Pardew: “We’ve had some positive news about Hatem.”

Benny after his latest injury.
Hatem Ben Arfa has been pencilled in to make his return to competitive action against Blackburn on September 24th after recent scans revealed that there are no problems with his injury.

Ben Arfa has been out of action since the Kansas game in pre-season after being on the end of a robust challenge from Roger Espinoza. The problem was that it was an injury to the same leg that was broken in two places by Nigel de Jong nearly a year ago which is a cause for concern. Had his old injury been affected by this new one?

Apparently not according to Alan Pardew who has confirmed that this latest injury has not had an impact on his leg break.

“We’ve had some positive news about Hatem – the second consultation has come back the same as the first – the break is fine and it’s a ligament problem,” said Pardew. “I still haven’t seen him play a competitive game yet in my time here.”

It’s good news in truth and puts my mind at rest and I’d guess it would help raise the confidence of the player knowing that he can come through a rough challenge and not actually have his leg snapped in the process!

I keep hearing people say how so much hope and expectation is being out on the shoulders of Hatem Ben Arfa. I agree that there is a lot of hope, but I’m unsure where the expectation bit has come from. I mean at the end of the day we’ve been without him for so long and coped.

I do think there is a sense of excitement around the return of Hatem Ben Arfa though. People aren’t silly and they know he won’t be able to reproduce the form he showed against Everton week in and week out, but they also know that he is capable of something special at any time.

It’s not expectation, it’s excitement.

I can’t wait to see him back in action and hope that he can remain injury free for a good while. Unfortunately though he is one of those players who will be a target for the hatchet men of the league who don’t know how to cope with skill, and I’m looking at the likes of Stoke and Blackburn when I say that.

So only a month to go until we see Hatem again, and no further damage to what was an horrific injury. I’d class that as good news.

Now we just have to try and fit him in somewhere…

About toonsy

A lifelong Newcastle fan and current webmaster of this very 'blog who has the sole aim of creating a place by Newcastle United fans, for Newcastle United fans.

100 thoughts on “Pardew: “We’ve had some positive news about Hatem.”

  1. Pootle – Can you at least be polite enough to type out who you are replying to because I haven’t got a fooking clue who you’re referring to, and I’m in the dashboard so can see all the conversations 😕

    Just a request as it makes things easier for everyone to follow 🙂

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  2. Sorry Stardust my perception from what you type is that your have a child like simplicity to your thoughts.

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  3. “You always say that our gameplan was to play exactly the way we actually played after the event.
    Lol.”

    Nostradamus?…I think not, I believe the word you seek is ‘trend’. As in, check the ‘trend’ of how we have played away from home over the last two years. Check the ‘trend’ in our away results and amount of scrappy 1-0 wins etc.

    It’s fine though, just keep ‘lol’ing away, mate. 🙄

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  4. ” How I look at it is simple. Forget possession, forget territorial advantage, who created the three best opportunities in the game?”

    Yes that is simple. That’s why it fails and is biased.
    Why three oportunities?
    Actually forget it. I don’t think you can understand why that shows you are demonstrating bias.

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  5. If that match had been at St James and the roles had been reversed there is no way on Gods earth you would be saying Sunderland deserved it.
    Simples.

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  6. Pootle

    Ok, let’s rephrase the question. What were the best goalscoring opportunities in the game?

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  7. “If that match had been at St James and the roles had been reversed there is no way on Gods earth you would be saying Sunderland deserved it.”

    Now who is “Nostradamus”, *yawn*.

    To be honest, if the roles were reversed at SJP I would be more worried about the clear lack of opportunities created despite the dominance of possession.

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  8. “See I knew you wouldn’t get it.”

    …Why do pseudo-intellectuals always resort to dismissive comments?

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  9. Just thought I’d take a look at the overall stats and see what they were. According to BBC

    Possesion: Sunderland 49% – Newcastle 51%
    Shots on target: Sunderland 5 – Newcastle 10
    Shots off target: Sunderland 10 – Newcastle 2
    Corners: Sunderland 7 – Newcastle 6
    Fouls: Sunderland 17 – Newcastle 7

    Food for thought maybe?

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/14514549.stm

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  10. People now whinging about a win over the scum? Sad, but unfortunately predictable.

    Since when are style points more important than league points? Is it only when ashley is your owner and the club has taken 4 of 6 from 2 tough matches?

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  11. ET – I seen you were involved in a debate so I left you to it 🙂

    In the interests of balance I’ll have a bat at those stats. As Pootle says, they had a lot of the game in the first half. I don’t think that can be argued really. I saw it that way even though they only really threatened from outside the box.

    Now to get those stats wouldn’t the second half need to be as hideously tipped in our favour as the first half was in their favour? Just a thought….

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  12. Thats the beauty of football.
    The best team doesn’t always win.
    Sure it wasn’t the best of games but derbys never are.
    The fact we were the away team has to be taken into consideration.
    Plus the 5-1 whopping just wont go away and has eaten away at bruce all year :mrgreen:
    The bottom line tho is getting that ball in their net, more than they get it in wors. :mrgreen:
    Results are everything. Performances, meh, we will get better. Team spirit is looking awesome, despite players departing.
    The next match in the prem is key.
    Can we show an improvement in consistently picking up points at home against these type of teams. ❓

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  13. Yeah Toonsy we had the second
    half I reckon. The goal and latterly the sending off saw to that.
    Until the goal we were generally second best though. After the goal it was far more even. With Newcastle getting stronger and particularly after the dismissal.

    It’s always good to beat Sunderland don’t get me wrong, even if a draw would probably be a fairer result.

    What concerns me is if over exuberance allows our owner off the hook about getting in a quality leftback and striker.
    We weren’t great for large spells of the match and that needs to be remembered.

    If i were a Sunderland fan I wouldn’t be thinking ‘well Newcastle deserved it because they had the three best chances’
    Instead i would be thinking ‘Why the hell didn’t we get a goal in the first half when we had the ball almost two thirds of the time?’

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  14. “Instead i would be thinking ‘Why the hell didn’t we get a goal in the first half when we had the ball almost two thirds of the time?’”

    Thats an easy one. Because they are ****. We didn’t even defend very well in the 1st half, yet they were incapable of scoring against us.

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  15. ” Thats an easy one. Because they are ****.”

    That really did make me laugh. 😆

    It’s played into our hands that both teams we’ve played in our first two matches have actually been a bit blunt up front. It seems to have really helped build up the team spirit because its made us look very strong defensively. We need to start working hard on doing more with the ball when we have it now.

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  16. Pootle – But on the flipside, could we really have expected more of the ball? I mean Arsenal still played their tippy tappy stuff and not many teams out-possess them and it was nailed on that Sunderland in their first home game and chomping at the bit to make a point would come charging out the blocks.

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  17. ” …Why do pseudo-intellectuals always resort to dismissive comments?”

    You do realise that is a dismissive comment, don’t you doltard?

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  18. Toonsy don’t get me wrong I think we’ve done really well so far, considering our dreadful preseason arrangements, and the potential squad unrest that was brewing, and the fact we are clearly short in a few key areas.
    Pardew has handled Barton very well in the last few weeks, and the fact we have fought hard to get the results we have is great.
    it has helped us, for sure, that Sunderland and Arsenal looked blunt, but we’ve still fought hard.
    We need to start working on using the ball better when we have possession of it now. To me we are still lacking in this regard.
    We still look a bit blunt ourselves.
    Hopefully Ashley won’t be lying to us again, and he will actually buy us a decent striker and a leftback.
    Then hopefully Marveaux and Keiron Ben Arfa will come back. And we can maybe begin to look like a decent side.

    I’m not keen on how much of this relies on ‘hopefully’, but let’s see eh?

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  19. TOONALE
    August 21, 2011 at 10:25
    Its always a good day to be a Geordie.
    At least it has been for the last Seventy years for me.

    Good man 🙂 . You must been through all the highs and lows you can possibly get being a Toon fan. You must have seen us win some silverware as well. I hope I get to see us win something major in my lifetime my Dad missed out on watching us parade the Inter Cities Fairs cup because my grandad was late getting ready. My Dad was trying to rush him and by the time they got there the bus was gone. My Grandad said to my dad “Never mind son we will see them lift a trophy next year” that was 42 years ago now 🙁 .

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  20. I personally think there is a lot of truth in what Pootle is saying maybes i’m reading it different to other people. The way I read it is he is saying we have had two great results which is brilliant but the sides we were playing were not at there best in the finishing department so the results shouldn’t take away from the fact that we need a left back and a striker. I agree with these sentiments as we still haven’t scored from open play and we still need a left back as we don’t have anyone in the squad available who plays there as their natural position. I don’t know why everyone has a go at each other on these blogs everyone has different opinions we should respect them even if we don’t agree with them.

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