Top of the league!

The injury league that is. Yet another thing that needs looking at come the end of the season

http://injuryleague.com/2013/05/newcastle-the-team-with-most-injuries-over-course-of-the-season/

 

I think we've been top all season and fully deserve the title

 

The one league we could do without being top of.

 

Do we get a trophy?

 

open top Ambulance, for the parade also

 

..

 

In view of this information, is every Pardew-hater willing to accept that it is injuries that have ravaged our season?

 

The injuries could have been prevented if it wasn't for Pardew, it took the inept twat 3 attempts to pass his first age badge in cubs. At least Rafa knows how to open a savlon tube and I'm led to believe Poyet can peel the back of an elastoplast with his eyes closed.

 

To my mind it says 1 player out for 1 week = 1 point. Excuse the maths here, but as we had Ryan Taylor and Haris Vuckic both missing for most if not all of the entire season, doesn't that take our "points" down by about 70 or 80? These two alone would be considered but neither would actually have made a lick of difference to Pards' starting XI. Dan Gosling probably counts as well - he's been out for donkeys. Fair enough, we could have benefitted from more than 20 games from Colo or more than 18 from Ben Arfa, but it's not like we played with kids every week. Far from it.

A more prevalent statistic would be based on players who would consider themselves in the 1st team. By my reckoning, based on apps, our strongest XI has been on the pitch for at least 50% of games. These stats look great, but lift a flap and you just cannot explain 2 away wins in an entire season with that squad. Colo's played in 21 games, Cabaye, Jonas, Cisse, Santon, Krul and Taylor all managed 24 or more with three of these clocking up over 30 league games. If things were THAT bad, how did Adam Campbell get just two sub apps? How did Sammy Ameobi only start one game? Only Shane Ferguson (4 starts and 5 sub apps) has chipped in from the young pool. Bigi only started 3 times, his other 10 apps from the bench. These are not the difference between 17th and 5th.

 

Undoubtedly had a massive impact on our season. How much we can lay at Pardews door is questionable with regards injury but there is no squirming out of it if you are Ashley. He sent us in with a squad ill equipped to play the number of games we had by Xmas nevermind the full season. His fumbling attempts in January may have averted a bigger disaster but the season has been derailed at that stage.

I suppose Ashley's counter argument would be you could not have picked up Mbiwa, Debuchy, Gouffran, Sissoko, Haidara for the fees you did in January if you had bought them in June. Therefore it was prudent to wait.

You can't blame it all on injuries of course, but you can't just ignore it either (particularly the players who were injured). The key thing that the stats don't bear out is the spine and key players. Last season Krul 38, Colo 35, Cabaye 34, Ba 32. This season Krul 24, Colo 21, Cabaye 24, Cisse 34. That is a significant drop off. Obviously Ben Arfa was available more last season too (once you look at sub appearances). These are big players for a team like Newcastle. You'd have to think its because we asked too much of the same sized squad as a last year. The other thing is the disjointed nature of selection i.e. they get injuries at different times meaning you never have your strongest xi on the pitch.

Last year we picked the same team for the first 11 games or something like that. A simple look to the teams competing in Europe would have told us that strategy wouldn't fly the following season. Instead of planning to change and utilise a squad to keep people fresh Ashley decided a shoe string was fine and Pardew went along with it. Yes Ashley is the decision maker but Pards went along with it and churned out the party line regarding being "stronger". As a manager he also misjudged the quality of his young players, wrongly believing they could pick up the shortfall. Fair enough high hopes for Streete, Campbell, Vuckic were dashed by injuries but Sammy, Tav, Ferguson, Abeid quickly showed themselves to be not ready.

The other key thing for me is the make up of the squad which both Pardew and Ashley must carry the can for. Last season we had goalscoring options. Lovenkrands didn't play much but him and Best were useful guys to have. We started with Ba, Best, Lover, Shola and added in Cisse. This season we started with Cisse, Ba, Shola and added a winger in Gouffran for Ba. I'm not including Campbell because he has been injured for big chunks of the season and had ongoing issues with the knee since Xmas, plus he's just a kid. Pardew and Ashley unbalanced the squad by penny pinching. They took the 3m for Best and shifted him/Lover off the wage and did nothing to replace them. This has left us shorn of proper attacking options, not so much from the start, but when you are looking to do something with players from the bench.

 

Bravo Pards!

 

Maybe this is why we get such seemingly good deals on top international players. They may be prone to injuries and there old clubs may know that? Just a theory.