Newcastle, Spurs combined XI: Were relegated Toon ‘much better’ than Tottenham? | OneFootball

Nicky Butt and Kevin Nolan reckons their relegated Newcastle team was a ‘much better’ side than the current Tottenham Hotspur. Fair?

The ex-Toon pair were on ‘The Good, The Bad and the Football’ podcast where they reminisced over the Magpies shambolic relegation in 2008/09.

During that season, Newcastle waved off their revered manager; appointed a relic who didn’t know the names of his players; sold their best player in January; and eventually went down under another local hero; with many players barely bothering to hide their eagerness to get away from the club. And that’s barely half the story.

Still, Nolan sees parallels with what’s happening at Spurs this season.

“It is a real big similarity to what’s going on at Tottenham now,” he said before agreeing with Butt that their Newcastle side was better.

We all watched that Newcastle team and, instinctively, we would have disputed that claim.

But a combined XI of the Newcastle then and Tottenham now includes more Mags than Spurs. Just.

Here is that XI, taking into account form rather than reputation…

GK: Shay Given (Newcastle)

Probably Newcastle’s best player in the 2008/09 season and many in the ranks of the Toon Army will highlight his sale to Manchester City late in January as the point it really started to go wrong. Not that they were flying with Given in goal; they were 15th at the time with two points separating the bottom six.

RB: Pedro Porro (Tottenham Hotspur)

The Spanish defender has been… ok. He certainly hasn’t been helped by being asked to play in a variety of right-sided positions recently and it all got bit much for him when he was hooked against Palace. It was Porro or Habib Beye.

CB: Cristian Romero (Tottenham Hotspur)

Romero’s nonsense this season has been entirely typical of the Argentina centre-back while Micky Van de Ven’s drop-off has been more stark and more alarming. So on the basis of better the devil you know, Romero is in.

CB: Sebastien Bassong (Newcastle)

Voted Newcastle’s tallest dwarf when he won Player of the Season before forcing his way out of the club at the earliest opportunity, moving to Spurs in the summer of 2009 having effectively gone on strike, refusing to travel on the Magpies’ pre-season tour, calling the political situation at the club ‘a shambles’. He had a point.

LB: Jose Enrique (Newcastle)

Just like Porro’s selection at right-back, Enrique is in as marginally the better of two very ‘meh’ options. Djed Spence’s form is good enough for Thomas Tuchel but aside from a good spell in the autumn, he has certainly not looked like being part of the solution for Spurs. Enrique was solid enough and stuck around to get Newcastle out of the Championship, winning the club’s Player of the Season in the second tier.

CM: Archie Gray (Tottenham Hotspur)

Should Spurs go down, Gray will be one of the few players applauded from the pitch on the final day, the youngster carrying out every role asked of him – there have been many – and one of the few who will have the opportunities for a big move that some of his team-mates seem to assume they will too.

CM: Nicky Butt (Newcastle)

Only one player played more than Butt during what was supposed to be his final season before retirement. But the ex-England midfielder didn’t want to do the ‘s***house’ thing and walk away having left Newcastle in a hole he helped land them in. So he signed up for one more season and shared the captaincy with Alan Smith to lift the Championship trophy before he hung up his boots.

RW: Mohammed Kudus (Tottenham Hotspur)

The Ghana winger remains the Spurs player with the highest number of assists and he’s been out since January 4. Only Richarlison has more goal contributions. His return, perhaps for the trip to Sunderland next week, could be as important as a new manager being in the dug out.

LW: Damien Duff (Newcastle)

Probably Newcastle’s most consistent outfield player through a wretched season, Nolan made sure to exclude Duff from the list of players whose performances showed they wanted out of St James’ Park. He played only one game in the Championship before Fulham paid £4million to bring him back to the Premier League.

CF: Richarlison (Tottenham Hotspur)

The Brazilian might not be fancied by many but he’s scored more than double the number of goals of any of Spurs team-mate – and already more than any Newcastle player in the team that went down. That the two Tottenham players closest to him for Premier League goals are both centre-backs tells you much about the problems Roberto De Zerbi is facing.

Martins and Owen both scored eight league goals but the Nigerian wasn’t choppering in and out of Tyneside each day and generally carrying the air of a man who resented being dragged from his horses to play for the club. Martins at least said he wanted to stay and help Newcastle get out of the Championship – before he was sold to Wolfsburg. His last game was the 6-1 pre-season defeat at Leyton Orient that Nolan remembers so fondly.