Newcastle fans know more than most that Paul Merson is a pretty awful pundit, but his comments about NUFC during his prediction for Sunday’s game with Arsenal are quite laughable.
Jumping straight to it, here’s the first line of his prediction piece for Sky Sports ahead of our game against his forget club this weekend:
“Newcastle have been alright recently. They will give you chances but they will have a go while Arsenal will have had a long trip to Russia on Thursday.”
Now, for a pundit probably being paid top dollar by Sky Sports, there’s a few bits of this that are just inexcusable, biased and as if he’s never seen us play since our mid-season struggle:
“Newcastle have been alright recently”
What a way to describe the side who are 5th in the Premier League form table since the turn of the year. Since mid-December 2017, only Man City and Liverpool have beaten us in the league. We’ve won three straight home games (and kept clean sheets in all of them), beaten Man Utd at home and climbed to 10th in league after our latest win away at Leicester. But yeh, we’ve been ‘alright’ recently.
“They will give you chances”
Again, a comment that proves he just doesn’t have a clue. Only six teams have conceded less goals than us this season. We’ve kept clean sheets in our last three home games. We’ve limited Leicester, Huddersfield and Southampton to a total of just three shots on goal in our last three games. The list could go on as to why Rafa Benitez’s team just don’t ‘give you chances’.
For a man that has bold opinions and is quick to criticise or write players/teams/managers off, this ‘assessment’ of NUFC and a side that’s worked wonders in recent weeks really is poor.
For what it’s worth, he’s actually backed us to get a 2-2 draw on Sunday, but I can’t get over what a bad bit of punditry this is – not that it should come as any surprise!
Nothing story. Pick apart anyones comments word by word and you can find fault. We will give arsenal chances if they are one their game, we have given chances to all the bigger sides, especially in games where we have sat back and stacked up the pressure. We are hard to beat though and form is is with us so fingers crossed. He is a cra**y pundit in my view but this article is a waste of time too. HWTL
Aspri11a(Quote)
He is a crafty pundit? He is an alcoholic idiot. Yes you can usually pick bits out of most comments but
(a) he is being paid very well for doing a job he knows something about
(b) he I should think be at least doing some research into the facts he writes and get some things correct.
(c) This is a regular thing in his forecasts, not an odd one off.
toonyoda(Quote)