Seems like another blow to Irish football on the way. Uncle Bobby has made noises about Steve Harper returning to the Newcastle first team for tonight's match against Juve. Don't think myself Shay was at fault for the Swiss goals, but he had a real shocker against Blackburn at the weekend. Should we blood Kiely/Colgan/Murphy against Greece?
quite surprised to see bobby drop given considering he is one of their best players and has saved them in countless games but he did play bad against blackburn. i think his substitution is a knee-jerk reaction to newcastle's poor start to the season. they still have defensive injuries to contend with and the back four seems to change for every match. their big defensive signing - titus bramble for 6m - hasn't worked out so far but it looks like given may be paying the price for 1 bad game. but putting harper on against juventus is a strange decision. harper has played something like 3 games in their last 50. a high profile game like this could break him if he doesn't play well. plus there's the public embarrassment for given - it's not like he's being dropped for a match against west ham or southampton. remember given's performance in their win against barcelona a few years back - absolute world class display. in a must win match like this you need your best and most experienced players. all in all, i think it's a bit of an un-necessary high-risk gamble for bobby
Well, On that performance from the Toon Army, Given aint going to be back in the team anytime soon. Shame, it didn't seem to me that Harper had much to do, but Uncle Bobby won't want to change a winning team.
Actually, harper was fairly poor early on, he gave Juve an open goal that is miss of the champions league already but he came into it later with a good save.
The situation is that Robson thought Given needed a mental break for a few days and "dropped" him for the Juve game. He wanted him to have nothing to worry about for a few days. Given's expected to start this weekend, although the manager may give Harper at least one further game in the coming weeks as a way of relieving some of the pressure on his first-choice keeper. He made the point that in a team that bagged a 100+ goals last season, the fans gave their player-of-the-season award to Given and that just went to show how important he is to Newcastle. If this is just for show, old Bobby's gone right out on a limb...
Yep, And he's been dropped again for the match against Kiev tonight. Looks like Bobby is having a goalkeeping duel for the right to wear the No.1 shirt longer term.
surely it can't be good for a team to be changing keeper every other match, especially a team with a defence like Newcastle's.
Uncle Bobby must have lost his marbles, changing goal keepers every game with centre halfs as young and inexperienced as O'Brien and Bramble is surley one of the most counter-productive moves he could make?
Well, it goes like this: Given dropped - beat Juve 1-0 Given back in side - beat Charlton 2-1 So far this rotation policy, for all of 2 games, has produced 2 wins out of 2. Not bad for marble losing, then.......
People, quit panicking... The Toon have a stretch of nine matches in 28 days, and Wor Bobby is "Given" Shay a break, plus he is rewarding Harper for his performance vs. Juve. Harper also will play against the Toffees but Given will be back in the net next Monday vs. the Smoggies.
Yeah, he said after the game at the weekend that he'd be rotating them for the next four games....starting tonight. Seems to be working so far! As far as I can make out Given will still be #1 at the end of it....although knowing Bobby who knows?
3 for 3 with the rotation policy, with just 2 goals conceded. You can't argue with results. (Well, you can, but you end up looking rather stupid - not that that hasn't stopped people here before. )
No you can't argue with results. Especially when two of them are against such giants as Charlton Athletic and Dynamo Kiev!