How Newcastle and Sunderland represent opposites

Why Newcastle United and Sunderland represent opposites

In terms of transfer dealings, these teams are at complete opposite ends of the scale. Newcastle prefer to sign up and coming talents and not sign players over 27. This model has shown plenty of strengths but also several weaknesses. This is reflected in the fact that players such as Yohan Cabaye have come and gone but fetched a high price, although it represents a risk, as the likes of Emmanuel Riviere have shown. Newcastle hope to fetch a high re-sale value, and this is an opposite to how Sunderland approach many of their transfers. Signings such as Wes Brown, John O’Shea and Jermain Defoe, lead Sunderland to believe they have a more reliable transfer model, based on signing players who are said to be proven in the Premier League. The down side of this is there is next to no re-sale value on these players, and means that Sunderland will struggle to be self-sufficient in the way that Newcastle is. The approach to managers is also shown to be a polar opposite approach these days, with Newcastle aiming to keep Alan Pardew long-term despite all the hiccups the club had during his reign, whilst Sunderland tend to change their manager at least once a season, most recently for Dick Advocat to arrive at the club. Even after Pardew’s departure, Newcastle have aimed to retain stability by promoting his assistant John Carver.

Statistics

In terms of the match, I found it surprising that of the squads available for Saturday’s match and not including injured and suspended players, Newcastle have more derby day experience particularly due to Newcastle’s lengthy injury list. Newcastle have 47 appearances in the Derby within the squad for Sunday, whilst Sunderland have only 35. The most experienced of these is Jonas Gutierrez who has 8 derbies under his belt, followed by Jack Colback who has played only 1 derby in Newcastle colours but 6 for Sunderland, and Mike Williamson and Tim Krul who have played 6. For Sunderland, Sebastian Larsson is their most experienced for this occasion having appeared 7 times, whilst Lee Cattermole and John O’Shea have both played 5 derbies.

In the 9 derbies since Newcastle returned to the premier league there have been 5 reds, 1 for Newcastle and 4 for Sunderland. There have been 49 yellows in 9 matches at an average of 5.4 per match and Lee Cattermole has yet to play a Tyne-Wear Derby in which he hasn’t been booked.

You have to go back as far as 2006 for a time that a team came from behind to win a Derby, when Albert Luque wrapped it up in a 4-1 win at Sunderland for Newcastle.

Amazingly despite racking up 82 appearances in Derbies between the players on show only 6 goals have been scored by current Newcastle or Sunderland players they are Adam Johnson 3 times, Ryan Taylor, Jack Colback (For Sunderland) and Steven Fletcher.

There hasn’t been a goalless Tyne Wear Derby in 32 matches since 1990.
Only Papiss Cisse (11) and Ayoze (5) have scored more than 3 premier league goals for Newcastle this season and only Steven Fletcher (4) and Adam Johnson (4) have scored more than 3 for Sunderland.  Only QPR and Aston Villa have as few players scoring 4 or more goals. Sunderland’s top scorer only having 4 is also the lowest in the division.

Newcastle have won just 1 of the 5 games that Moussa Sissoko has previously captained them in.