1. What happened on Sunday against Liverpool?

Since the beginning of the season, we've played well one game in two. Last week, we played well against Leicester and a couple of days later, we were all over the place against Liverpool. We couldn't have started worse, conceding a goal after a few minutes..I don't know why but I think we took this game too lightly and Liverpool took advantage. We had to react but we couldn't do anything with the crosses I put in in the first half although we were playing good football. Then, in the second half, instead of continuing in this vain, we started playing long, high balls that their defence always won. Our defenders started playing a l'anglais instead of trying to play football.

2) How do you explain the long ball stuff after playing such good football previously?

I don't know but at half time, the manager told them to play through me because their defender had a yellow but it didn't happen.

3) How did you play?

I got some crosses in but had no real goalscoring opportunities and kept getting fouled in the second half so I got a few free kicks but nothing to get my teeth into.

4) It's a difficult time for Newcastle, you've lost a couple of games and are losing your position in the table. What's going wrong?

Consistency. We really have to address this if we want to make an impact in the Championship.

5) You aren't worried?

No, it's only the beginning of the season. We have to get stuck in in training and be tougher during games. Things will start to happen if we do this.

6) What did the manager say?

He was very disappointed. In my opinion, he should have had words with one or two players.

7) What are you doing this week?

I'm going to Montpellier to see my family and rest..oh, and to see the sun again.

8) What have you been doing thiS week so far?

We had a warm down on Monday, yesterday off and back in training today...

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

Answers

At least PSG are playing like shite, too.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

In a way, it's nice to see a player who will admit to things that we all commented on: too many long balls from defence and not being up for it from the start etc but I can see that odd bits of this will go down like school tapioca in our dressing room. The other thing is, WHY don't our players get the ball to him? Do they dislike him more than they like winning? Are they too thick/skill-free to follow instructions? Should the captain be constantly reminding them about the manager's instructions? There are other examples of this - where we can only assume that they are told one thing and go on to do another (eg. defending set pieces).

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

Brilliant. This is a superb source of info. What's the URL Dougal?

I particularly like "Our defenders started playing a l'anglais instead of trying to play football. " and
"oh, and to see the sun again."

Openness(sp?) reminiscent of KK.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

Well, I shan't bother doing my translation then, since you've beaten me to the punch. Hmph!
Actually, I still find the unprocessed Alta Vista effort more entertaining. This week's highlight:

But how is that made that you balanced long balloons in front of whereas you take them speed while playing on ground? I do not know at all. However, l.entrainor had asked the half-time to play on me because my defensive medium and my back had taken a yellow paperboard. And that n.a be of the whole the case. A word on your match. I n.ai have any occasion of goal. As I said it to you, j.ai distributed some centers in first period. And in second half-time, one enormously made faults on me. J.ai thus have blow-francs on the large side but I n.ai really have thing to put to me under the teeth.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

Geordie -

http://www.laurent-robert.com/html/interview.shtml

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

Merci Dan!

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

J.ai thus have blow-francs on the large side but I n.ai really have thing to put to me under the teeth.

You're not kidding Dan.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

Perhaps the rest of the players are using Alta Vista's translations which would explain why they avoid him. Afraid of getting hit with blow-francs.

Or they're just thick.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

I like the fact he says that the manager should have had a word with a few players. Too bloody true.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

Wait a couple of weeks and he'll be naming the players!

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

He sounds like trouble already and perhaps he should be shown what he said when he joined. About not being another whinging Frog who will desert the club.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

Yeah. I'm not massively keen on him from what I'm reading in these interviews. Needs to learn a bit about collective responsibility and collective credit...at least in public.

Personally, I liked the yellow paperboard bit.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

I follow what the PSG and general Lolo fans are saying about him and have done since we were rumoured to be buying him. Without knowing there were ant Toon fans looking, they were talking about him playing for six months of the year because he detests the cold. Later, wonce he'd played a few games, they were commenting on how much we liked him and at least 8 people replied along the lines of "They'll like him until they see his personality". Now, I adore him and don't want to judge him on his previous club's opinion, but I think we may have to tread carefully with this bloke. Scarily, my first thought after Sunday was, "Oh God, Lolo's body language was awful...I bet he's regretting coming"...it's awful that we have so little faith in these players' professionalism.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

He's right to whinge, he must have thought, "what have iI done coming here". I wouldn't blame the defence, it was the midfield who consantly hid whenever we had possession. Bobby Lee & Speed should be shot for their performance on Sunday.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

........howay Dave man; Speed was only on for 20 minutes!

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

I agree Clarky - whoever was to blame, Speed wasn't! Acuna tried hard enough. Lee had a poor game. However, the really shite players were the fullbacks who were scarily bad (apart from two half decent tackles in Griff's case). The CBs weren't really tested - Fowler and Heskey were poo - so you can't blame them. I imagine it's Robbie Elliott and Griff that Lolo's talking about.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

This is the beginning of the end.Believe me,once this man starts having to de-ice his car he will be demanding a move back to the sun. Another Domi? Mystery injuries and returns to france,authorised or not!? I'm telling you,it'll happen!

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

The part about the manager having a few words with one or two players is actually very interesting. For that matter, I do wonder whether Bobby is the type to single out a bad performance by any player let alone the "seniors". He said at least according to the reports, "I can't blame any of the players for today's performance" after the Liverpool match so if that's the case, everyone went home thinking they did fine and we'll get them the next time.

And of course he defended Barton regardless of a few really bad mistakes. Maybe he thinks having words might do more harm than good but it just makes me wonder whether that's actually the case.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

I certainly know when I've played badly when I'm playing football (yes I do have good games sometimes, scored a hat trick last week :)) (as well as one own goal)

Surely if a player has done badly then they don't need to be told by the manager that they need to do better. The thing is, you can't really fault them for effort, if they've been told by BR to pump long balls up the pitch then that's what they are going to do.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

..... except that is apparently the opposite of what he told them to do, Paul! Now what?

For what it's worth, I reckon Bobby is too soft with them.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

Hard to know how Bobby is with the players in private. I get the impression that he's someone you definitely don't want to cross. But the performance on the pitch and the number of times he's said in interviews that he's told players to do this or that, then they do the opposite(also suggested by his body language during matches), leads me to think he might not be hard enough on them. Sure, it won't do them any good to constantly bawl them out for every little thing, but a few well-timed rockets up select @rses might not go amiss. Once again, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I say a good sports psychologist should be brought in to work with the players. (In addition to defensive coach, Commanding Center Back, Commanding Center Midfielder, Commanding Forward, etc)

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

Nous sommes merde et nous le connais. Mais ce n'est pas mon faut, vraiment Guv. Non, ce n'est pas mois. C'est l'autre fellow.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

What a diverse lot on here. He gives us his impression, a lot of which mirrors what we are saying on here and he is accused of moaning.

If he says they were told to play through him and hoof it long is he not correct in suggesting the manager have a quiet word?

He also said he did not have a great game and he was marked and kicked a bit. He did not say "Yes I had another blinder and the others stuffed up" For god sake what does he have to do?

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

I'm in Australia at the moment so I'm not sure what the weather has been like on Tyneside, but if he's missing the sun in October he'll be suicidal come December!

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2001

ADK - we've had arguably the most miserable September in living memory, so I can certainly sympathise with LR's longing to get back to La Belle France to reacquaint himself with the sun. Although it's shining this morning, actually!

Gus - spot on marra. I love his articles - refreshingly honest in a world of b/s and sound-bites. Long may he keep these bulletins going. However, the local journos are also accessing his web-site now, and regularly basing their stories around it. So, sooner or later NUFC will undoubtedly wade in with big clogs and curtail his frankness.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001

I agree that it is refreshing to see this type of article from a player. However, perhaps my Franglais didn't make my point clear enough. The way I read it, Lolo didn't seem to think he had much responsibility in the poor performance - a somewhat different opinion the Clarky and others voiced on here after the match. Maybe it was the translation but it seemed to me he thought it was the others' fault and nowt to do with him.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001

Human nature Screach - he certainly didn't say he played well, in fact he implied that he didn't do much.
I would perhaps have expressed it just a tad stronger than that, especially 2nd half!

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001

Rather than bawling out the full backs for their poor distribution, isn'y Bobby perhaps being a bit more sensitive to why they didn't follow his instructions? ie surely it's a confidence thing, unless you assume Elliot and Griffin deliberately didn't do as told. I suspect they decided too often to take the easy option and get the ball as far away as possible. I'm sure Lee's early blunder didn't help either, and was preying on everyone's minds (defenders especialy). Have a word in private so they understand the impact, and try and coax them to use the ball more positvely (without dwelling on it unduly).

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001

but both Solano and Robert were in the middle far too often, they didn't make themselves available out wide, all seemed pretty silly

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001

They probably only moved into the middle because the ball wasn't going out wide enough.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001

Can anybody tell me what role the skipper should play in passing on the manager's tactics and ensuring they are being carried out as best possible on the pitch?

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001

I was wondering about that, Screach. I'm not going to slag off Shearer because even when he was injured, Lee, Speed and Barton proved equally inept as captains, but I do think the general issue of leadership needs addressing.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001

Difficult for the skipper to influence how the full backs use the ball when he's playing centre forward (though I have to say the central midfielders have been equally to blame in avoiding the left wing for most of the season). I do think this problem is partly down to the fact that we haven't had an effective left sided player in a long time and that takes some getting used to. Hopefully this will improve as the side get used to playing with him - if they hit the left wing half as often as we try to hit then he'll see a lot more of the ball.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001

If it is accepted that a skipper should be the "on oitch voice" of the manager, then no matter which position he plays, he should do that (tho I am a long time believer that the best place for a skipper is defence, or possibly m/f but definitely not in attack).

However, as the FBs were the biggest culprits of hoofing the long ball, their target was surely Shearer? In which case a certain amount of eye-contact must be made. You can't tell me that Shearer doesn't have the ability to make his thoughts known about where to play the ball? Not to mention at free kicks and other pauses in play.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001

Oops. It seems there must have been a error in transmission. Shudda said "on pitch". Oitch!!

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001

Regarding our width. In the last two games - following the WHU debacle - it has appeared to me that Nobby has been instructed to play further inside rather than out wide to add some substance to our midfield and compensate for LR hugging the left touchline. The onus is then on Griffin to get forward down the right, with us playing a pseudo-back three of O'Brien, Dabz & Elliott.

"Not a bad idea" I hear you all saying (!!), but this then restricts Elliot's ability to provide LR with good service down the left. This is all to compensate for our lack of top-class central m/f players.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001

Good point Clarky. Indeed, Nobby would seem to have excelled in this on Sunday, pushing so far infield that he appeared on the left wing, with LR (now there's a thought!) playing infield.

If indeed this was YBR's plan, then surely it could also work the other way round, with Nobby out wide on the right and LR pressing further infield, allowing Elliott to move up the wing. All we'd need then would be some movement (I wish) from midfield and the forwards and we could play like ManUre (as opposed to sh!t) ;-) Ah - I knew there was a reason for LR in all this!!

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001

Shall i tell you something? ssshhhh. *whisper it*

it's cold in France too in the winter. It rains. And worse still, it even snows. Disaster.

Don't try and tell me he didn't look at the weather charts before signing. And remember, it's HIS web-page for HIS fans. So why shouldn't he talk about himself?

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001

The weather in Paris is f....g appalling, which is why he probably keeps the house in Montpellier (along with the fact that his wonderful young brother who has "Future Left Winger for the Toon" written all over him is a trainee there).

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001

It's a difficult one with the wingers.

If they sit outside the opposition can play a narrow game and our two centre midfielders find it hard to cope.

If they sit inside then there is no wide outlet.

For two wingers to work you need both to play well, that is why in some repects our unbalanced midfield last season had its advantages. However, all is not bad, Bobby has said nothing is won or lost in September and he's dead right. We could win our next five on the trot and all would be forgotten (although that is somewhat unlikely)

We are all a little bit sceptical about any French player now after our past experiences, it is only natural. Surely Robert has to prove to us that he can consistantly do well? A few great games at the start is what Daniel Cordone did last season (although less was expected of him, costing 20 times less than Frenchbob)

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001