Toon face tough start to life in the Premier League.

Posted on June 17th, 2010 | 42 Comments |

Old Trafford will be Newcastle's first destination
Old Trafford will be Newcastle's first destination
Well the fixtures are officially released, and with them now in the public domain it would appear that we will have to gear ourselves up for a tough rebirth into the Premier League.

Newcastle have been handed a start away at Manchester United as they try to resettle back in the Premier League again.

This is then followed by a home game against Aston Villa which offers us our own little chance to get some payback for them putting the final nail in our coffin in the Premier League last time, and hopefully we can put to bed those scenes in which they revelled in our demise with pretty little banners and the like. The first of the Tyne/Wear derbies takes place on 30th October at St James’ Park, with the return match at the Stadium of Light happening on 15th January. The traditional boxing day fixture will see us playing at home against Manchester City, and the final game of the season will also be at home for a change, this time against West Brom, and what a massive game that could end up being!

AUGUST
14 Man Utd (A)
21 Aston Villa (H)
28 Wolves (A)

SEPTEMBER
11 Blackpool (H)
18 Everton (A)
25 Stoke (H)

OCTOBER
2 Man City (A)
16 Wigan (H)
23 West Ham (A)
30 Sunderland (H)

NOVEMBER
6 Arsenal (A)
10 Blackburn (H)
13 Fulham (H)
20 Bolton (A)
27 Chelsea (H)

DECEMBER
4 West Brom (A)
11 Liverpool (H)
18 Birmingham (A)
26 Man City (H)
28 Tottenham (A)

JANUARY
1 Wigan (A)
5 West Ham (H)
15 Sunderland (A)
22 Tottenham (H)

FEBRUARY
2 Fulham (A)
5 Arsenal (H)
12 Blackburn (A)
26 Bolton (H)

MARCH
5 Everton (H)
19 Stoke (A)

APRIL
2 Wolves (H)
9 Aston Villa (A)
16 Man Utd (H)
23 Blackpool (A)
30 Liverpool (A)

MAY
7 Birmingham (H)
14 Chelsea (A)
22 West Brom (H)

So what do you reckon? I think we could have got dealt a better hand, another opening day away trip to Manchester United? How many times has that happened? Still, we have to play all the teams twice and nothing is set in stone yet as these dates could yet be moved to accommodate cup competitions or for live TV coverage.

Bring it on!

NUFCBlog Author: toonsy toonsy has written 643 articles on this blog.

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Posted on by toonsy in category: Fixtures 2010/2011 and Thoughts and reflections and Toonsy , with tags: ,
Comment on this post

42 Responses

  2. Apologies for the delay with the article, bit of a personal issue going on at the moment, catch you all later.

  3. that’s a shame. might dent our winning mentality from the off. lets hope for a point like 2 years ago, and jonas to play like he did

  4. Well you shouldn’t have bothered if it was that – We were arguing fine on the previous thread.

  6. My team if, as expected, we sign f*** all
    Harper
    Taylor (S), Colocinni, Williamson, Enrique
    Spiderman, Nolan, Guthrie, Barton, Routledge
    Carrol

  7. Does anybody have any idea when Sky and ESPN or whoever it is these days release the first lot of games they are going to screen?

  8. Stuart79 says:
    June 17, 2010 at 12:40 pm

    “Well edited, toonsy.”

    Thought it sounded a bit dramatic for what is actually going on. Nobody has died, and it’s getting sorted out now. :D

  9. come on! That fixture list could be a lot worse, no built up games against very strong opponents and home games on boxing day and the last day of the season! Personally I’d far rather be away at old trafford than stamford bridge or the emirates! Although I do expect a loss, if we come out fighting it shouldn’t do too much to dampen spirits and if we do get anything then it’ll send morale through the roof. Could be a lot worse lads! TOON TOON

  10. I think our first few games are decent. Best to get Man Utd out of the way but I think we can get points from the next five. If you seen West Brom’s first 6 its a bad start. They have Chelsea, Sunderland, Liverpool, Tottenham, Birmingham and Arsenal. For us Man Utd is a write off and hope for the best. I think we can get a point from Aston Villa if we are on our game. Everton normally don’t start well and the rest will be in and around us so we should be looking to get the three points.

  11. I’d rather have Manure early than late. Remember last year we had the same start and came away with a point; we could do the same this time.

    Of course, they could also repeat coming to SJP and utterly clunging us 6-0 too. :(

    Not a bad draw, all in all. I’ve had a pick through with very rough predictions, and I reckon we’ll end up with about 40 points and 15th. Which is enough… but makes for a stressful season.

  12. DevonMag is kind of thinking the same as me really. No back to back games against the bigger teams.

  14. Gutierrez does look a little out of his depth with this team – It could be because he’s playing at right back, but he doesn’t look a patch on his team mates.

  15. Thing is, for me Jonas isn’t a right back back. He is good at tracking back from midfield to defend, but to defend from the off would be harder to come to terms with I reckon.

  16. Must admit delighted we got Utd for the first game , its a proper premiership team if you get me!

  18. hate to agree but I’m gonna have to there stu. If I wasn’t a nufc fan and had never seen him play I’d still single him out from the rest- he just doesn’t have anything like their composure on the ball. Probably comes from not playing on the highest stage like the rest of em.

  19. Why haven’t Newcastle dabbled with signing some of these Koreans before. They just dont stop running and running!

  20. I agree Toonsy. Even the North Koreans. That lad up front didn’t look bad at all.
    The unknown players to impress me have been from Korea and Chile. Very impressed with Chilean players technique and skills and the workrate and neatness of the Koreans is superb too.

  23. I think it’s a bad idea to rate anyone based on WC performances. Totally different mentality, team, situation, climate… air… ball… :)

  25. manure away is good. would have preferred liverwank but its good. As we are only going to get worse as season kicks on. we got a draw with KK so i see no reason why we cant get one again.
    Hey toonsy… villa didnt relegate us.. duff did, if anything, i thought villa did everything possible to not score a goal that day. i still recall that game, if i didnt knwo better i thought villa were trying to help us!

  26. Craig – It isn’t Villa I have an issue with, it’s the way their fans reacted. I would do time if it meant I could get my own back on some of them :mad:

    Immature? Over the top? Possibly.

    Bothered? No.

  28. I think the fixture is actually quite OK. Its good to play against a good team at the start, it can give a massive boost if the team gets something from the game, if we loose, well not the end of the world, people are talking about a winning mentality, well its not really like we are going to win 10 games in a row or more, this season won’t about making it to the europe with a 20 game unbeaten run, it will be a nasty point collecting campaign…. But if we won’t sack a manager after first 10 games, I think we will be OK.

  29. The important thing is the majority of our first 7 home games are winnable, the first obviously against Villa the toughest but it will be early in the season and certainly could get something out of it. After that it’s Blackpool, Stoke, Wigan, Sunderland, Blackburn and Fulham. Throw in a few battling and lucky points here and there and we could go into December not looking too bad.

  30. Times have changed, Stoke, Blackburn and Fulham are very good midtable teams and really tought to beat. And Sunderland feeds on Bent factor. While you never know about Wigan, they can be brilliant and hammer Arsenal, or they could be woeful and get raped by Stoke…

  31. I don’t mind playing them first off,might get really lucky and catch them cold again.I don’t think the first few games are too bad could be better but could also be alot worse.HWTL

  32. I agree with Lionel Speed those are the type of teams we need to get 3 points off esp at home , now im sure a few of those teams will look to us as an easy 6 points but we need to be strong and make sure we take as many points off those type of teams as we can

  33. Ooh big shock, Man United first game. Who saw that coming? ;-)

    Haha, you know what. I think even though we will probably lose. It’ll be a good thing because it’ll set the tone for the standard we’ll have to keep to survive.

  34. Off this threads topic. Last nights game with South Africa vs Bafana Bafana was amazing. Well the atmosphere was amazing.
    And really the vuvuzelas have a different effect at the game. They actually are used in conjunction with song and dance, and they are in rythem. Just it sounds like a big jumble on the television. Such a carnival atmosphere.
    The weather was freezing here last night. Around -3 degrees, which is very rare in South Africa.
    Its a very dry cold, so I don’t even think the Europeans will be used to that.

    Outside the ground at Loftus, the Entire Springbok team were there mixing with the crowds. Taking photos, signing autographs, and then sitting amongst them in support of the football team – I thought that was a great touch.

    I got a photo of myself with Victor Matfield and Bakkies Botha, Butch James etc. For suchbig brutes on the rugby field they are great guys off the field.

    Others There were also a few of the former players like Percy Montgomery and Os Durrant. Fantastic to see…

  35. Yea ! Daunting task for a first game back.
    however this is the league where the money and the strongest team are and there are really no gimme games.
    The sides who have survived promotion and solidified their place in the last few years have all benefited from EPL revenues and have spent accordingly and for the most part are not the sides of a couple of years back.
    The reality is brought home when comparing our present side with the majority of the EPL clubs.
    And yes, i for one would feel better if we brought in those promised reinforcements.
    The quality and quantity of which will tell us of our ambitions for the season, simply survival or somewhat competitive.

  36. Think it’s pretty obvious what our only ambition is this season – survival.

    That is the only real significant target we can achieve as the next target is 7th place, and we aint gonna get that!

    17th to 8th are nothing positions. Nothing extra is gained by finishing in withe, just Premier League football for the season afterwards, although of course there is the matter of £750,00 per position in prize money for every extra league place we manage.

  37. I am a little pissed, granted.

    But didn’t seeing those fixtures make anyone think “ah, thank f***. Were back in the prem.”

  38. Well we got a point there last time. Plus United are now a bit of a spent force and traditionally start the season slowly.

  41. My moneys on the Argies, ‘we will score one more than you’. :)

    Me dad put his money on Spain, good ol kiss of death.

  42. Anone know why there are no games in the last 2 weeks of March? Are those FA Cup weekends? I was hoping to have game at SJP for my Birthday, but looks like it’s not to be the case.