Fenham Eusebio scores again for the Toon.
Posted on August 20th, 2009 | 12 Comments |
After buying the customary Mag and visiting the Back Page we took our seats in the East Stand where we listened to the usual banter and the never ending discussions regarding the takeover/non takeover. It seems Moat was at the game sitting next to Llambiarse again in the Directors Box while takeover discussions drag on.
The last visit of Sheffield Wednesday resulted in the famous 8-0 win when Sir Bobby was in charge but no one anticipated anything remotely close to that tonight.
Wednesday had sold out their ticket allocation so were well supported with a good following up in the top tier of the Leazes End.
The only change to our team from Saturday was caused by Joey Barton failing a late fitness test which saw the introduction of Danny Simpson our new on loan right back, causing Ryan Taylor to be pushed up into midfield.
We started off brightly enough backed by a crowd of 43.904 significantly up on Saturday’s attendance.
Michael Gray the ex Mackem player had a torrid reception and was predictably roundly booed each time he touched the ball.
A couple of early chances fell to both teams before the Fenham Eusebio was at it again when a long kick by Steve Harper resulted in Carroll flicking the ball on to Shola who drove a low strike past the Wednesday keeper to score in the 16th minute to equal his goal tally for last season. Amazing what a bit of confidence does! Cries of “Same old Shola, always scoring” and “do the Shola Ameobi” rang out around St James Park. In fact Shola nearly had a second goal soon afterwards but his strike was saved by the keeper. Carroll seemed to spend half of his time on his backside and despite lots of endeavour I find him to be quite frustrating at times.
Sheffield pushed forward but seemed to miss the quality to finish things off.The second half both teams had chances but our lack of pace and creativity was evident for all to see.
Carroll went off injured to be replced by Xisco who contributed little. Simpson had a good first match. He looked quite solid and managed to cover a lot of ground. Guttierez did his usual producing no end product but he does have a good understanding with Enrique down the left hand side.
Harper made a few good saves in the second half to keep us in the match but we did seem to make hard work of it at times to hang on to our one goal lead. Ranger got a slightly longer run out today, coming on in the last 10 minutes and was immediately involved in the action. It would be good to see this lad on for longer as I’m sure he would cause some problems. Ryan Taylor the birthday boy came off towards the end and was replaced by Guthrie.
Three of our players were booked Smith, Coloccini and R Taylor.
Not a huge amount to write about. The lads have done well to collect another three points but this will not turn out to be a particularily memorable match. Credit to Hughton for getting this bunch of disparate lads playing as a team and to the players for showing the hunger they didn’t demonstrate last season. Just about to book my tickets for the Leicester game now…
Deb, if your daughter is 16, she should be completely brainwashed by now. What have you been doing all this time?