clubs wont sign players that haven proven it at high levels, bundesliga is fine but there is a high risk in brining in players that may not adapt to the league, we signed some players who really had only consistently performed in leagues lesser or different to ours nd werent even stars of that league.  think he's saying more clubs should do this.  This makes no sense to me though as they already do plenty of s**** players signed from france, holland, germany etc in this league.

 

Maybe he's saying that other clubs should learn from us and not sign shit players.

[jdckelly]

think he's trying to say don't buy English players as they're overpriced and shit

[pinkeye]

Isn't he saying that is the patronising view of us?

 

Yes,

 

I read the article highlighted section to mean that the country is lead to believe that we Geordies think our place is at the top of English football but, that is a misrepresented view.  In other words most of us are realistic enough to know that we are riding the crest of a fantastic wave at the moment but, just waiting for it all to crash down around us.

 

Quite a reasonably well writen piece without being too patronising....

[Beren]

http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/11679/7297190/Silva-gets-Richards-vote

 

Short snippet on Micah respecting Newcastle's defence.

[simonlemagnifique]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/sports/soccer/09iht-soccer09.html?_r=1

 

Patronising, occasionally offensive, poorly researched load of shite.

Can a coach change the intrinsic nature of a club and earn the respect and gratitude of its supporters? Newcastle United lies third in the English Premier League. Its team is unbeaten after 11 games, almost a third of the season, equaling the club’s best-ever starts, in 1950 and 1994.

 

The next two games are away at the only clubs above it in the standings — Manchester City and Manchester United. But for now, with a break for international matches this coming weekend, the Magpies, as Newcastle’s players are known, are flying higher than Chelsea or Liverpool or Arsenal.

 

Newcastle is a special club. It is the only team in the northernmost city of England, fiercely proud of its regional isolation, its separateness from the rest of the nation. The community’s shipbuilding and coal-mining industries might have declined, and unemployment is up, but the Tyneside region feels proud when the team is performing well.

 

The St. James’ Park stadium, where Newcastle has remained unbeaten since early March, seats more than 52,000, but the club could sell four times that number of tickets if space allowed it. The steep banks of the ground are as high as they can be, the roar of the home crowd cascades down onto the field, and it would be a strange player who was not moved by that sound to give 100 percent of what is in his or her soul.

 

Yet the current team is not everyone’s cup of tea.

Its squad draws on players from more than a dozen countries, in keeping with the polyglot makeup of virtually all the clubs in the Premiership, but at odds with the dream of Newcastle’s rearing its team of locally produced “Geordie lads.”

 

That concept, espoused up to a decade ago, was intended to supply the entire team, from 1 to 11, from the Durham County population. The-then owner, John Hall, was a coal miner turned real-estate entrepreneur. His coach was Kevin Keegan, the grandson of a Durham miner.

 

And the style was gung-ho. Keegan knew next to nothing about defense, other than to instruct defenders to join in the attacks on wave after wave. Hall had his memories of the way the Magpies had won F.A. Cups in his youth, though they were long memories because the club had won the last of four league titles in 1927 and brought home the Cup for the last time in 1955.

 

Still, the belief of Hall, the spirit of “Wor Kev,” Our Kev, as the Geordie fans chanted Keegan’s name, got that old feeling coursing again through the sons and daughters of Newcastle. They lined up in the thousands for season tickets. They traveled in numbers greater than any other team on long, long road trips to support their team.

 

Geordies across the globe, like expatriates here in New Zealand, live in hope of a revival of the team that puts “The Toon” on the map.

 

But time moves on. New owners, no longer just multimillionaires like John Hall, but billionaires from the Arabian peninsula and the United States, come to spend money in amounts out of proportion to what the local communities supporting the teams can afford.

 

Think of Manchester City and United, the teams above Newcastle at this moment.

 

The Abu Dhabi owners of City are throwing such financial might at winning the league — and the Champions League — that it seems as if ogres are shaking a mighty tree, sure that in time all its fruit will fall into the owners’ hands.

 

And it might. City’s 6-1 victory at United still reverberates around the soccer world as a warning about the power of Gulf wealth in the English league.

 

Newcastle does not have that. Its owner, the man who paid Hall to sell in 2007 and got rid of Keegan in 2008, has not until now been welcomed by the Toon fans. For one thing, the new owner, Mike Ashley, is a southerner, from closer to London than the North East.

 

For another, his fortune was made in selling sportswear, buying and selling businesses at just the right moments to maximize his profits.

 

Newcastle folk distrusted him, and twice Ashley nakedly stated his intention of selling his stake in the club. He found no takers, he stayed, and now a transformation is taking place.

 

The latest coach, another Southerner, Alan Pardew, speaks with the wrong accent for Durham people. His strategy, defense first and foremost, is alien to their history. And, after Ashley sold or simply gave away players he felt had unsustainable large salaries before the start of this season, there was gloom and doom around Tyneside.

 

Three months in, the mood is changing. Yes, the core of Newcastle’s game is cautious, indeed its record of conceding only eight goals in 11 games is meaner than that of any opponent in the league. Its attack has scored just 17 times, which is fewer than half of what City has done, and also behind United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur.

 

Pardew can point, with pride, to the tenacity his team showed last Saturday when it overcame Everton’s stubborn team play to win, 2-1. The winning goal, struck from the edge of the penalty box by Ryan Taylor, was spectacular enough to make those Geordie voices reverberate as much as the crossbar did when the ball cannoned in off it.

 

As Everton rallied, a trait it shows especially against top teams, Newcastle had to dig deep into its reserves of endeavor and defiance. “It was one of those games where we got disrupted,” Pardew admitted. “We lost two key players, Yohan Cabaye and Sylvain Marveaux, and that cost us some rhythm. But we are stronger now, we have depth in the squad, and I’d say this was our best defensive performance of the season so far.” The trainer of a club wedded to attacking soccer is locked into defense.

 

The crowd is cheering because the team’s position is higher than many expected, and higher than most have experienced in their lives. More than that, they are witnessing players from Argentina, from Africa, from European lands they scarcely knew existed, playing in their famed black and white stripes.

 

Pardew’s triumph, thus far, is in getting players from such disparate backgrounds to recognize one paramount thing: They will be cheered to the rafters on Tyneside so long as they wear the shirts worn with wholehearted commitment. The Toon is rocking.

[wormy]

Holy shit. :lol: That reads like a Yank who's literally only picked up on football this season, and Googled every possible cliche and wrong fact available about Newcastle.

[clintdempsey]

Still it's nice with positive articles about the club in foreign papers. Albeit a bit faulty.

[Benwell Lad]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/sports/soccer/09iht-soccer09.html?_r=1

 

Patronising, occasionally offensive, poorly researched load of s****.

Can a coach change the intrinsic nature of a club and earn the respect and gratitude of its supporters? Newcastle United lies third in the English Premier League. Its team is unbeaten after 11 games, almost a third of the season, equaling the club’s best-ever starts, in 1950 and 1994.

 

The next two games are away at the only clubs above it in the standings — Manchester City and Manchester United. But for now, with a break for international matches this coming weekend, the Magpies, as Newcastle’s players are known, are flying higher than Chelsea or Liverpool or Arsenal.

 

Newcastle is a special club. It is the only team in the northernmost city of England, fiercely proud of its regional isolation, its separateness from the rest of the nation. The community’s shipbuilding and coal-mining industries might have declined, and unemployment is up, but the Tyneside region feels proud when the team is performing well.

 

The St. James’ Park stadium, where Newcastle has remained unbeaten since early March, seats more than 52,000, but the club could sell four times that number of tickets if space allowed it. The steep banks of the ground are as high as they can be, the roar of the home crowd cascades down onto the field, and it would be a strange player who was not moved by that sound to give 100 percent of what is in his or her soul.

 

Yet the current team is not everyone’s cup of tea.

Its squad draws on players from more than a dozen countries, in keeping with the polyglot makeup of virtually all the clubs in the Premiership, but at odds with the dream of Newcastle’s rearing its team of locally produced “Geordie lads.”

 

That concept, espoused up to a decade ago, was intended to supply the entire team, from 1 to 11, from the Durham County population. The-then owner, John Hall, was a coal miner turned real-estate entrepreneur. His coach was Kevin Keegan, the grandson of a Durham miner.

 

And the style was gung-ho. Keegan knew next to nothing about defense, other than to instruct defenders to join in the attacks on wave after wave. Hall had his memories of the way the Magpies had won F.A. Cups in his youth, though they were long memories because the club had won the last of four league titles in 1927 and brought home the Cup for the last time in 1955.

 

Still, the belief of Hall, the spirit of “Wor Kev,” Our Kev, as the Geordie fans chanted Keegan’s name, got that old feeling coursing again through the sons and daughters of Newcastle. They lined up in the thousands for season tickets. They traveled in numbers greater than any other team on long, long road trips to support their team.

 

Geordies across the globe, like expatriates here in New Zealand, live in hope of a revival of the team that puts “The Toon” on the map.

 

But time moves on. New owners, no longer just multimillionaires like John Hall, but billionaires from the Arabian peninsula and the United States, come to spend money in amounts out of proportion to what the local communities supporting the teams can afford.

 

Think of Manchester City and United, the teams above Newcastle at this moment.

 

The Abu Dhabi owners of City are throwing such financial might at winning the league — and the Champions League — that it seems as if ogres are shaking a mighty tree, sure that in time all its fruit will fall into the owners’ hands.

 

And it might. City’s 6-1 victory at United still reverberates around the soccer world as a warning about the power of Gulf wealth in the English league.

 

Newcastle does not have that. Its owner, the man who paid Hall to sell in 2007 and got rid of Keegan in 2008, has not until now been welcomed by the Toon fans. For one thing, the new owner, Mike Ashley, is a southerner, from closer to London than the North East.

 

For another, his fortune was made in selling sportswear, buying and selling businesses at just the right moments to maximize his profits.

 

Newcastle folk distrusted him, and twice Ashley nakedly stated his intention of selling his stake in the club. He found no takers, he stayed, and now a transformation is taking place.

 

The latest coach, another Southerner, Alan Pardew, speaks with the wrong accent for Durham people. His strategy, defense first and foremost, is alien to their history. And, after Ashley sold or simply gave away players he felt had unsustainable large salaries before the start of this season, there was gloom and doom around Tyneside.

 

Three months in, the mood is changing. Yes, the core of Newcastle’s game is cautious, indeed its record of conceding only eight goals in 11 games is meaner than that of any opponent in the league. Its attack has scored just 17 times, which is fewer than half of what City has done, and also behind United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur.

 

Pardew can point, with pride, to the tenacity his team showed last Saturday when it overcame Everton’s stubborn team play to win, 2-1. The winning goal, struck from the edge of the penalty box by Ryan Taylor, was spectacular enough to make those Geordie voices reverberate as much as the crossbar did when the ball cannoned in off it.

 

As Everton rallied, a trait it shows especially against top teams, Newcastle had to dig deep into its reserves of endeavor and defiance. “It was one of those games where we got disrupted,” Pardew admitted. “We lost two key players, Yohan Cabaye and Sylvain Marveaux, and that cost us some rhythm. But we are stronger now, we have depth in the squad, and I’d say this was our best defensive performance of the season so far.” The trainer of a club wedded to attacking soccer is locked into defense.

 

The crowd is cheering because the team’s position is higher than many expected, and higher than most have experienced in their lives. More than that, they are witnessing players from Argentina, from Africa, from European lands they scarcely knew existed, playing in their famed black and white stripes.

 

Pardew’s triumph, thus far, is in getting players from such disparate backgrounds to recognize one paramount thing: They will be cheered to the rafters on Tyneside so long as they wear the shirts worn with wholehearted commitment. The Toon is rocking.

 

It's so bad it actually made me laugh.

Comical but pretty harmless I suppose.

[TaylorJ_01]

That's an absolute train-wreck