Arsenal v Newcastle – Match preview.
Posted on November 6th, 2010 | 48 Comments |
Newcastle head off to North London this weekend for another Sunday lunchtime kick-off, and the travelling fans will be hoping for a repeat of what happened in our last Sunday lunchtime where we smashed Sunderland 5-1.
Realistically, that isn’t going to happen, but we can always hope, eh?
The task couldn’t be tougher as Newcastle face an Arsenal side that has been looking rather impressive, even by their own high standards, in the league this season. That combined with the fact that we never really get anything from The Emirates will probably ensure that we are tasting defeat come around 4pm tomorrow afternoon.
Moving on to team news, and as ever we start with our beloved Newcastle United.
Sol Campbell will have to wait until the last minute to find out whether or not he makes the matchday squad. Sol has trained all week but Chris Hughton will have to decide if Campbell is fit enough to take a space in the 18-man squad for the trip to his former club.
One player who will be in the squad is Steven Taylor, who made the bench for last weekend’s demolition derby and came through an hour of reserve team football against Wigan during the week unscathed. I would expect Taylor to take a place on the bench.
Newcastle will be without long-term absentees Hatem Ben Arfa, Steve Harper, Leon Best and Dan Gosling, although it is fair to say, touch-wood, that our injury list is finally starting to clear up a bit.
As for formation and team selection, one half of me would like Chris Hughton to stick with the team that has done so well against both West Ham and Sunderland, whilst the other half feels that perhaps starting with just one up front and trying to contain Arsenal could be the way to go. After all, we could always change to a more attacking line-up through the game if we needed to.
Still, I would like to see the team that has served us well over the last few weeks get another chance which would leave us with a team of;
Newcastle – Tim Krul, Danny Simpson, Mike Williamson, Fabricio Coloccini, Jose Enrique, Joey Barton, Kevin Nolan, Cheick Tiote, Jonas Gutierrez, Shola Ameobi, Andy Carroll.
Arsenal will be boosted by the return of Cesc Fabregas, who was among of number of players including Andrei Arshavin and Alex Song who sat out the midweek Champions League defeat to Shakhtar Donetsk.
They lost that match 2-1 and will be looking to bounce back to winning ways against us and put on the kind of convincing performance that they lacked last weekend against West Ham where they had to rely on an 88th-minute from Alex Song to deny The Hammers a point. The Arsenal team that day was;
Arsenal – Lukasz Fabianski, Bacary Sagna, Laurnet Koscielny, Sebastien Squillaci, Gael Clichy, Cesc Fabregas, Samir Nasri, Denilson, Alexandre Song, Andrei Arshavin, Maraouane Chamakh.
It’s fair to say that history is not on Newcastle’s side in this particular fixture. Newcastle have beaten The Gunners just once in the last 15 meetings between the sides and the previous three visits to North London have seen Newcastle beaten 3-0 on each occasion.
Newcastle are good in the air, which is understandable when we have a player like Andy Carroll in the team, and no team has scored more headed goals than Newcastle this season. The current tally is six, which can only be matched by Manchester United.
One thing this Newcastle side will do is battle to the end, which is a good job as Arsenal sometimes leave it late to score goals. In fact Arsenal have scored in the last 10 minutes in nine of their last 11 home league games.
All-in-all, I’d like to predict a win for Newcastle, but I just can’t see it. What I am hoping to see is yet another committed performance from the lads. Unfortunately though, I don’t think it will be enough to stop Newcastle being brought back down to earth with a bump.
My prediction: Arsenal 3-1 Newcastle.
Howay the lads!
Date – Sunday, 7th November, 2010.
Kick-off – 1:30pm.
Venue – The Emirates Stadium, London.
We should keep the same team that has just won two on the trot out of respect and fairness. I also think that is our best team atm.
We should throw the kitchen sink at them right from the off, plus they will be travel weary from their champions league exploits. If we change players and try to defend against them for 90mins we will get beat. They have the players to break us down and finish us off. The only advantage I see that we have over them is in our final third and our swashbuckling frontmen having a go at their rather civilized defense. We will have to outscore them. Although Fabianski has improved greatly we have to hope he can’t deal with our arial threat. Also once a keeper has lost their cleansheet they tend to be easier to beat, so hit him early. The longer the game go’s on and the more we sit back they will take over. What they don’t like will be us having a go at them and blasting in set pieces. The more corners we win the better but it won’t be easy at all. HWTL!