Howmanheyman 26925 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 http://www.nytimes.c..._r=1&ref=soccer In Newcastle, a Place Proudly Apart, Skepticism About Change 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monkeys Fist 38799 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 Durham fucking County?? GTF. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kid Dynamite 5936 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 We could sell 200k tickets as well apparently Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Howmanheyman 26925 Posted November 8, 2011 Author Share Posted November 8, 2011 Hands up who thought of Stevie when they read the Durham bit? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monkeys Fist 38799 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Howmanheyman 26925 Posted November 8, 2011 Author Share Posted November 8, 2011 Highest I've ever league place most of us have seen NUFC in our lives!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaddockLad 14620 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 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. Fuck off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monkeys Fist 38799 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 from European lands they scarcely knew existed, Fuck off, twice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Howmanheyman 26925 Posted November 8, 2011 Author Share Posted November 8, 2011 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. Fuck off. Well it makes a change from the 'well known fact they used to average eight facking fousand in the old 2nd division before facking Keegan went there', to be fair, mate! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monroe Transfer 0 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 Mock it all you like, but it's nice to see the club getting a lot of praise from overseas media. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monkeys Fist 38799 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 And you can fuck off too. They think we're mackems man! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChezGiven 0 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 Read it this morning, definitely the worst article written on the back of our recent form. It's fucking terrible and it appeared in the Herald. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kitman 2188 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 Apaprt from some glaring inaccuracies, including the Durham references and the old "Keegan's sides don't defend" cliche, I didn't think it was a bad article actually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Face 29 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 Mock it all you like, but it's nice to see the club getting a lot of praise from overseas media. Is praise from a complete gump worth anything? Have you seen some of the people Louis Walsh praises? Fucking Jedward. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Howmanheyman 26925 Posted November 8, 2011 Author Share Posted November 8, 2011 I must admit, I find it very amusing when Yanks/Aussies/Cockneys/Talksport try and talk about football and NUFC in particular. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McFaul 35 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 "The latest coach, another Southerner, Alan Pardew, speaks with the wrong accent for Durham people" and who may I ask cares what the mackems think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Park Life 70 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 Pretty cringeworthy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Howmanheyman 26925 Posted November 8, 2011 Author Share Posted November 8, 2011 Mock it all you like, but it's nice to see the club getting a lot of praise from overseas media. Is praise from a complete gump worth anything? Have you seen some of the people Louis Walsh praises? Fucking Jedward. Fuck off, HF! CT thinks I'm a canny poster. You can't take that away from me!! (CT) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lake Bells tits 1 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 from European lands they scarcely knew existed, Fuck off, twice. What is this, Conquest of Paradise I was waiting for a followup of something like " and they had never seen a person of african-american desecent until Kevin Keegan brought in players from exotic lands of coconuts and pineapple. The simple and hard-working coal miners of Newcastle can hardly read or write, but that doesnt stop them from storming the gates before every game, beer in hand and shovel in the other" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sammynb 2929 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 I must admit, I find it very amusing when Yanks/Aussies/Cockneys/Talksport try and talk about football and NUFC in particular. Fuck off, I take offense at that. Martin Tyler sounds like he knows what he's talking about wtf is this sentence? 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. I thought it was written by a yank? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbsweeney 0 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 I must admit, I find it very amusing when Yanks/Aussies/Cockneys/Talksport try and talk about football and NUFC in particular. Fuck off, I take offense at that. As do I Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lake Bells tits 1 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 Author is from New Zealand? Like sitting on the moon writing about washington politics Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hostile_statue 0 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 @ that article. "From European lands they scarcely knew existed" - er, you mean France? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monroe Transfer 0 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 Mock it all you like, but it's nice to see the club getting a lot of praise from overseas media. Is praise from a complete gump worth anything? Have you seen some of the people Louis Walsh praises? No, because I avoid everything and anything to do with X Factor. Clearly you can't say the same, so I'm the better man. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lake Bells tits 1 Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 Except for the weekend games, the only time Tecato turns on the telly is when My big fat gypsy wedding is on... in order to record it.... and burn it on a disc.... and chronologically place it on his dedicated MBFGW shelf... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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