ThePickards
standards, accessibility, and ranting and general stuff by the web chemist

I’ve been thinking about doing this post for some time, and now that Laura — sorry, Mike — Ashley has got his hands on more than 90% of the club’s shares and Big Sam has signed his fourth player, it seemed about time.

Firstly, I have to admit to a certain disappointment about the Mike Ashley takeover. Part of the reason I wanted someone to take over the club was that I’d had quite enough of Freddie Shepherd, thank you very much so the fact he will be staying on as chairman (at least in the short term) seems somewhat of a wasted opportunity.

Secondly, the fact that it was Mike Ashley. Now I don’t know the fella, but just imagine how much fun it would have been if it had been Laura Ashley instead. Out would go the bold black and white stripes: the players would play in some lovely pastel shades, there would be nice floral curtains on all of the executive boxes and all of the seats would have cushions.

Thirdly, who in their right mind would want their club to be taken over by a billionaire who unusually enough for the English Premiership, isn’t American, doesn’t immediately saddle the club with £2/3 billion in debt, and says he wants to make the club a success? Um… oh, well, that one’s not too bad I suppose.

It’s interesting to note that there have already been some significant changes to Newcastle’s transfer policy even without Ashley’s millions flooding in yet. Firstly, it’s only the start of July and we’ve already signed four players, two of whom we actually paid money for, as opposed to the usual trick of getting to the 30th of August and realising that you’ve only actually got seven players.

Of the players we’ve signed, Joey Barton is a good midfielder and if he ever grows up will be an asset to the club. Viduka and Geremi are pretty decent players without being the sort of players a top four team would want — but I’ll happily take ‘em for nowt as not only are they better than some of what we’ve got at present, they also fulfil a useful function of providing extra bodies in the squad. And then we’ve got Jake Gylenhaal. Sorry, Ronnie Rosenthal. Sorry, that Czech chappie called Rozenhaal.

I would say that he must be all right as he’s managed to pick up 34 caps for the Czech Republic, but as Marcelino, Christian Bassedas, Silvio Maric, Hugo Viana and Albert Luque all managed to pick up caps for their respective countries, that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be good enough to cut it in the Premiership. We’ll just have to wait and see.

I’m not sure whether or not I should me more concerned about the types of players Sam is going for -– they’re all what you would class as big strong muscular players (with the exception of Barton, who still certainly qualifies as ‘combatative’), leaving me with a slight worry that the sole plan will be to kick lumps out of the opposition until they give up and allow us to win.

I don’t have any objection to this as an option; indeed one of the few pleasurable games under Souness’s reign saw us out-fight Arsenal, significantly upsetting Arsene Wenger in the process (just gets better, doesn’t it?).

So I’ve got no objections with this tactic being used from time to time; I also think it’s to our advantage if we’re less likely to be muscled out of the game by sides like … um, Bolton, but I would like to ask Sam to remember that we would also like to see passing football, players blessed with the ability to pass, dribble and shoot, as well as just those who can hit the ball long then jump up high to challenge for it.

That is to say, I’d like to see Newcastle able to marry the physical and skill aspects of the game together, in contrast to previous regimes which appear to have concentrated on one very much at the expense of the other.

On the whole though, I can see reason for optimism. Not only have we signed some half decent players (in some cases who other clubs actually wanted) but we appear to be bringing in some very competent backroom staff; Sam appears to be trying to ensure that everything is geared up to getting the best out of the players, and on top of that Mike Ashley seems to be bringing in some of his own people to ensure that the non-footballing side is run properly too.

So I’m cautiously optimistic, but only time will tell…

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 7th, 2007 at 8:31 am and is filed under Newcastle United. You can follow responses via my RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.