Steady as she goes? – Newcastle United 3-0 Preston North End.
Posted on February 20th, 2010 | 124 Comments |
With the surprise news that Wayne Routledge was to miss today’s game with a calf injury, it meant a recall to the team for club vice-captain Alan Smith with Danny Guthrie move out to the right wing to accomodate. That left both sides lining up as follows:
Newcastle United: Harper, Simpson, Coloccini, Williamson, Van Aanholt, Gutierrez, Smith (c), Nolan, Guthrie, Carroll, Lovenkrands.
Subs: Krul, Hall, Kadar, Ranger, Best, Taylor, Pancrate
Preston North End: Lonergan, Mawene, Sedgwick, St. Ledger (c), Coutts, Wellbeck, Jones, Williams, James, Wallace, parkin
Subs: Hart, Carter, Chilvers, Treacy, Henderson, Elliot, Mellor
The Toon started flat but still went 1 goal up on 3 minutes when Peter Lovenkrands hit a cross-come-shot which looped over Preston goalkeeper Andy Lonergan and dropped into the far corner of the net. This seemed to be a cue for the home side to take their foot off the pedal for the next 10 minutes befor goal-scorer Lovenkrands was forced to leave the field with a suspected hamstring injury around the quarter-hour mark to be replaced by recent arrival Leon Best.
Fresh from losing Lovenkrands, it was Preston who ‘pressed on’ searching for an equaliser, striker Jon Parkin twice forcing fine saves from Steve Harper with the away side wasting a couple of corners. Alan Smith nearly opened his Toon scoring account on 38 minutes, a fine save from Andy Lonergan tipping Smith’s 20 yard volley around the post. From the resulting corner it was Lonergan who again thwarted Newcastle’s attempt’s to get a 2nd before half-time, tipping Mike Williamson’s powerful header onto the woodwork with United unable to capitalise from the rebound. Preston came within inches of sneaking an equaliser before the break, Jon Parkin again missing the target by inches from his volley.
So a 1-0 half-time score in what was turning out be a pretty uninspiring yet effective performance, the likes of which us fans have seen all season.
United started the 2nd half brightly with Carroll, Gutierrez and Guthrie all going close and on 55 minutes Newcastle got the 2nd goal that the up-turn in tempo deserved, Alan Smith rolling into the path of Kevin Nolan for the scouser to score his 12th of the season. At 2-0 it was effectively game over as a contest. Preston seemed nervous and seemed to want to get away with a 2-0 scoreline. Jonas Gutierrez was replaced by Ryan Taylor and Danny Guthrie left the field to a standing ovation to replaced by Fabrice Pancrate.
The 2-0 scoreline wasn’t to be, and after a succssesion of chances, 2 of the substitutes combined in stoppage time to make it a final score of 3-0. Fabrice Pancrate cutting the ball back across the box for Ryan Taylor to sweep in his 2nd goal in a week.
So a final score of 3-0 and a case of job done. Some great individual performances on show today, particularly from young Danny Guthrie who ran the show both on the wing and cutting in from the wing, and another sound defensive performance. Our very own bowburnmag was in attendance so will no doubt be along with his very own opinion and player ratings in due course. My player ratings go something like this however;
Starting XI: Harper 7, Van Aanholt 6, Coloccini 7, Williamson 7, Simpson 7, Jonas 7, Smith 6, Nolan 7, Guthrie 9, Lovenkrands 7, Carroll 6.
Subs used: Best 6, Taylor 7, Pancrate 6.
Attendance: 45,525.
A full match review from Bowburnmag will follow.
NUFCBlog Author: toonsy
toonsy has written 643 articles on this blog.
In all fairness, Preston never really seemed a team that set out to trouble us and we’ve been far more pushed by other, maybe lesser, teams this season.
At the end of the day it’s another 3 points on the way to promotion, which ultimately is the only thing that matters. I could slip in a line about worrying about facing Prem teams with performances that were short of top gear like today, but that’s a bit unfair and skeptical. Well done to the new lads and Guthrie for overcoming some out of depth performances on the wing to give arguably the best display today.