In researching this article, I spent a couple of hours reading about Newcastle and their team. The first thing I learned is that they lead the country with 127 fans currently under banning orders including 95 new orders from last year. Southampton, by contrast, only has 24 orders with only four new orders from last year. I am okay with our position in this competition.
I was unaware
of any similar phenomenon in the United States so I googled a bit and came up
with this.
Apparently, NFL fans who are asked to leave the stadium must take a four hour
online course to get back in. Frankly,
this just seems like a way for the AJ Novick Group to make money.
Newcastle
has had a disappointing start to the season with just two draws but, of course,
if they beat us they will pass us and be much less disappointed. I intended to transcribe the portion of Alan
Pardew’s pre-match press conference that had anything to do with Southampton. However, the complete press conference is
behind some kind of Newcastle United paywall.
I transcribed the Southampton relevant part that was available on
Youtube:
Q: Alan, there’s been lots of change at
Southampton since the summer. What do
you make of them so far this season?
Pardew: They look slightly different. You know the new manager is trying to put his
own sort of tilt on the tactics and on the way they play. Their forward line has changed dramatically. They’ve
good players and players that we know well.
Pelle we know because we scouted Janmaat and I’ve seen Pelle many, many
times. He’s a good player. You know for us I think it’s very important
that we control part of the game. When
they won at West Ham I think they had, perhaps, too much control and that’s
something we want to take away from them.
Schneiderlin, I think, is important to them so they have still got some
very, very good players.
Q: Because of all the changes from your point of
view did it make them harder to assess than maybe last season?
Pardew: I think it’s slight unknown about them a
little bit. They’ve been up and down. They were terrific at West Ham. Perhaps not so
good the week before so they’re blowing hot and cold as teams do at this time
of year. You know it’s very rare that
you can bang three, four, five performances straight out of the blocks and
there’s a couple of teams in that position at the moment, Swansea and Chelsea,
and they will be looking to continue that but it is very difficult.
Not a
fountain of insight, but what do you expect from a pre-match press conference?
TRANSFERS
Newcastle
looks to have suffered worse than we did in the transfer window—especially when
you consider that they also lost their best player, Yohan Cabaye last January. Moreover, their incoming transfers do not
seem to be as good as ours.
As
always, I evaluated the transfers using information from Football Manager 2014
and Transfermarkt.
I ignored players who were loaned in
both this year and last or loaned out during both years in evaluating transfer
business.
INCOMING
TRANSFERS
Player CA PA Transfer Fee (in millions of pounds)
Facundo
Ferreyra 143 171 loan
Siem de
Jong 140 148 7.66
Remy
Cabella 139 160 8.8
Daryl
Janmaat 135 146 5.28
Jonas
Gutierrez 135 140 returned from loan
Emmanuel
Riviere 133 148 5.56
Jack
Colback 127 134 free
Ayoze
Perez 118 -8 1.76
Mehdi
Abeid 110 130 returned from loan
OUTGOING
TRANSFERS
Hatem
Ben Arfa 159 170 Loan
Loic
Remy 150 156 end of loan
Mathieu
Debuchy 147 158 13.2
Mapou
Yanga-Mbiwa 142 165 loan
(1.11 fee)
Sylvian
Marveaux 136 140 loan
Luuk de
Jong 134 152 end of loan
Shola
Ameobi 123 130 free
Dan
Gosling 115 135 free
James
Tavernier 109 135 undisclosed fee
Conor
Newton 106 125 free
Michael
Richardson 70 125 free
Steven
Logan 69 -6 free
Yohan
Cabaye was a 155/165 sold for 22 million.
Overall, I would say that Newcastle’s transfer negotiator is not as able
to get every last penny out of a sale as is Les Reed. I am confident that Southampton would not
have sold Debuchy for only 13.2 million or Cobaye for just 22 million.
Transfermarket
values Newcastle’s entire roster at 110.88 million pounds which is 9th
in the BPL between Southampton and Stoke.
STARTING
ELEVEN
Last year’s
starting eleven is based on the players who got the most playing time. This year’s is based on the best CA’s at each
position—more or less.
Position
Last year(CA) This year(CA)
G Krul 150 150
LB Santon 145 145
CB Coloccini 152 152
CB Williamson 128 Taylor 136
RB Debuchy 147 Janmaat 135
CM Tiote 145 145
CM Anita 139 Sissoko 140
AM Gouffran 142 142
AM Sissoko 140 de Jong 140
AM Ben Arfa 159 Cabella 139
ST Remy 150 Ferreyra 143
Newcastle
has lost 35 points of CA at three positions and picked up nine points at two
positions for a total loss of 26 points.
This means that their FM based first team strength has dropped a bit
more than ours, but their best 11 totals 1567 CA whereas ours is only 1545. Of course, we all know that FM greatly underrates
Clyne and Schneiderlin and probably underrates Fonte as well. Possibly Newcastle fans also believe that
some of their players are underrated.
INJURY
LIST AND THIS WEEKS LINEUP
This is
the injury list from the BPL website.
Southampton: Rodriguez, Isgrove,
Gallagher
Newcastle: Santon, Taylor, Cisse, de Jong, Colback,
Ferreyra, Aarons, Tiote
Newcastle’s
injuries greatly impact their starting lineup.
POS PLAYER
G Krul 150
LB Haidara 124
CB Coloccini 152
CB Williamson 128
RB Janmaat 135
CM Sissoko 140
CM Colback 127
AM Gouffran
142
AM Cabella 139
AM Anita 139ST Riviere 133
This line up totals 1509 CA which is considerably weaker than ours. Presumably this means that I should predict a victory by Southampton on Saturday. So I will.
Finally, despite all the rumors that Southampton was for sale this summer, it appears our club is not for sale. On the other hand, Newcastle United might be. Apparently, the owner, Mike Ashley, is looking to trade up by selling Newcastle and buying Rangers. His attitude should cause anyone who questions the suitability of Katharina Liebherr as an owner to recognize that things could be a lot worse.
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