Crash! Bang! Wallop! Newcastle 1-2 Blackburn.
Posted on November 11th, 2010 | 57 Comments |
To make matters worse, the man in charge of Blackburn is our former manager, Sam Allardyce, and he would have absolutely loved getting one over on us last night.
The game itself wasn’t a classic, and Newcastle, after recieving so much praise for our defence over the last few weeks, were made to pay for two defensive errors.
On the positive side of things, Andy Carroll continued his good form and should have all but guaranteed himself a place in the England squad come Saturday.
Newcastle named an unchanged side for the fourth game running, which was kind of expected really given the fact that the very same team borught us wins against West Ham, Sunderland and Arsenal. Don’t break up a winning team without reason and all that.
Unfortunately that same team fell behind after just two minutes after a horrendous mistake by Cheick Tiote. The Ivory Coast midfielder, who has been excellent for us all season I may add, tried to dribble the ball out of our own box. He was tackled by Emerton, who then had the ball taken from him by Pederson, who drove forward with the ball and smashed it low into the bottom corner leaving Tim Krul with no chance.
The first-half was a spectacle that contained a lot of effort, but not a lot of action really as Blackburn concentrated on nullifying the threat that Newcastle presented. It was clear that Allardyce had instructed his team to close down our wide men and restrict delivery into the box, and it was working. Blackburn rarely threatened and a less than memorable half of football ended up with the visitors leading 1-0.
The second-half started with a substitution for Newcastle as Chris Hughton withdrew Shola Ameobi, who looked to be struggling with injury, and brought on Nile Ranger in his place. Blackburn got the early goal in the first-half, but this time it was Newcastle who drew early blood.
Joey Barton pinged a long free-kick into the box for Andy Carroll who lost his marker and unleashed an unstoppable header into the top corner of Paul Robinson’s goal. As headers go, it’s been some time since I have seen better! 1-1.
The game never really got going to be honest and was far from fluent with the ball spending an awful lot of time out of play.
Blackburn winger David Hoilett went down in the box under a challenge from Cheick Tiote on 50 minutes. Subsequent TV replays show that Hoilett was trying to pull a fast one and the referee booked him for diving.
Whilst the ref was dealing with that however, an off-the-ball incident involving Morten Gamst Pederson and Joey Barton took place. Again the TV replays showed just what happened as Joey Barton appeared to have a dig at Pederson’s ribs. The ref may not have seen it, but the incident is being investigated by the FA and will more than likely see Barton serve a suspension.
Newcastle huffed and puffed but they couldn’t break Blackburn down, and the hammer blow came just eight minutes from time. A long punt forward by Blackburn saw Jason Roberts turn Fabricio Coloccini before shoulder-barging Williamson out the way and finishing neatly through Tim Krul’s legs. 1-2.
That was pretty much game over, although Newcastle tried to grab an equaliser and had a couple of weak penalty appeals turned away. I personally don’t think Newcastle deserved to lose, but the same token we didn’t deserve to win. I guess that means that a draw would have been a fair result…
The unchanged team will go out of the window for Saturday now as Shola Ameobi will miss the game against Fulham with injury, and if the FA take action, Joey Barton could also be missing from the starting line-up.
Newcastle remain 5th in the table but will need to get back to winning ways again on Saturday.
Howay the lads!
Newcastle -Tim Krul, Danny Simpson, Mike Williamson, Fabricio Coloccini, Jose Enrique, Joey Barton, Cheick Tiote, Kevin Nolan, Jonas Gutierrez, Andy Carroll, Shola Ameobi.
Subs – Ole Soderberg, Sol Campbell, Steven Taylor, Alan Smith, Wayne Routledge, Peter Lovenkrands, Nile Ranger.
Blackburn -Paul Robinson, Michel Salgado, Chris Samba, Ryan Nelsen, Gael Givet, Pascal Chimbonda, Brett Emerton, Phil Jones, Morten Gamst Pedersen, David Hoilett, Nikola Kalinic.
Subs – Mark Bunn, David Dunn, El Hadj Diouf, Herold Goulon, Jason Roberts, Grant Hanley, Mame Biram Diouf.
NUFCBlog Author: toonsy
toonsy has written 643 articles on this blog.
I think you’ll find it was Emerton that took the ball from Tiote and Pedersen took it from Emerton rifling the ball into the far corner.