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We won't be relegated darlings


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He's definitely predominantly right-footed on the evidence I've seen. Didn't he play left-back at Inter (and here I suppose) due to circumstances rather than his preference though?

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He's right footed. There needn't be another reason.

 

As I understand it, he ended up played leftback because Inter were short on numbers so had to make do. He performed well there and has subsequently got stuck there. But the standard in football is to have right footed players on the right and left footers on the left. I know this is not as clear cut as it used to be for wide midfielders but it is still rare to have fullbacks playing on anything but their natural side. If you're looking for them to supplement the attack and get balls into the box they will be able to do it far more successfully with their better foot. I also think it would help him defensively as it would simply be more natural to him when he's facing up to the opposition.

Of course there are time's recently where he's made mistakes which could have easily happened whichever side of the pitch he was on but imo he would fare better on the right.

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Santon has been one of our worst players for the last two months. This is where you need a few players in rotation. Give him a bit of a rest and tell him he needs to prove himself in training. He's an automatic choice at LB because there is nobody else we could realistically put there unless forced to through injury

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In his second season (when we were in the Championship) Ricky was immense. Think your're a season out there Johnny. And even in our relegation season (well our last one!) he was imo our best player in the second half of the season.

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When we were in the Championship that was Enrique's third season though. Plus I don't think it's fair to compare Championship performances simply due to the fact that league is so inferior to the Premiership. I remember people saying how good of a league it was when we went down, it was competitive yes but I thought the standard was quite poor.

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Sorry you're right, it was me who was a season out, I always forget it was Fat Sam who signed him and think of the relegation season as his first.

 

Mind you if you're comparing the two players at the same point, I go back to what I said about him in the relegation season. Bassong was our best player in the first half of it but around this time Ricky became our best player.

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Can't see us going down, once we get players back from injury plus Debuchy and A.N. Other. Definitely 3 poorer teams than ourselves.

 

Surreal that it's even being contemplated after last season given most of that team is still at the club.

 

i remember a lot of people saying that the last time we went down.

 

it's being contemplated because of our form. 10 defeats in 12 games is relegation form, whichever way you look at it.

 

last year the same group of players were mostly fit and in the main, played together all season. plus they went on an unbeaten run at the start of the season similar to this run of defeats. winning breeds confidence; losing kills it.

 

the big worry for me, aside from the lack of depth and one dimensional tactics, is the lack of spirit. it's been a big factor for us the last three seasons. it's the first time since the relegation season that we've put a run of gutless performances in. and that's worrying.

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i remember a lot of people saying that the last time we went down.

 

it's being contemplated because of our form. 10 defeats in 12 games is relegation form, whichever way you look at it.

 

last year the same group of players were mostly fit and in the main, played together all season. plus they went on an unbeaten run at the start of the season similar to this run of defeats. winning breeds confidence; losing kills it.

 

the big worry for me, aside from the lack of depth and one dimensional tactics, is the lack of spirit. it's been a big factor for us the last three seasons. it's the first time since the relegation season that we've put a run of gutless performances in. and that's worrying.

 

I was one. I bleated the usual line of "3 worse teams" blah blah. How wrong was I. The more we think we are too go to go down the more likely we'll get sucked further in. They need to fight their way out and I'm hoping that getting Cabaye back and Tiote heading off, plus Debuchy coming in, is going to stop the rot. Im not going to say we cant go down like, we can.

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The season we went down we were a mess. A very unstable club. Thankfully we're in a better situation now than then.

Agree with that. The reason we are where we are is injuries and lack of quality in our squad players.
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I think signing some new players and getting the likes of Cabaye and HBA back will give us the momentum we need. That said, we are definitely in a relegation battle and imo we need some luck with injuries, suspensions and the like. If we can string some results together I think we'll be OK but it's a real worry.

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Also I'd like to add Santon is putting in better performances than Enrique did at similar times in their respective Newcastle careers.

 

Not defensively. In the early times, with

Allardyce not playing him anywhere near consistently his main weakness was his passing - he'd frequently resort to punting it up field with few other options.

 

I think with Santon he may have questioned how he was playing based on our results and felt he had to change up something to help us win. This clearly wasn't the case but you can understand how that could happen.

Edited by OTF
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i remember a lot of people saying that the last time we went down.

 

it's being contemplated because of our form. 10 defeats in 12 games is relegation form, whichever way you look at it.

 

last year the same group of players were mostly fit and in the main, played together all season. plus they went on an unbeaten run at the start of the season similar to this run of defeats. winning breeds confidence; losing kills it.

 

the big worry for me, aside from the lack of depth and one dimensional tactics, is the lack of spirit. it's been a big factor for us the last three seasons. it's the first time since the relegation season that we've put a run of gutless performances in. and that's worrying.

 

Yup. Scarily, on the way in to the Everton game I heard a lad say he would be happy with a point. Does anyone not realise we're running out of home games? We lost the right to get a point at home to anyone when we failed to beat any of the shite around us earlier in the season. We have to beat everyone at home now, simple as. That includes Chelsea as well. Happy with a point at home to Everton in the position we're in, fucking serious.

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Yup. Scarily, on the way in to the Everton game I heard a lad say he would be happy with a point. Does anyone not realise we're running out of home games? We lost the right to get a point at home to anyone when we failed to beat any of the shite around us earlier in the season. We have to beat everyone at home now, simple as. That includes Chelsea as well. Happy with a point at home to Everton in the position we're in, fucking serious.

 

Given the team we were forced to put out, I can see his point. Do you think all the teams around and below us will win every single home game? Don't be daft.

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Given the team we were forced to put out, I can see his point. Do you think all the teams around and below us will win every single home game? Don't be daft.

They won't of course but the problem we're facing at the moment is that other teams down the bottom look like (and in fact are) winning games while we don't at home let alone away. QPR have had the worst start in premiership history yet even they are only 7 points behind us now.

We can still comfortably pull out of this if we get the main three injured players back for the rest of the season and bring another striker in but have to start beating teams soon.

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Sat 12 A Norwich City

Sat 19 H Reading

Tue 29 A Aston Villa

 

February

Sat 02 H Chelsea

Sat 09 A Tottenham

Sat 23 H Southampton

 

March

Sat 02 A Swansea City

Sat 09 H Stoke City

Sat 16 A Wigan Athletic

Sat 30 A Manchester City

 

April

Sat 06 H Fulham

Sat 13 H Sunderland

Sat 20 A WBA

Sat 27 H Liverpool

 

May

Sat 04 A West Ham Utd

Sun 12 A QPR

Sun 19 H Arsenal

 

Its going to be very scary. Particularly wouldnt like to be going to QPR or West Ham looking for points in May.

 

The players who will be returning are the same players who were getting beat off poor teams early in the season. The key to avoiding relegation is Pardew holding his nerve and playing football on the ground. If he returns to over defensive long balls then its going to be a very unpleasant last few weeks imo.

 

I'll happily take a defensive 1-1 draw against some teams but expect to see us attack those around us.

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