da spicy bet： Newcastle striker Demba Ba has been continuously linked away with a move from the club all summer and amid reports of a behind-the-scenes disagreement with manager Alan Pardew, matters weren’t helped much by the player’s agent trying to sound out a potential move away from the North East, but has a mountain simply been made out of a molehill?
da bwin： The situation come to loggerheads when Ba was left out of the starting line-up for the away trip against Everton, a game that he came on at ha;f-time to completely transform with a barnstorming display that saw him register two goals in the 2-2 draw and he gave both Sylvain Distin and Phil Jagielka in particular a torrid time. The player’s brother Hamady took to his twitter account to label Pardew’s decision prior to the match as ‘crazy’ while his agent didn’t help matters shortly afterwards.
Alex Gontran, who has something of a knack for trying to hawk Ba around extremely publicly had this to say the day after the Everton game: “Since returning from the Africa Cup of Nations, Demba doesn’t understand the management. If he continues to be a substitute all season, we’ll look at other solutions. The choice to put Demba on the left last season was good for the club, because [Papiss] Cissé scored 13 goals, but there was a lack of recognition for Demba. It is more difficult to play well when you don’t have the confidence of your staff. How could you put your best striker with full confidence on the left wing? He is playing in the Premier League, with lot of fellow French speakers and he loves the club’s supporters. He would like to start every game but he respects the choice of the coach, even if he does not always understand or agree.”
Pardew has since spoken of how he has talked to Gontran and that he believed he was mis-quoted, but that’s a tired old cliche trotted out by the players themselves whenever they speak to foreign media, the quotes are too precise to have been made up as on the face of it, they appear to be legitimate criticisms, if a little hasty and ill-judged in their timing . The agent himself may have been acting without Ba’s consent, which is at least more believable, but the fact that Ba’s £7m rase clause still exists in his contract when most thought it had expired in the summer should be a cause for concern to most Magpies supporters.
While it seems that only one of either Ba or Cisse can be in excellent form at any given time, Newcastle do possess an excellent attacking trio of the two Senegalese forwards and the majestic Hatem Ben Arfa. Gontran hints that Ba may have been unhappy about being moved out to the left for the sake of the team last season, which is entirely understandable, but given Cisse’s form it was a shift that was more than vindicated.
The main stumbling block towards any move away, of course, is that no player can actually leave their club at the moment, not until January at least. Nevertheless, Ba has proven a difficult player to keep happy, despite Pardew stating at any given opportunity that the two enjoy a good relationship. The fact that the £7m release clause eve became public knowledge was surely not on the say so of the club as they’d want to keep that clause on the quiet for risk of losing him.
Once again, the finger of blame has to be pointed at his representatives for trying to engineer a move away from the club. Ba has a history of being poorly advised, whether it be that he went on strike at Hoffenheim to force through a move to West Ham or that he insisted on a relegation release clause in his contract at Upton Park, which he then activated to move to Newcastle after seeing a switch to Stoke break down over a suspected dodgy knee complaint.
You get the sense that Ba seems somewhat put out that he was immediately shunted out wide as soon as Cisse signed and that he may feel that he’s not as appreciated as his fellow countryman and team-mate. This level of injustice is preyed upon by those around him and they often speak on his behalf. Ba certainly doesn’t have a reputation for loyalty, but it does seem that he genuinely likes Newcastle, just that he’d like to play in his natural central striking role more.
Ba may be an impressionable person and trusting of the wrong people, but that does not make him blameless in this situation, but the majority of blame lies at the door of the mischievous agent, trying to secure a quick buck for what is still an immensely impressive player who could strengthen many of the top teams in the Premier League and around Europe by his arrival.
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