Pilgrims head for the church of St James. Newcastle v Plymouth match preview.
Posted on September 19th, 2009 | 13 Comments |
Plymouth have a paltry 2 points from their opening 7 games, picked up via an away draw at Crystal Palace and a home draw against QPR in the first 2 games of the season. Since then they’ve lost to Cardiff, Derby, Sheffield Wednesday, West Brom and Watford, scoring just 6 goals along the way. Alan Gow – a £200,000 signing from Rangers in the summer – is Plymouth’s top scorer with 2 goals and they also have Bradley Wright-Phillips on the books.
Alan Smith returns from suspension for us which means we only have Ameobi and Jonas unavailable for selection. I’d expect Smith to come straight back into the team, most logically at the expense of Butt although I’m not entirely convinced Hughton will drop Butt. We shall see.
New defender Zurab Khizanishvili will be straight into the squad, although I’d be surprised if he starts and would expect Hughton to stick with Simpson, Taylor, Coloccini and Enrique for kick-off.
Up front I’d guess it will be Carroll/Lovenkrands or Carroll/Ranger, most probably the former with Ranger coming on later in the game.
Hughton said:
“We hope we do get a big crowd again.
“There was wonderful support at Blackpool, and when you lose, you always feel for those supporters.
“The best thing you can do is put things right for them. They travel, and they would have been as disappointed as we were by the end. We’re sorry we didn’t give them more.
“Now we have an opportunity to put it right, and it will be a valuable three points against Plymouth – we must make sure we get them.
“We hope we can pick up where we left off at the end of the Blackpool game.
“We created chances, and we’ll be hoping to do the same again.
“I won’t chastise this group of lads for one performance – they have given everything so far.
“We’ve regrouped and we’ll look to get back on track.”
I think we’ll be angry after the defeat at Blackpool and really lay into Plymouth. I’m going for 3-0 to us.
NUFCBlog Author: Hugh de Payen
I'm a baby-boomer of the punk rock persuasion, currently exiled in Somerset for crimes committed in a previous life where locals keep trying to poison me with something called 'scrumpy'. Hates sprouts, coat-hangers, Cilla Black, ornaments, Steven Seagull movies and 50 Cent (he's not worth 10).
Hugh de Payen has written 634 articles on this blog.
Smithy coming back is the big plus for us. Surely Butt has to be dropped to make way? If he isn’t, it will just be another indicator that Hughton isn’t up to the job longer term.