Will Newcastle beat travel sickness to take three points at Swansea?
Posted on February 12th, 2010 | 17 Comments |
This will certainly be a stern test for the lads, as Paulo Sousa’s team play good football and are unbeaten in their last four home games. They are strong defensively, and following our 3-0 defeat at the hands of Derby County midweek, they now have the same number of goals conceeded as us. However, all is not perfect as the strikers, or in fact anyone else having a go don’t seem to have much luck finding the target with only a paltry 26 goals scored in 29 matches. Only bottom club Plymouth have scored less.
The last time the two teams met at Swansea City was amazingly over twenty years ago, with Newcastle Utd. beating the Swans 2-1 in a second division match. Since that time Swansea have moved to a new 20,500 capacity stadium, and more recently have earned a reputation as a decent footballing side. That was evident under previous manager Roberto Martinez and has carried on with their current boss, another good young manager in the making Paulo Sousa.
So while Swansea having been playing well at home, Newcastle’s away form of late has been lacking, and the Toon haven’t won any of their last six away
matches. I’m sure many Swansea fans will be seeing this as a good time to play us, especially on the back of our 3-0 defeat handed out by Derby County a few days ago.
Swansea will start tomorrow in bouyant mood after beating Crystal Palace mid week. Fans were hoping to witness Shefki Kuqi’s swan dive after the striker scored against his old club in his first start for the Swans. Kuqi said of his normally flambouyant goal celebration
“Out of respect for the players and some of the fans at Palace, I didn’t want to do it. It’s my former team and I have a good relationship with a lot of people at the club, so it wasn’t a place to celebrate.”
Lets hope we don’t hae to witness it tomorrow either. Swansea apparently started to dictate the play early on in the Palace match with their trademark slick passing and movement. Experienced striker Alan Lee caused a lot of problems for the Palace defence, and another player receiving a lot of plaudits was Andrea Orlandi.
Our lack of cohesive defending with three new lads in the back four cost us dearly Tuesday evening, but we will be boosted by the return of Coloccini to the squad after he missed the last three games due to injury. Hopefully Colo will link up with Williamson and either Ryan Taylor or Kadar will replace Danny Simpson who is still carrying an injury. The young Chelsea lad, Patrick Van Aanholt, looks like his loan won’t be extended when Enrique is fit as Cashley Cole has been crocked and will be out for 3 months so Van Aanholt will no doubt be returning to Chelsea sooner rather than later.
I mentioned that goals seem quite hard to come by for Swansea, and they seem to win by only the odd goal or two. Trundle and Pratley are their top scorers in the league with 5 goals a piece. Meanwhile at the other end, Dorus De Vries, their dutch keeper, has managed to keep a clean sheet 17 times this season, so hopefully our strikers are on form to make the most of any opportunities that come their way. Swansea will have defender Angel Rangel, who has been out with an ankle injury back in the side for the match tomorrow. Cedric van der Gun and Craig Beattie will almost cetainly be out though, with hamstring and ankle injuries respectively.
Let’s see what team and tactics turn out for Newcastle. For most of the season Chris Hughton has employed a 4-5-1 formation away from home in an attempt to stifle teams and ideally hit them on the break. However after the terrible Leicester game, Chris employed a 4-4-2 formation away to Derby and we suffered our heaviest defeat of the season. Two out and out wingers were used in midfield but for me the main problem was too many new faces who hadn’t yet gelled. We had played the same formation only a few nights previously against Swansea’s nearest rivals Cardiff and thrahed them 5-1. Either we were lucky and Cardiff very poor on the night, but there was no explanation how the same team looked so uncomfortable against Derby. We played as individuals rather than a team, and the new defence were clearly struggling. Bringing in Colo tomorrow will be a good move to provide some stability to the back four. I think Smith should play and Nolan needs a rest. He was poor against Derby and has been in the past few matches. I think I could beat him for pace every time. Now, Chris Hughton must pep up what he describes as a “hurt” dressing room. We’ve had lots of positive comments from the players since Tuesday evening, now we want to see them make it count where it matters, on the pitch tomorrow with a view to taking all three points. This is going to be a difficult task against a well organised team so we need to be up for the challenge.
Who Chris Hughton plays up front remains to be seen with a number of similar strikers available for selection. The game also reunites Routledge with his former mentor, Paulo Sousa. It was Sousa signed Routledge for Queens Park Rangers in January 2009.
On a lighter note, or not as the case may be, look out for Swansea City Physio, Kate Rees, who took some stick at Palace where her regulation track suit was not deemed to be the most flattering of outfits for someone a bit on the large side. But good luck to her. Fair play to Swansea, it’s good to see them employing a female physio in a very male dominated world and let’s hope Kate has a sense of humour to put up with the banter from travelling fans.
I think this will be a very tight game and the odd goal will nick it.
Howay the Lads.
Kick off: 12.45pm, Liberty Stadium, Swansea.
Referee: Andy Woolmer.
NUFCBlog Author: geordie deb
geordie deb has written 38 articles on this blog.
Great article Deb.
I’m still not really sure which way tomorrow will go. It would be nice to see us win away and spur us on into our 2 home games next week.