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The Shola Ameobi thread


Crumpy Gunt

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Aye right, so if Owen rushes back and tears his hamstring and is out for the remainder of the season. Just for the sake of him starting against them instead of Shola. That makes a lot of sense to me like....

 

As much as I want to beat them there will be far more important games over the next 6 or 7 months.

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What I really don't want to see is him playing well and then getting dropped the minute the big name player becomes available. JK has to walk the walk here - you can't praise the lad up and then not show faith when it comes to the acid test.

 

I just want to see this club being run on normal lines for a change. If you play well, you keep your place.

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What I really don't want to see is him playing well and then getting dropped the minute the big name player becomes available. JK has to walk the walk here - you can't praise the lad up and then not show faith when it comes to the acid test.

 

I just want to see this club being run on normal lines for a change. If you play well, you keep your place.

 

If Owen's fit, Owen plays as far as i'm concerned. Shola's done well in the game and a bit he's had under Kinnear but let's be realistic here. Harsh, maybe (well, the lad's had enough chances tbh like) - but Owen is several times the player he is, and is in a cracking run of form. I don't think that's in any doubt.

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Kinnear sees Ameobi as one of his first two strikers, which hasn't happened since Roeder. Which coincidentally was when he scored quite a lot.

It's all about the gaffer having confidence in him - which is why when Allardyce and Keegan played him (rarely like) he played shite.

 

Needs to give another good performance tomorrow against the mackems.

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What I really don't want to see is him playing well and then getting dropped the minute the big name player becomes available. JK has to walk the walk here - you can't praise the lad up and then not show faith when it comes to the acid test.

 

I just want to see this club being run on normal lines for a change. If you play well, you keep your place.

 

That's not how 'normal' clubs work though.

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Louise Taylor has a first...

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2008/oct/25/premier-league-sunderland-newcastle-blog-ameobi

 

Shola Ameobi may have got on the scoresheet once more, but Joe Kinnear will be pining for Mark Viduka and Michael Owen

 

Joe Kinnear has been minding his language since receiving a ticking-off from the Football Association in the wake of his foul-mouthed rant at reporters but Newcastle United's interim manager could hardly be blamed for cursing when Shola Ameobi missed a superb second-half chance in today's Tyne-Wear derby.

 

After heading Newcastle level during the first period, Ameobi was ruffling Anton Ferdinand and Danny Collins. Both were wrongfooted when Obafemi Martins slipped him a sweet pass and, virtually unmarked, the centre forward only had Marton Fulop to beat.

 

In the event Sunderland's stand-in Hungarian goalkeeper saw the resultant shot sail woefully off target leaving Newcastle fans collectively shaking their heads and muttering, "same old Shola".

 

Had he scored Newcastle would have gone 2-1 up and might have proceeded to record their first win under Kinnear's charge and their second Premier League victory of the season. Granted Sunderland's superior passing and greater number of chances merited this first derby triumph on Wearside since 1980, but games hinge on the finest of margins and Kinnear had reason to rue Mark Viduka's latest injury-induced absence.

 

It is no coincidence that the Tynesiders's revival late last season under Kevin Keegan came when Michael Owen was allowed to flourish in a role playing just behind the Australian striker. Owen, of course, is injured as well right now. Indeed, while Newcastle did not play as well as in recent draws against Everton and Manchester City, Kinnear can, like many a St James' Park predecessor, complain that fortune is frowning on him.

 

It did not help, for instance, that Nicky Butt was clearly hampered by a foot injury, which at one point required restitching. Some coaches might have gambled on starting Joey Barton but, without a full game in six months, that would have been quite a risk.

 

Nonetheless the pitch might have been a safer place for a midfielder dubbed 'football's baddest lad' than the sidelines where Barton's warming up routines were disgracefully, if predictably, interrupted by a shower of missiles. It remains to be seen what Kinnear can do with a fully-fit squad and how a match-fit Barton will respond to his strictures but at least the interim manager has effected certain individual improvements.

 

Some managers rarely speak to players individually, preferring to keep them guessing. Kinnear though has always been into private chats, even going so far as to take senior players at Wimbledon out for drinks. In Shola Ameobi's case he has taken things one step further. Kinnear has been giving the striker, who Kevin Keegan fruitlessly attempted to offload to assorted Championship clubs this summer, private afternoon lessons in the art of discomfiting defenders. Judging by the sporadically fazed looks on the faces of Collins and Ferdinand - and just where was Rio's little brother when an unattended Ameobi headed the opener? - such tutorials are, at least partially, having the desired effect.

 

It is now two goals in two games for the Geordie-Nigerian striker that Kinnear has pledged to turn into 'the new John Fashanu'. Talking of Ameobi's African heritage - he was born in Nigeria and emigrated to Tyneside with his parents as a small boy - he has offered a reminder that he was once rated sufficiently promising to prompt a tug-of-war between London and Lagos.

 

I remember interviewing Howard Wilkinson, then the England Under-21 manager, in a Yorkshire hotel before a junior game at Barnsley where Ameobi was scheduled to make his international debut. During our chat Wilkinson explained that the FA were fearful that their Nigerian counterparts were hatching a last minute plot to hijack Ameobi and persaude him to turn out for the country of his birth rather than gamble on one day leading England to World Cup glory.

 

Even though England's bus was not waylaid by highwaymen en route to Oakwell and Ameobi scored twice on his debut that always seemed unlikely. "Shola's definitely got something," mused Wilkinson afterwards. "I'm not quite sure exactly what though."

 

Other managers, Keegan especially, have been equally uncertain about Ameobi's slightly unorthodox talents. Although his touch is better than it looks he is not ultra-combative and responds to stroking rather than kicking. It is no coincidence that his best football - and a ratio of one goal every other game - came under the management of Glenn Roeder who persistently told Ameobi he was "the biz".

 

Kinnear is doing something similar but must privately be counting the days until Owen and, arguably more importantly, Viduka are fit again.

 

 

... a reasonably balanced article concerning us with NO mention of how great Keane is!

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