He failed to pick up Atsu a couple of times in the first half. As already stated, we had two players returning from injury and others who have played occasionally.Any athlete needs constancy in their sport to find rhythm.Sporadic play can make you flustered and panicky. For all his moaning and groaning about "miracles" to keep Toon up,Benitez is far too astute a coach to let this happen,it's just an unfamiliar role for him I suspect.
Benitez trying to put the owner under pressure to spend money I feel. Its why all the Newcastle fans love "Rafa the gaffer" - he is on their side and they'd probably get somebody a lot worse if he left.
Just so but it's a little one dimensional after twenty seven airings Rafa! I have no doubt they wouldn't get a better boss/coach but I would expect him to behave better than his constant whining. Get on with it man!
Success is a winger, or a partner to a clinical striker at best. Unfortunately he’s being asked to be the clinical striker in this team. He regularly outpaces and outmuscles defenders and drew multiple fouls in good positions yesterday, if we had someone who could take free kicks we could have made something from them. He still lacks composure a bit with the final ball but hopefully this will come. I think it’s quite obvious he is more suited to this position. I think there’s a theme in that javi is not utilising our players in their correct positions, Hughes should never be played out wide, he’s a great player when he’s in the middle, picking out passes and playing one twos, but he is never a wide player and offers nothing out there. He’s not got the pace to get past a player and will often find himself isolated. So it’s no surprise people are getting on his back a bit and it’s a bloody waste of a great talent. Strangely I think the same a bit for pererya. Yes he’s had a good season goals wise, but games will still often pass him by. He doesn’t usually get past a player because he has no pace, especially against someone like yedlin, losing the ball easily numerous times and thus offering no real outlet out wide. He also offers worse than nothing defensively as he often doesn’t track back or loses his runner. I think again it’s quite obvious he would be better suited in the middle, behind 2 strikers or a more central role where he can be even more effective without the detrimental impact on the team. Looking at this I would say a natural winger or two would be good additions to the obvious striker (which looks like it’s not happening) and defender in January.
Yeah but don't let any of that get in the way of a good Deeney moan. He didn't score today so he's lazy overall.
I'm surprised you were there still for the equaliser; did the season of goodwill persuade you to stay after half time?! Now I have to admit that I spent yesterday afternoon preparing for the arrival of a houseful for a "between Xmas and NYE soiree" so didn't see the match or any highlights. However, I still challenge anyone claiming yesterday's was the worst performance of the season. I cannot believe anything tops the Bournemouth match. Happy New Year everyone.
Oh, yes. For any of you who still have to toil for a living try that at work: "Boss, if you don't spend a shed-load of money on me and my project it is destined to fail. If, however, it doesn't fail it is because I'm a miracle-worker." Benitez the self-appointed miracle -worker; it's the second coming! (Nevertheless, he is a first-class coach).
Overall, I agree. But we don't know for sure that the other two back-line changes were entirely unforced. They keep quiet about injuries. Particularly liked for 'a good slap to get some sense into him': A coaching/teaching practice that has sadly slipped out of date.
You are quite right yesterday was not nearly as bad as Bournemouth, the biggest problem was that we all expected out team to turn up, do its stuff, and collect three points! Six changes confused the fans as much as the players, they didn't know what they were doing and we didn't either!
Of course we wouldn’t. Part of our argument for attracting young talent is that we will develop them, and then let them go to big clubs when they hit their peak. We’re not going to do a Levy and break the whole model to eek out a few extra quid. If the deals good, we’ll accept and wish Doucs all the best.
Seems unlikely that the Holebas change was anything but resting him, given that he came on and inserted some of his usual, angry intensity. I don't think that Janmaat was any worse than Kiko would've been in allowing in the cross for their goal, but it seems unlikely that all 6 changes were forced. If, say 4 were forced by injury/fitness then it makes even less sense to then tinker further with the side unnecessarily. Of course, I may be wrong and Deeney, Doucoure and Holebas were pushed to their limits to give us 40 minutes or fewer.
Thing is, we still haven't reinvested from the massive profit we made from Richarlison. I'm not confident that if we raked in a huge fee that we'd actually reinvest it where we needed to. Pozzo model etc. Of our current crop, I'd say the one player who regularly looks like he's too good for us is pereyra and I'm not sure it would be easy for us to replace him
Agreed. Not sure Udinese got much out of selling Sanchez either. Unless Gino is secretly increasing the wage cap with the extra profit, I think he’s happier buying and developing youth players and pocketing the change. He’s probably also scarred from the whole Gray debacle. That he spent (up to) 18m on a striker with less composure than Lloyd Doyley is not going to encourage him to spend big again.
Gracia was right to rotate, and our performance was always going to suffer. That’s what happens with 3 games in a week. His mistake was to not give some of the rotation players more match time throughout the season. The ones which came on, although they’ll be better for it now, would have been sharper if they’d played a few more minutes this season. Javi likes to play a consistent team. That gets teams up and running quickly and benefits teams before Christmas, but often leads to a drop off from the winter onwards. I hope I’m wrong, but this season has the makings of a poor end of season. Especially if/ when we sell Doucoure.
I've not seen the penalty claim mentioned in any report and no one is up in arms about it on this thread, so I'm guessing it wasn't one. It was at the other end of the ground from me, so was hard to tell, but from that end it looked like a good claim. Talking of penalties, did anyone see the two that Liverpool were awarded. Absolutely pathetic awards and 100% we would not have been given two like that in a million years. Also, after watching the post-match interview, it looks like Gracia is getting tired of the constant missed chances. Yesterday he mentioned three scoring chances before their goal, which would have put us in the driving seat. I'm hoping that the board are going to try very hard to get that allusive striker in this window, even if it's just someone on loan.
Thing is, were in a unique position for us and for the Pozzos, in that the perfect storm of market conditions, the pool of talent available and the shop window we're in means we've 2 or 3 potential 40m-50m players, if the right bidding war happens. Delofeu, Pereyra, Doucoure, all have the potential to make Gino embarrassingly rich over the next 2 years. I wonder he doesn't just cash them in and sell the club and retire 9 figures richer.
Small time mindset is an interesting point to make. If Javi was saying he was pleased with a point to the players at full time then I'd agree that it is a dangerous mindset to have. But a fan stating it is different matter. In fact I'd say that fans having small time mindsets would benefit the performances. If the fans approached every game with the idea that we are the underdogs whoever we play, and that we would support the team to create an atmosphere which spurs the players on, I'd suggest it would have a positive impact on the team's performance. You just have to look at how Cardiff perform at home this season and how Huddersfield stayed up last season as evidence of this.
If the goal of our club is to replicate the success of Huddersfield and Cardiff, then you are spot on.
Read through all the comments, quite funny how emotion after the result leads to the more extreme responses and gradually the more level headed comments appear. Early comments suggesting Javi is getting it all wrong are a little laughable. What’s this, our 3rd best league position in our history at this stage in the season? Some of the most entertaining football I’ve seen is play. Teams like Newcastle realising they can’t go toe to toe with us and have to give up possession and try and ‘do a job’ against us. Loving Javi, loving this team. But in full agreement about needing a proper goal scorer and a better CB.
I didn't see anyone bust a gut yesterday. The drop in effort compared to Chelsea, for me, was palpable.
Probably get slated for this, but my small time my mindset is that perhaps we should've rested these players v Chelsea and put out a stronger team yesterday and v Bournemouth instead.
Nothing comes to mind - I don't recall any meaningful penalty claims. However, I'm disappointed you are not in full ref-rant mode about yesterday and I'm putting it down to post-Christmas exhaustion. Because I thought the refereeing was poor: Throughout the match fouls were missed and ones which didn't exist were invented. The yellow card was employed erratically, too: The United guy professional-fouling Success throughout the afternoon only got booked for petulantly throwing the ball (and even that was questionable). Lucky for the ref it wasn't a spiteful or angry match. Btw: Before anybody picks me up on Success falling over too many times - yes, he did; way too many.
Considering that, other than some laughable booing at half time and the consistent abuse of Isaac Success, there was utter silence between the Newcastle goal and ours, I'd say that the fans think their presence is irrelevant to the team performance.
I thought the ref was good yesterday, so why would anyone have a go at him? I thought he probably have shown a couple of Newcastle players a yellow card early on, but other than that, he was much better than the usual. If all refs performed like Roger East yesterday, then I would never have a problem with any of them.
No, makes sense. Surely Newcastle should have been the game we should have been targeting for the 3 points .
I mentioned this after the game but I'd point you in the direction of Lesta vs Man City followed by Cardiff as another example. Think our performances yesterday reflected we have less to play for than Newcastle who are still in a relegation battle. Out players will always raise their games against big boys as do all mid table teams hence why there is the occasional shock result. I can almost guarantee there will be worse performances than yesterday against other sides we would expect to perform well against. Not saying we should accept it but sometimes you just have to move on. If we'd lost I'd have been annoyed but a draw was okay, enough not to ruin the day, a match to forget.
I thought could have balanced out the rotation more. Maybe two vs Chelsea and two yesterday. Full strength at Bournemouth as we will probably rest lots for Woking.
