Install the app
How to install the app on iOS

Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.

Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.

 

Pre-Season

Status
Not open for further replies.

14 July - Morecambe (A) - 2pm...I suppose that players involved in international tournaments will still be on leave, so it will be a chance for the likes of Duffy, Garbutt, Gueye, Barkley, Baxter, McAleney and Vellios to play with the seniors.

18 July - Dundee United (A) - 7.45pm
21 July - Motherwell (A) - TBC...Two games with a slightly higher level of competition to get the likes of Hibbo, Distin, Neville, Fellaini and Osman to step it up.

5 August - Blackpool (A) - 3pm...Heitinga, Jagielka, Baines and Jelavic will probably get a run out in an end to end game at Bloomfield Road.

8 August - AEK Athens (H) - TBC..Perhaps not the best standard of European competition (5th in their league and Cup Winners). One of their better players appears to be Eider Gudjonsen. Is this game a chance to run the rule over Manolas?

11 August - Malaga (A) - TBC...Moyes has talked about wanting to take his players for a "good night out". It's definitely the right club to be playing to kill two birds with one stone, but as the final warm up match before the new season?

Compare it to some of our rivals:

Arsenal: Southampton, Rangers, City
Chelsea: PSG, MLS AllStars, AC Milan
Liverpool: Roma, Spurs
Newcastle: Porto, Olympiakos, Cardiff
Southampton: Rangers, Arsenal, Ajax, Udinese
Spurs: LA Galaxy, Liverpool, New York Redbulls

I appreciate that the schedulers need to factor in travel times, availability and promotional commitments as well as the technical staff's needs regarding fitness. I'm sure that we're not that glamourous either when it comes to trying to arrange prestige friendlies. But it really seems to me that the standard of our pre-season competition is inferior to that of our rivals and that it puts us at a disadvantage competitively at the start of the season. Most of the sides mentioned are playing against clubs who will give them a really good game. Blackpool will probably get stuck into us, but they're not the sort of proposition that we're likely to face in the Premier League and neither are Malaga. We need to be playing against teams who will defend in numbers and look to hit us on the break to give Moyes an opportunity to experiment with countering it. It just seems like we don't use pre-season to our best advantage to prepare for the new season. Our matches are friendlies in the old sense of the word, whereas Liverpool v Spurs or Arsenal v City will be dress rehearsals for the upcoming campaign.
 

We should play Dortmund in Germany, that would be a great match and I think the fans would enjoy the stadium... But i am obviously not planning these things so it probably won't happen :(
 
If somebody had told me we'd be playing two European teams, one of whom is in the Champions League then i'd have bitten their hand off. Those are the teams we should be playing, they'll offer much better competition than those American sides we went and played last Summer.
 
Brennan91 said:
If somebody had told me we'd be playing two European teams, one of whom is in the Champions League then i'd have bitten their hand off. Those are the teams we should be playing, they'll offer much better competition than those American sides we went and played last Summer.
Click to expand...

Malaga's squad contains De Michelis (31), Joaquin (30), Toulalan, Cazorla, Mathijsen (32), Duda (31) and Baptista (30). They're good players, but wily and dogged rather than full of running. They finished 42 points behind Real Madrid and are obviously nowhere near the pinnacle of European football just yet. It's not a bad fixture but not one that I think will help to condition us for the season ahead.

Nobody in the AEK squad really stands out.

Looking at how Borussia Dortmund prepare to retain the Bundesliga they've got two training camps in the Alps before playing their first friendly on 9th July. Their schedule reads Meppen, Club Brugges, RW Erfurt, Nuremburg, St Gallen, Legia Warsaw, Hamburg, Bremen/Bayern (tournament). Wouldn't we learn more by playing against the likes of Dortmund, Shalke, Monchengladbach, Levekusen, Stuttgart, Werder and Nuremburg than we would by going to Scotland? Why not tour Belgium, France or Holland and do some scouting while we're at it?

I hadn't realised that it's becoming increasingly common for Premier League sides to face each other during the close season. Couldn't we get a game against Stoke, West Ham or Wigan who we won't be facing in the league til nearer Christmas?
 
I think it's a good pre-season schedule that will hopefully build confidence.

If it's as easy as people suggest, I look forward to watching a few 6-0 wins for us. Somehow I doubt that will be the case. I'd imagine a number of the games will be quite evenly fought, which suggests that maybe we're better off at this stage having such games rather than getting embarrassing somewhere foreign and exotic.

Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Spurs are all playing Sponsorship-arranged games, that are very lucractive and were offered to those respective clubs. None of those managers said, "I know, we'll play Team X because they will help us with our defensive game and sharpness". They're just global marketing exercises, nothing more, nothing less. We don't get those games because we haven't been offered them. Because we are not seen as glamourous, nor are we a monied-club.

Newcastle's pre-season fixtures last season:

Darlington 0-2 Newcastle
Sporting Kansas City 0-0 Newcastle
Orlando City (not even an MLS team!) 1-0 Newcastle
Columbus Crew 0-3 Newcastle
Leeds 3-2 Newcastle
Newcastle A-A Fiorentina (abandoned, freak storm).

And then they finished 5th.

The value of pre-season fixtures are overrated in some respects, and not always a true indication of how a season will start or go.
 

Status
Not open for further replies.

Welcome to GrandOldTeam

Get involved. Registration is simple and free.

Register
Back
Top