Papiss Cissé Taking Time To Settle In….
I had to laugh when people were talking about Papiss Cissé taking time to settle in when he’d already scored three goals and only started four matches, as I said to more than the odd person, “I wish all of our past players had taken as long to settle in!”. Remember as well that those goals were a couple of class strikes against Norwich and Villa, plus a real instinctive finish against Wolves – arguably winning Newcastle an extra seven points in those handful of matches.
Delving back into modern football history (using modern and history together seems a bit weird…), in the days of the Premier League only ex-NUFC favourite Mickey Quinn has hit more Premier League goals in his first eight matches after joining a Premier League outfit.
Quinn actually achieved this feat for Coventry after Kevin Keegan judged him surplus to requirements after our promotion in 1993, ‘The Mighty Quinn’ actually scored the ten goals in his first six mathces for the Sky Blues.
Viduka for Leeds and Aguero for Manchester City have equalled Cissé’s nine in eight matches, while Shearer hit eight in eight for Blackburn, as did Francesco Baiano for Derby.
The great thing is that in the Senegalese striker we have somebody coming into what should be the best years of his football career and his record in Germany (37 in 65 matches for struggling Freiburg) strongly suggests that this opening Premier League salvo is anything but a flash in the pan.
We might have had to wait a while for a player to fill the number nine shirt but what a player we’ve landed.
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