Foot & Soccer Soccer Match Reports, Football News
On 13 April 2024 Wor Flags unveiled a pre-match banner that hailed the squad’s local lads, or lads that grew up fans of the club. Eleven players graced the banner, with Sean Longstaff front and centre. Silhouetted behind was the Tyne bridge motif from the old Pavel Srnicek ‘96 ‘keeper kit in what was a stirring display of support for the local lads.
There were calls from certain quarters after a difficult start to last season for Longstaff to come into the side and steady the ship. He bagged the third goal against PSG on an epic night. He had his best goal scoring season last time out with eight. Yet, he misplaces an attempted progressive forward pass and is hooked at half time in an away win at Wolves and is awarded a 1.63 on the BBC player ratings.
The next worst rating was Lloyd Kelly with 7.05. I want to be clear this is not a defence of how Longstaff played against Wolves, he was poor but to dig him out for being at fault for the Wolves goal seems harsh. He was trying to progress the play with a forward pass and the ball was cut out on the edge of the oppositions eighteen-yard box.
A lot happened between the loss of possession and the ball ending up in the back of United’s net, including terrible Dan Burn jockeying, poor tracking back from Bruno, Tino and Hall, and Schar losing his man by being drawn towards the ball in the middle of the six-yard box.
Psychologically it’s interesting how fanbases treat local lads who pull on the Black and White stripes. Anecdotally, I’ve heard stories of similar fan concerns for players like Lee Clark and Steve Watson during the ‘90’s. I remember fans digging out Steven Taylor and Peter Ramage in the early 2000’s. More recently, Shola Ameobi and Paul Dummett have also been much maligned due to their footballing shortcomings.
In 2021, as part of an attempt to dispel the ‘glory supporter’ trope, an 888 Sport survey named the club as the most locally supported team in the Premier League. The average…
Source link : https://www.nufcblog.co.uk/2024/09/23/the-local-cauldron-at-newcastle-united/
Author : Jonathan Young
Publish date : 2024-09-23 13:11:49
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
