Alan Pardew has highlighted Papiss Cisse’s inability to play on Saturday as having a massive impact on the game, saying it is the equivalent of Liverpool losing Luis Suarez or Chelsea losing Fernando Torres. Pardew found out that he would be unable to use Cisse against Swansea just an hour or so before kick-off. However, the manager did know that this was a possibility after Senegal had invoked FIFA to use the five-day rule. They claimed that Newcastle had not provided substantial information on Cisse’s back injury after he was unable to play for Senegal mid-week. Pardew claims that the players in the dressing room were devastated by the news that the Newcastle no.9 couldn’t play. He compared it to having a similar impact of Chelsea losing Torres or Liverpool losing Suarez – a strong remark to make considering that Cisse has only scored once this season, nonetheless Pardew and the players must have felt Cisse had a huge role to play in the game. Speaking to the Chronicle, he said: “We did everything we thought was right and we were waiting until 1.45 to see if we could play him. “It was a blow for the players in the changing room. There is no other way I could dress it up, but they tried to cope the best way they could with it. “You can bet your life our players would have been thinking if we had had Papiss we might have won. We can never answer that question.” Do you think that Cisse’s absence was influential regarding the outcome of the game? Let us know your thoughts?
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