Joe Kinnear plans to start his reign at crisis club Newcastle by telling his struggling stars to stop sulking. Kinnear, 61, was in the stands at St. James’ Park on Saturday as his new team slumped to a fifth successive defeat, 2-1 at Blackburn, to remain rooted in the relegation zone. Kinnear, who was appointed as interim manager on Friday and officially takes charge today, was shocked by Newcastle’s woeful defending which allowed Christopher Samba and Roque Santa Cruz to head the visitors into a 2-0 lead with just 41 minutes gone.
The former Nottingham Forest and Wimbledon boss, who had addressed the players before kick-off, had some choice words for them at the break, and that seemed to do the trick as they turned in a much-improved, second-half display. However, Michael Owen’s 49th-minute penalty — his fifth goal in seven games — was the only tangible reward and Kinnear knows he has a major task on his hands in training today.
“We needed to stop feeling sorry for ourselves,” he said. “We need to get rid of all the issues that are going on — Is the club being sold? Are we bringing back Kevin Keegan? — until it actually happens.”
“We need to focus on playing football, it’s as simple as that. And they need to play football well. But what has not helped matters, I am told, is that six or seven of the best players are missing,” he said.
“On the good side, with the international break coming up we could have four or five of them back. We need to be more vocal in the dressing room, we need more input. It’s something that I have always had throughout my career, feedback from players, players who show emotion, players who want to win, players who have things to say,” he said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier