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Pre-Season

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BoysInBlue said:
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.
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You do make some interesting points. My general concern is that we tend to play very average teams who try hard (Preston, Ipswich, Leicester etc) and we win 2-0 without really stretching ourselves. Then, in the penultimate game before the new season, we will face a quality side (Villareal, Wolfsburg) and we'll have no answer to it. I don't think that we gain very much from that.

I concede that the glamour sides will be invited to the prestige friendlies and that we won't be top of their list but the Premier League is at it's most popular globally and the top clubs are only available for so many invitation games. Surely the likes of Howard and Cahill have some appeal internationally? I respect that ENIC have fingers in LA Galaxy and Tottenham and that we won't be in the States this summer, but I would have thought that a round robin tournament in California would be a winner.

We're supposedly the great innovators. Surely we can squeeze more value and benefit out of the close season than we currently do.
 
Its all making sense now, hawwy robbed all moysies transfer targets
On a seecret scouting mission, moyses has passed the test and harrys happy
happy with the performance of the squad + the league position he's told spurs he wants to go on a break an cruise round the World an enjoy his life out the limelight an all that an moysey will be his successor at spurs till then, cudnt b arsed
In the euro"s cos he's too ambisious an will return in 2014 after taking the england job in the world cup
 
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.
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This is a little unfair. They are in midseason form, whereas the other teams are also in pre-season form. While they may not be the highest caliber teams out there, the fact they have match fitness from the prior 3 or 4 months makes for good competition. We have lost games on 2 of our past 3 trips to the states, and having been at the losses, I can say that the American teams have outplayed us on each of those occasions.
 
It doesn't really matter how we play when Moyes has us playing hoofball up to Jelavic on his own with Osman wide right and defenders in midfield for the first half of the season.
 
billycopper said:
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.
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Regardless of the actual squad composition, a team who finished 4th in this season's La Liga will provide a better standard of competition than two teams from the MLS.
 

Brennan91 said:
Regardless of the actual squad composition, a team who finished 4th in this season's La Liga will provide a better standard of competition than two teams from the MLS.
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Yes but with their age and the climate I would expect the game to be played at a walking pace. We don't need any more practice at that.
 


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