You're Wrong Joe - Martins Misses His Buddies!
By Nu Mad
Updated Tuesday, 28th October 2008
Joe Kinnear can talk until he is blue in the face, but Oba Martins is struggling because he is missing the quality of strike partners Michael Owen and Mark Viduka, both out through injury.
We've had Joe tell us the last month how good Shola Ameobi is when we've watched the striker for over 200 games (since his Toon debut in September 2000) and Kinnear has probably seen him play four games.
Shola and Martins 'play off' others ... they are far too similar to create a strike partnership.
They go at defenders 'head-down; arse up; wearing blinkers'. They NEED a partner with a football brain, like Owen or Viduka, and sadly we'll have to wait for that to happen.
Joe Kinnear: "He (Oba Martins) is one of these lads who gets very frustrated with himself. He has got bags of ability, he just needs to get a few goals to kickstart his season.
"The thing with Oba is his unpredictability. If you see him in training, he fashions something out of nothing and you think, 'How did he do that?'.
"He is that type of player. He is not a link-up player or a team player.
"The ball goes up to him and you think, 'give it simple', and he will backheel it, run round the other side of the player and then lash it into the top corner.
"You say, 'Okay, that's not too bad, don't give it anymore, just keep doing that'.
"You just hope what he does on the pitch in training, he transforms into match days. That's the key to it, doing what he does on the training pitch on match days.
"I said to him, 'If you can get used to isolating yourself one versus one on the last defender, don't pass it to anyone'.
"The only trouble is, I think he fights himself at times. He gets narked within.
"He is probably a bit hard on himself at times because of his standard. He questions himself, he is one of those players.
"He has one focus, and that is to stick the ball in the back of the net, we know that. We know we are not going to get the ball if he sniffs out that he is anywhere near the goal.
"If he is any shooting distance, he shoots."
