First, I thought Parker and Dembele started to look much better about the 20 minute mark against West Brom. Until then it just hadn't looked like the old Parker. I assumed it was a combination of rust, new teammates and maybe some lingering effects from his injury. I tend to think Parker and Dembele will be a very good pairing. But: it's not Dembele and Sandro. Sandro had really been putting the fear of God into teams, a combination of how hard he played and his talent for knocking the ball in the right direction when tackling that led to a number of breaks. With Dembele also a hard tackler, other teams were often looking gun shy, which was invaluable. Parker and Dembele are good, but I don't think they'll be that good. So far, we've had 2 1/2 bad spells. The first was the beginning of the season, the second was when all our DMs/playmakers were hurt, and this is the "1/2". The problem now has been mostly that teams are keeping at least their defenders and often more players in place to deny us break opportunities and clear shots on goal. It's a serious problem when most of our goals had been created by the speed of Lennon, Bale and Defoe to get past the defense. I don't know what to do. I'm hoping AVB does. If we keep doing more or less the same thing, I hope Holtby and Adebayor between them can come up with better, more creative passing around the box. But, as has been said, even Barca has trouble on occasion breaking down teams that sit back.
I fully agree, and I think Dembele needs to be playing his football in a more advanced (forward) position, to be seen at his best.
It would appaer I've started a thread within a thread with concerns regarding Dembele and Parker. At least we all agree that Parker is a valued player, highly regarded and is still more then capable of doing a job.
It's all good. When I posted the line ups before kick off in the West Brom thread it hadn't been commented on in a couple of days so it's good when these match threads are kept ticking over with discussion.
[video=youtube;fKWpxUigNUE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKWpxUigNUE[/video] AVB's press conference for those who are interested. Interestingly he says he knows where Ade is, but won't say. Smells of a behind the scenes problem if you ask me...
I wouldn't read too much into that Roo, if he says where he is that would involve perhaps personal details that AVB does not what to get involved in. Simpler to just decline to answer. Also note that BAE and Dempsey are not back yet either.
hmm. Not convinced. - The whole ACON debacle where he was going, then he wasn't going, then he was going, still makes me think there's more to it. Demps was due to the distance. Not sure about Benny as I don't know who Cameroon played.
I can't help but laugh now at this situation. The fact that we've had to play arguably the best left winger in the premiership in a central role, ruining our threat down the left, and now our controlling CM might be playing in this role too, is just comical. Some might say that Dembele is better further forward than he's been playing for us since he signed, but we have no idea of how Holtby and Parker will work out. - especially against some of the physical players Newcastle now have. (presuming hypothetically that it'll be Holtby and Parker?! I pray to god it's not parker with Huddlestone or Livermore.) This isn't the time to be pissing about with the shape of the team and it really shouldn't have got to this. IMO, Parker and Dembele should stay where they are. Holtby should start just behind ade and bale should be on the left. If Ade isn't available to play, then lets put a striker in that position such as Harry Kane. If we lose Dembele from CM, we'll soon notice his absence, regardless of whether some think he's below par at the moment, or not.
If Adebayor doesn't make it back, which I think he will be, then we should just start Kane or Obika. Ruining other positions to put a makeshift player into another unfamiliar one just seems like we'll weaken two positions.
We could always put Lennon in goal and play Lloris as a striker he's pretty quick from a standing start and has a great punch on him.
Yup, I'd actually have no problem with starting Kane up front, we've got to stop being so afraid of giving the youngsters opportunities.
They reckoned he would be ready to start training on the 18th, so he's a week ahead of schedule, so that has to be a positive sign.
The fat controller, Phil Dowd is our ref. Lets hope the bad decisions go our way... I wouldn't be surprised if he decides to "take Bale down a peg or two" by booking him for being tackled. Equally I'm still hopeful that our first penalty of the season will come soon although we'll probably miss it after having waited so long
We're buggered. I've not witnessed a game of ours where we've either had Foy or Dowd and felt it was an impartial refereeing display. All other ref's have good and bad games for us, but that happens. Those 2 seem to continuously give us absolutely nothing.
I think Foy's just not a particularly good ref. Dowd possibly falls into that catergory too although he seems to enjoy bossing players around and getting in their faces, he's a homer ref too. Allardyce just got fined, after Dowd reffed his game at OT, for suggesting that he was a homer ref and that many refs give United the decisions at OT. The truth, basically. Twatkinson and Clattenburg are the ones I fear most, both have a long record of making things up as they go along.
