Newcastle United vs Chelsea match banter
Posted on December 3rd, 2011 | 66 Comments |
Date: Saturday 3rd Dec, 2011.
Kick-off: 12.45pm.
Referee: Mike Dean.
TV: Sky Sports 2.
Hello Geordies and welcome to our match banter feature for today’s early home fixture against Chelsea.
Even with home advantage, we have to go back to May 2006 for our last victory against Chelsea in the Premiership, with Titus Blunder scoring the winning goal in a 1-0 victory at St James’. However, with Chelsea’s relatively poor form recently as they attempt to settle under recently appointed manager Andre Villas Boas, now is almost certainly the best time in a long while to finally squeeze 3 points out of Chelsea’s pensioners.
Although they are only one place below us in fifth, they have lost no fewer than three of their last four games in all competitions, two of those defeats coming against Liverpool in the Premiership and the League Cup, with the other coming in the Champion’s League against Bayer Leverkusen. In the Premiership alone, they have lost four games out of thirteen so far, whereas we of vourse have lost only one, against moneybags Man City. But anyway, for a far more in depth preview of today’s match, please check out the thoroughly excellent and extensive match preview from our latest star signing, Andy Mac.
One piece of news for regular readers is that we may not feature our usual post match stuff this week, ie match reports, highlights and other analysis due to other commitments, however I shall try to do what I can under the circumstances. As usual though, I will be uploading the teamsheets for this afternoon’s game when they become available.
As usual, please feel free to post any good links to the game if you have any.
Howay the lads!
Teams
Newcastle United (4-4-1-1): Tim Krul (G), Danny Simpson, Steven Taylor, Fabricio Coloccini, Ryan Taylor, Gabriel Obertan, Yohan Cabaye, Danny Guthrie, Peter Lovenkrands, Hatem Ben Arfa, Demba Ba.
Subs: Steve_Harper, Davide Santon, James Perch, Dan Gosling, Sammy Ameobi, Leon_Best, Shola_Ameobi.
Chelsea (4-3-3): Petr Cech; Branislav Ivanovic, David Luiz, John Terry (c), Ashley Cole; Ramires, Oriol Romeu, Frank Lampard; Daniel Sturridge, Didier Drogba, Juan Mata.
Subs: Ross Turnbull, Jose Bosingwa, Ryan Bertrand, Raul Meireles, Florent Malouda, Salomon Kalou, Fernando Torres.
Very winable game. We’ve conducted ourselvse well in the last 2 matches and a good result here should sort out the doubters in the press.
I’m looking forward to a long lunch (in the pub!).
Enjoy the game everyone.
HWTL!