Reasons To Be Cheerful

By: Daryl | December 17th, 2008

So my summer shopping wasn’t a massive success, but it wasn’t bad either. After a couple of games, I’m still confident that Clément Chantôme will turn out be a good buy. Maybe overpriced at £12m, especially given my Scrooge-like chairman David Williamson, but after two games he’s looking like exactly what I wanted: An all action box to box man who can win the ball and play a bit too.

Other reason to be cheerful is that I haven’t significantly altered the squad, so there shouldn’t be any problems with blending in the few new faces. Also, Pavel Pogrebnyak is now listing Newcastle as one of his favourite clubs (good lad!). But most of all, all the young players in my squad from last season are now a year older. And some of them are noticeably better footballers.

For example:

Mascio – Brazilian/Italian mid is still only 18, but he’s come back from his summer holidays looking a bit more like a man ready for some first team football if you ask me. Might want to balance out his attacking training with teaching him to tackle again though.

John Fleck – Scottish left winger I paid £2.7m for in the Jan transfer window. Has been patchy so far, but I’m optimistic that he’ll be a bit more consistent this season. Will turn 18 in two days, so hope he stays sober.

Alan Dzagoev – After my earlier problems with the Russian superchav, he’s finally starting to mature at 19. Stats are coming along almost as well as his bum-fluff moustache, and I’m retraining him as a right mid, just so I’ve got some options.

On top of that, a few of my players in their early twenties – Danny Guthrie, Charles N’Zogbia, Jose Enrique, Steven Taylor – have all made small improvements. Basically I’m optimistic that Newcastle 2009-10 is all round better than Newcastle 2008-9. But we all know football doesn’t necessarily work like that.