Was Onyewu playing that bad?

He's not playing anymore, but he's 100% responsible for every goal Newcastle have allowed since he was born.

 

He's also responsible for Newcastle's inability to play defense in the midfield as well as score goals, or even pressure the other team.

He's also 100% completely responsible - and this is the thing whose implications run far deeper for all who have been subjected - for many a YA being introduced to "Toonfan". It's kind of like taking the blue pill. Except there's nothing at all good about it.

It's just something you wish had never been turned on.

 

Its not that we was playing that bad, it just that he isn't that good.

He is mid level league good, and he can have a great career for a team of that caliber. He could even have a decent National Team Career.

But the EPL exposed his flaws. Newcastle is wise to pass on him, that club is a pressure cooker and they need to find better quality at CB if they are going to ever challenge the current top 4 again.

He is too tenative and lacks the technical skills to be a truely great defender, he relies too much on his physical strength and can be exposed by smaller faster players with pace and quickness. He is great against the target guys however.

I think he should try the Bungesliga if he can get on there, many americans have had fantasic careers there.

 

That's simply not true. There were a couple or three goals in the early 1990s that were possibly not his fault.

 

He had a good start, IMO, but faded. IMO it was less the level of play than the trendline that was the problem.

 

You know the phrase "a rising tide lifts all boats?" Playing for Newcastle's like the opposite of that.

 

I saw him play a few times and he was never as good or as bad as the boards made him sound. There were games when I thought he played fairly well and the board made him out to be the next coming, then he'd make a mental error or two and all of the sudden he wasnt good enough for Standard anymore. Now, I don't know the logistics of his contract, but him not getting picked up by Newcastle may not have been directly correlated with how he played, but could also be about the cost of a potential transfer. With the money that Standard were asking for earlier, I think that you could find a defender of the same quality who would produce the same results for fewer Euros.

Overall, I think if he gets in the right situation he has a shot at becoming a solid defender in one of the big 5 leagues in Europe, I don't think he'll ever be playing for a huge club that many posters here want and hope for. Unfortunately though, he still has to keep his head for a full game. He's still prone to mental errors, for some reason, whether coaching's fault in training him or his fault because of lapses of concentration, he can find himself in rough situations that you don't want a CD in, such as bad positioning or being too wreckless with the ball on the backline.

Just my two cents on the situation.

 

I think his play for Newcastle was similar to his play for the USMNT against Ecuador. Wins a lot of balls and is a good tackler. Decent distributor, but takes too long on the ball and is sometimes dispossessed (and even "sometimes" is deadly for a CB). Positioning is the biggest problem for him though. It seems as though he drifts from his mark and slips into zone defending, possibly thinking that he'll be able to win any ball that the other team tries to play over him. But he is very susceptible to being beaten by low through-balls due to the fact that he does not stay close to and goal side of his man. Aside from occasionally being dispossessed, most of his recent troubles have come from through-balls. He needs to fix that ASAP. Until he does, I'll be pulling on my hair and screaming "GOAL SIDE!!!!"

 

I think Newcastle have simply decided to blow up the defense and start all over. They've had nothing to play for for ages, so they rolled out some guys like Bramble to see once again if he was up to it. I bet they're all gone by this time next year but Taylor, who I rather like. What's weird is their defense has been bad since I started watching the EPL in ~1999. They take good defenders from around the world like Boumsong and turn them into blundering morons. Meanwhile other EPL teams find guys like Ryan Nelsen and turn them into stars.

Onyewu will be fine. I say head north and play for Celtic.

 

He wasn't playing horribly, but not terribly well. Newcastle expected him to come in and anchor the defense. I think he just made a few too many bonehead errors in his plays. Hopefully, he'll bounce back, but it wasn't an easy situation to walk into. It doesn't mean Onyewu can't have a good career in a top league, but he has some learning to do. Newcastle wanted immediate answers. Onyewu was not an immediate answer.

 

I was watching Fox Football Phone In last night and there was quite a funny comment about Newcastle being a big club vs. Sunderland. Something to the effect that Sunderland actually had an FA Cup from 1973 vs. Newcastle's nothing. It was pretty funny.

 

I'm putting the over-under on the number of threads over the next 3 months discussing Gooch's loan experience and opinions thereof at 8.

Any takers?

 

He couldn't have been any worse than the other players on the back line in the game vs Reading. They were terrible.

 

I'll take the over on that one big time. Goochophelia is a pasttime on this board.

 

I'm quite sure I saw GR quoted saying Gooch was wanted, just not at the price Standard was asking.

Generally, people are complaining about positioning and mental errors. Umm, hello?

That's what happens when you move to a new team (that's not scoring goals and defending poorly) in a new league.

If you think Onyewu is a failure b/c of 1/4th of a season, you're fooling yourself. Gooch, IMO, will get an opportunity at a nice club and prove that it's Newcastle, and not the half dozen experiments they've had at CB over the past few years, that is the issue.

Newcastle had less goals scored against when Gooch was in the lineup compared to before he arrived, am I wrong?

 

Just to second the above post and try, once again, to pin Gooch's sojourn somewhere close to the island of reality:

It appears from many sources that NUFC wanted to sign Gooch but did not want to play SL's "Chelsea and Real want him too" price - whatever that was. Fulham appeared to have confirmed their 2 million lb offer before he went to NUFC on loan and the numbers at that point were between 2 and 4 million bandied about including OM, Fulham, 'Boro as possible destinations.

So the reality, I would guess, is SL had Gooch valued at the upper range, perhaps even a bit above that top number and NUFC wanted to pay the lower end or below. Now anywhere in that range is not a very sexy number for an EPL transfer, even a defender, but NUFC is also not a club that is going to toss money at someone that they do not value at all.

So in the end he played well enough to be bought, but not well enough to be bought for much. How's that?

 

That's the thing. It was last-chance city for Bramble and he failed. Onyewu's not worse than Bramble, but if you aren't going to sign Gooch why play him. They're in no-man's land in the table. They probably think it's more important to make decisions on their current group of defenders for next season.

 

I'm quite sure they're doing exactly that Clint, they know Gooch is a gone so they're giving Bramble his last shot.

IMO he failed, and only Taylor will remain. Unfortunately (for Newcastle) there's no many top-flight CBs on the market, and they'll likely have to pay big bucks to pry a seasoned talent away.

 

I'm not particularly a Gooch fan, but I agree that he is certainly not worse than Bramble. Pretty clearly better, IMHO. It's not at all clear to me why things seem to have turned negative for Gooch. Maybe someone can run the stats, but it sure seems as if he had zero effect on Newcastle's scoring and that Newcastle gave up goals infrequently whether he was in the game or not. In other words, things did not improve with Gooch not playing.

 

Yeah, that's about the sum of it. Had Newcastle played well, Gooch would have been signed.

 

Now that all the good (and obvious jokes) are taken, I'll return to football.

NUFC will probably bid for an established Premiership defender such as Silvain Distin, Anton Ferdinand or Danny Gabiddon.

There's also an outside chance of them bidding for some m-Bundesliga (Metzelder, Mertesacker, Madlung, Meira) or La Liga (Jorge Andrade) defenders.

Then there are your "unsettled" players like William Galas or Phillippe Senderos.

Of course, there are also rumors that the Dubai based consortium that was fiddling around with purchasing Liverpool before Hicks and Gilette made their combined move, may bid on Newcastle and pump it up like Hans and Franz.

The only certain thing then is that Roeder will be sent packing.

 

He's also the reason why they lost the 1974 FA Cup final. Before he was born.

 

gooch needs a real shot like what convey got. a bit of time, a full pre-season then a full season bloomjob. it's possible he's too expensive.