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Hatem Ben Arfa (still a free agent)


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We need to keep this thread going forever. Let's not let wankers rewrite history and pretend he was given a fair go at the first team here, and treated well. And just reminiscing about his play brings this weird moisture over the eyes. That Bolton goal, what a moment to be a Newcastle fan at that time, a sliver of the sublime within 90mins of turgid bastard of a game.

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I get that non stop fanboyism might annoy some, but to have the opposite opinion or even an overly negative opinion about Hatem still baffles me.

 

Beyond the highlights and memories his legacy is also as a handy tool to identify joyless buggers out there.

 

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Wasn't he the quickest in our pre season training last summer as well?

 

Yeah quickest to the fucking canteen at lunch time, amirite guys!?

 

EDIT: No including Andy Woodman who spent his entire summer camped out in there.

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Wasn't he the quickest in our pre season training last summer as well?

 

Someone has either been lying or it is really embarrassing that our team still were slower than a fat lazy slug.

I'm fairly sure he was quickest over a short distance or something

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Wasn't he the quickest in our pre season training last summer as well?

 

Someone has either been lying or it is really embarrassing that our team still were slower than a fat lazy slug.

I'm fairly sure he was quickest over a short distance or something

 

The short distance between the salad and the chips in the canteen, right!?

 

Guys? Right?

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Chronicle love writing about him

 

They say the camera can put on 10 pounds, but in Hatem Ben Arfa’s case last weekend it looked more like 50.

 

Pictures of Ben Arfa’s pre-season comeback game – well, one pretty grainy snap to be precise – went viral on Saturday evening and let’s put it this way: the mercurial former Newcastle United forward looked twice the man he ever did at St James’ Park.

 

His defenders were quick to point out that it was a particularly baggy red and black Nice shirt that he was sporting. So often the man with a trick, this time Ben Arfa had been the victim of a trick of the light apparently.

 

With Ben Arfa, there’ll always be someone prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. With such a luxurious talent, that’s often the way – but a wasted year and a career on the slide is his fault and no one else’s.

 

It was always a shame. A fit and in-form Ben Arfa might have lifted last season above the dreadful drudgery that eventually curdled into some of the most serious and pressing problems of the Mike Ashley era, and I always felt that – however unpredictable and inconsistent he might have been – there was always the capacity for entertainment when he was around.

 

 

En signant à Nice, Ben Arfa avait prévenu: il a faim de ballons ! pic.twitter.com/tfKaZxvii8

 

— qP (@QPerissinotto) July 12, 2015

 

Newcastle were nothing but dull and dreadful from January last year but given Ben Arfa was drummed out of Hull – where, after one video analysis session, it was put to him that the goalkeeper had covered more ground during the game than him – that was hardly the sole reason. So Pardew was right, then? Well his call has been borne out but at various points Ben Arfa’s career might have gone a different away with a different approach.

 

Why, for example, was Ben Arfa so often allowed to rehabilitate from injuries in France and other exotic locations? Why, indeed, have Newcastle granted so many of their foreign stars such extended leaves of absence when they’re recovering from serious knocks?

 

Fabricio Coloccini, hardly Ben Arfa’s biggest fan, apparently, had long sojourns in Argentina when recuperating. Hopefully Steve McClaren will have been told how damaging that has been for the reputation of the skipper and will be changing things a bit.

 

Ben Arfa was brilliant and bold on his day, but given recent developments I wonder whether we were wrong to hitch such emotional attachment to a player who looks skittish at best. Is it just a reflection of how little entertainment Newcastle has given recently that Ben Arfa’s name can still prompt dewy-eyed reminiscing?

 

McClaren wants to change United’s style, apparently. He might like to absorb all the lessons he can from Ben Arfa’s rise and subsequent fall.

 

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