Newcastle young guns on brink of cup final.
Posted on April 16th, 2010 | 40 Comments |
With the scoreline poised at 1-1, our lads will be looking for some extra support from what is expected to be a decent crowd inside St James’s Park this evening as friends, family, colleagues and public combine to swell the crowd and drum up support for the boys.
Not much has been mentioned about the kids, and they have gone about the business of trying to be the first Newcastle youth side to make the cup final in 25 years very quietly indeed. They have had to get through more than their fair share of tricky away ties to get this far, and will play the Chelsea youth side in the final if they get through tonight. Right now they have a glorious chance to emulate the last side to do it, a side that featured players such as Paul Gascoigne and Kevin Scott, and will be hopeful that victory tonight could catapult their careers and help them improve further.
Newcastle can feel rightly aggrieved after the draw at Villa Park last week. They left the hosts chasing the ball for large parts of the game whilst retaining possesion and deservedly took the lead through Phil Airey, only for that to be cancelled out by a Villa equaliser from Kofi Poyser. The hard work in keeping possesion is something Head of the Academy Joe Joyce says that he and his team focus on.
“We try to use a lot of video from teams such as Arsenal and Barcelona,” Joyce explained.
“More so recently we have focused on Barcelona and we record a lot of their games then go through it with the lads.”
It certainly seems as though making the lads watch the videos is paying off, as is evidenced purely on the performance in the first leg of the semi-final. They also have Phil Airey up front, who has the pace to get behind a defender and has already scored 5 goals on the way to the game tonight and gives the team the ability to go more direct of they ever choose to.
There are also highly rated players such Haris Vuckic and Brad Inman that can add a bit of passing ability to the midfield whilst players like Samuel Adjej and Sammy Ameobi, younger brother of Shola, can add the flair with a trick or two, infact Ameobi’s younger brother does appear to hold more skill than his older sibling!
That attacking flair and pace is combined well with no frills defenders such as captain Jeff Henderson. The local lad and life-long fan from Ashington believes that now his senior counterparts have secured promotion back to the Premier League, it will only spur the young guns on for their very own success.
“The promotion has lifted us because we’re part of the club aswell and have been supporting them all season. There is a real buzz around the place and, for me especially as a fan, I’m delighted that we are going back to the Premier League where we belong.”
Winning the competition would be a great achievement for the youngsters but first thet must put any thoughts of the final to back of their mind and deal with Aston Villa. Kick-off is at 7pm tonight and you can gain admission via the East Stand for £3 for an adult or £1 for concessions.
Tonight we get to see if the kids are alright.
NUFCBlog Author: toonsy
toonsy has written 643 articles on this blog.
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