June 2007 Archives

Despite being injured, Brazilian World Cup winner Edmilson looks set to join Newcastle United as Sam Allardyce's rebuilding programme continues to gather pace.

Indeed Big Sam is in Barcelona now and has made an approach to get Edmilson.

The player is ruled out until at least October but has agreed in principle to join United and help bolster our troublesome defence - unless there are any late hitches!

We have just snapped up David Rozehnal from PSG for a snip at £2.8million and a defence in dire need of help is now looking good again.

It actually would mean competition for places, something that was alien to Glenn Roeder last season at times and even when there were bodies available it proved to be his downfall!

If you joined together the amount of defenders that have tried to rid Newcastle of their infamous dodgy defence, how far do you think they would go around the ground?

Well maybe not as far as the queue did in 1993 when there was a near riot for the scramble for tickets for the FA Cup fifth round tie at Blackburn, but still canny far I'd say.

At least from the Strawberry to the Cafe@St James'!

If Albert Luque, he's the £9.5million Spanish misfit/flop/waste of money we paid Deportivo la Coruna the Earth for two years ago in case you’d forgot, starts this pre-season the same way he started the last one, we could be in for an unexpected surprise.

Luque’s career under Graeme Souness never really started well after the Spanish international picked up an injury early on in his time in Toon.

And by the time he got back to full fitness Newcastle were heading for the Championship and Souness was heading for the dole office!

Fresh start under Glenn Roeder then?

Not likely, Glenn and Alberto just didn’t hit it off and by the end of Roeder’s time at St James’ Park they weren’t even doing eye contact, let alone speaking terms!

Cilla Black would have loved it.

I mean out of all the fixtures we are heading to Bolton and hopefully to beat them at their own game.

Come on, the last few years at the Reebok have been awful for Toon fans.

But now we are going back with the man who inflicted all the misery on us in charge.

Nice to see Big Sam keeping it all real with the Michael Owen situation wasn't it?

I mean apart from pinning the England striker up against the wall and tell him he's going no where, there is, as Big Sam says there is "nothing" he can do.

Mind you it’s also nice to see the new boss not begging to get him to stay.

Yes, in an ideal world you would want him to stay but you wouldn’t want to look desperate!

Once upon a time there was a man who played as a striker that famously turned down a team that play in red.

He deserved to win something for his efforts but in the end he didn't win anything but boy did he score some goals for the Geordies, 206 in total.

Now it appears that history has repeated itself on a much smaller scale and hopefully this time it ends in silverware.

Mark Viduka isn't as big a name as Alan Shearer and Middlesbrough aren't a big club like Man United.

But history has repeated itself, in a way!

His slate will take some cleaning and he makes Kieron Dyer and Titus Bramble look like naughty schoolboys.

But Joey Barton's emergence as Sam Allardyce's top summer transfer target could see the manager with a tough task of taming ahead, if he is to get the best out of the England midfielder.

Barton has already rubbed up the backs of England senior players up by slagging them off for making books after the World Cup.

And other troublesome moments include the night when Stuart Pearce actually requested that the Thai police lock him up for a scuffle with a junior Everton fan and the final straw coming after he assaulted his team mate Ousmane Dabo.

Apart from all of that lot - he's one helluva player!

And at £5.5million the Huyton-born schemer could be ours!

But haven't we been down this potentially unpleasant road before?

Dyer, Bowyer, Bellamy, Robert, Jenas, Bramble....between them you've got goldfish bowls, punch-ups, insults to fans, police cautions, attacking journalists and not least some shocking excuses for performances down the years.