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Gary Neville’s damning verdict on Coloccini and Newcastle’s defending

8 years ago
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Gary Neville has joined the rest of us in talking about just how shocking Newcastle United’s defending was against Leicester, especially the ‘contribution’ of Captain Fabricio Coloccini.

Neville says that Jamie Vardy and his teammates had a field day against Coloccini and the Newcastle side, with the striker ‘toying’ with the Newcastle Captain for the first goal.

So many instances in the game stand out, where Newcastle’s defending was shown to be wanting…

Coloccini turning his back on Vardy for that opening goal.

In the build up to the goal, Marhez walking through a feeble challenge from Vurnon Anita.

Ulloa standing unmarked six yards from goal for what seemed an age, before Mahrez crossed for the killer second.

Mbemba knocked over by Vardy when he went on to hit the crossbar.

Vardy running the length of the pitch dribbling the ball and Coloccini getting nowhere near him.

Mahrez embarrassing Dummett any number of times.

No team outside the relegation zone has conceded more goals than Newcastle’s total of 25, with bottom club Villa actually conceding less.

Gary Neville thinks that other clubs will now have marked Jamie Vardy’s card and won’t let themselves be embarrassed as the Newcastle team were.

However, that isn’t our worry as to whether Leicester and Vardy can keep their run going, rather it is whether our failing team can pull together and score the goals at one end whilst tightening up at the other.

With arguably the consistently worst defence in the Premier League over the last three and a half years, we will need to see a quite amazing turn around.

Mike Ashley’s failure to allow the defence to be strengthened with more than one player (Mbemba), especially after selling two (Santon and Yanga-Mbiwa), is looking potentially catastrophic.

Gary Neville talking on Sky Sports:

“Different questions will start to be asked of Jamie Vardy and there is no way other teams will be as bad as Coloccini and Newcastle’s defence, he is going to get marked tighter.

“For some reason Coloccini thinks it’s the right thing to do to stand off Jamie Vardy.

“He allows him to have it and I think what we see when he picks up the ball on the outside of the area is a level of maturity from Vardy, as last season he would gone straight towards goal.

“However, he actually toys with Coloccini…slows him down, makes him think he is not interested, slows him up and then plays a brilliant one-two to get into a great position (to score first goal).

“In the next few weeks against top defences we will really see whether he can adapt and adjust, when other teams show him a lot more respect than teams are showing him at the moment.”

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