November 2010 Archives

Newcastle United have landed a sensational FA Cup third round draw away to Stevenage.

The tie fires up bad memories of the 1998 fourth round meeting of the then non-league side and the Magpies in a clash that caused much controversy.

Back then United took on the Hertfordshire outfit at Broadhall Way and were held to a 1-1 draw after a row before the game was sparked when Kenny Dalglish offered to play the game at St James' Park.

Damien Duff will make his return to Newcastle United and probably endure his fair share of boos at St James' Park.

You can count the amount of times that Duff really shone at Newcastle during his three year stay on Tyneside on two hands if you're lucky.

Nobody needs to be told the ability of Duff and what he could do when things were going well.

So there you have it - Joey Barton steps one centimetre out of line and he's got the world on his back again and of course the ultimate court of justice aka Twitter on his case.

Make no mistake Barton was WRONG to throw a punch at Morten Gamst Pedersen but come off it, surely you've seen worse than that in football?

Or even in the street.

Had David Beckham been serving up the delicious balls into the box that Joey Barton has in recent times - TV pundits across the globe would all have been foaming at the mouth.

Barton has been causing havoc in the last third of opposing penalty areas during a period he admitted was the "best of his career" thus far.

His calculated cross from near the halfway line against Arsenal - which left Łukasz Fabiański looking like somebody trying to catch a dropped tenner on a windy day in Whitley Bay - had been in Barton's head for sometime.

Last season I had the audacity to suggest that Andy Carroll should have been on the plane to South Africa for the World Cup with England.

The suggestion was scoffed at, but those who did aren't scoffing now.

And when they were crying into their beer after the exit of England in the World Cup, they wouldn't have been scoffing then either.

My reasoning behind it, was that Carroll would offer England both something different as well as possibly providing the element of surprise after a season under the radar in the Championship.

Just 11 games into the Premier League campaign and Carroll has six goals and four assists, and is now on the brink of the England squad with Fabio Capello an interested specator at the Emirates to see him power home an old fashioned centre-forward's goal.