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Who Tops The Worst Player v Brighton Poll?

11 years ago
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We normally do a ‘man of the match’ poll after matches but on Saturday we asked ‘Who was your (Worst) man of the match v Brighton’?

It was slightly tongue in cheek but the response was overwhelming, in fact more than normally make the effort when we win! Thanks to the thousands of you that took the time.

We all see matches in slightly/massively different ways but when the votes were counted up I think it gave us a picture that summed up that game and the ‘strengths’ of our squad perfectly.

Eight of the players collected less than 5% of the total votes between them but half a dozen stood out from the crowd;

Sammy Ameobi 25%
Mike Williamson 24%
Gabriel Obertan 18%
Shola Ameobi 14%
Medhi Abeid 9%
Nile Ranger 6%

Of the other eight players I think Elliot and Perch are honest grafters; Santon, Anita and Bigirimana definitely have futures in the Premier League, Tavernier and Dummett are young players with it still all to prove, while Marveaux has at last shown in the last few games he has ability but is just at the starting point of proving his worth.

The idea wasn’t to create scapegoats but when faced with this reality, surely you have to accept that the six with the votes would not get a game for another Premier league team.Yes they aren’t our ‘Purple’ players but they are all in the first team squad and at least three or four of them are seen as direct replacements for injured first teamers.

I know a lot of people hate seeing negative comments about players but it is not the same as booing players at the match or ironically cheering them.

We are allowed to debate the people whose wages we pay and it is no good kidding ourselves and hiding from reality because then it just ends up going further up the food chain and feeding the naivety/stupidity of those running Newcastle United.

I’ve lost count of the number of times that Alan Pardew has built up the likes of Shola, Sammy, Williamson and Obertan before matches, you might be able to fool some of the people some of the time…

When fans get on about Alan Pardew I do have much sympathy for him, these players are not Premier League players so how can we expect them to fill in against Premier League opposition? I don’t expect to have another Cabaye, Ben Arfa or Steven Taylor sitting on the bench but there is a happy medium.

I don’t blame these players because at least in most cases I think they do try their best but they simply aren’t good enough, no matter what formation or position you play them in.

Newcastle United can’t control injuries but what they can do is make sure that when players are missing that we go one step down rather than four or five for their replacements.

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