Newcastle United v Manchester United – Match Preview
Posted on January 3rd, 2012 | 81 Comments |
Date: 4th January 2012
Kick Off: 8.00PM
Referee: Howard Webb
Hair by: Rooney of Croxteth
Manchester United make their seasonal pilgrimage to St James’ Park in what could be viewed, for them anyway, as a tough game – particularly as they seem to be in relative disarray.
Wayne Rooney and a couple of the club’s lesser lights (Darron Gibson and Johnny Evans) allegedly went out for a meal and a few drinkies on Boxing Night. This wasn’t against any of the Manchester club’s rules. However, they subsequently committed the crime of looking decidedly shabby and putting in a poor performance in training.
As a result manager Alex Ferguson threw a strop and dropped them for the home game against Blackburn Rovers. ‘Ol Red Nose was rewarded for his tantrum on his 70th birthday by a defeat from the second-bottom club.
If rumours are to be believed, Mr Rooney is hopping mad about being dropped and fined £200,000 but has managed to “keep his hair on”.
On the surface then, a good time to be playing them.
However (and there’s always a “however”), the media would point to the fact that their red darlings always react strongly to an adverse result.
Is that right? Sometimes but not always I would suggest. Anyone who believes this myth could, for example, perhaps check their history books and see what happened in the game Manchester United played after their 5-0 drubbing at the hands of the Newcastle United “Entertainers” side in October 1996. (To save you looking it up, they lost 6-3 at Southampton).
I’m sure everyone will understand why I would want to work that 5-0 game in somewhere in this preview – but I accept that I’m digressing.
For Newcastle United this is always a hard game. We last won this fixture in 2001/02 season and have only managed a couple of draws since then. The problem for us isn’t just the fact we are playing one of the better teams in the league, we also have a few problems of our own to overcome. The early season bubble which saw us remain unbeaten for 11 games was burst what seems a long time ago now, by Manchester City on 19th November 2011, and our form since then has been decidedly patchy if not poor. One win and two draws in the last 8 games has seen a return of 5 points from a possible 24.
Strangely enough, one of those 5 points came in a hard earned draw at Old Trafford on 26th November when our ten men and particularly our defence stood up to a late battering from a Manchester side desperate for a win they often seem to regard as a right. Hopefully however, that result will help our confidence which, to be fair, looks to have stayed buoyant during the sometimes difficult to swallow recent run of results. There has been no real evidence of heads dropping during recent defeats and it is a credit to the team and the management that they have been able to keep this resilience going.
TV Coverage
The Match-up between the two Uniteds goes out live on Sky TV for those of us who will not be attending “the Cathedral On The Hill” for whatever reason. For those without Sky or access to a pub, we’ll try to identify some useful streaming links before the game – stey tuned for our regular “match banter” post, which will go out around an hour before kick off.
One of the things I find irritating about watching this game on TV or listening on the radio, is the media’s insistence on referring to Man U as “United” and us as “Newcastle”. I realise many of you will have grown up with this as the norm and don’t regard it as odd, but it wasn’t always so. To someone like me to whom the name “United” has only ever meant Newcastle United, it can be a mixture of irritating, insulting and confusing. Rant over!
Recent Statistics
As stated earlier, this isn’t usually a good fixture for us as regards picking up any points!
The last time we won this match was a 4-3 victory in 2001/02 season with goals from Lee, Dabizas, Robert and Brown o.g.
Since then, we’ve only managed to muster a couple of draws and the rest have been defeats.
Games V Manchester United at St James’ Park |
||
Date | Score | Newcastle United Scorers |
2010-11 | 0-0 | |
2008-09 | 1-2 | Lovenkrands |
2007-08 | 1-5 | Faye |
2006-07 | 2-2 | Milner, Edgar |
2005-06 | 0-2 | |
2004-05 | 1-3 | Shearer |
2003-04 | 1-2 | Shearer |
2002-03 | 2-6 | Jenas, Ameobi |
2001-02 | 4-3 | Lee, Dabizas, Robert, Brown (o.g.) |
Newcastle United Team News
Gabriel Obertan looks likely to face his old club. It had previously been assumed that he faced several weeks on the sidelines after suffering a recurrence of a foot injury in Friday night’s defeat to Liverpool. However the injury has responded to treatment and Alan Pardew expects him to be available for selection. Long-term injury victims Steven Taylor (achilles tendon) and Sylvain Marveaux (groin) remain absent from the squad, as do Danny Guthrie (groin) and Peter Lovenkrands (calf), which otherwise is a strong one – as strong as we have available, anyway.
Likely Squad: Tim Krul (G), Rob Elliot (G), Steve Harper (G), Danny Simpson, Ryan Taylor, Davide Santon, Shane Ferguson, James Perch, Fabricio Coloccini (C), Mike Williamson, Tamas Kadar, Cheick Tiote, Yohan Cabaye, Gabriel Obertan, Hatem Ben Arfa, Jonas Gutierrez, Sammy Ameobi, Dan Gosling, Mehdi Abeid, Haris Vuckic, Alan Smith, Demba Ba, Leon Best, Shola Ameobi.
Manchester United Team News
As stated above, Wayne Rooney is expected to return for Manchester United after being disciplined by Sir Alex Ferguson last week.
According to reports in the Daily Star, Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson is also considering dropping David De Gea. It was De Gea’s mistake that handed Blackburn Rovers their winner at Old Trafford on New Year’s Eve. Ferguson is understood to be considering De Gea’s rival between the sticks, Anders Lindegaard. Chris Smalling (tonsillitis) and Rio Ferdinand (back) may also return on Tyneside. Manchester United’s usual captain, Nemanja Vidic, is out for a while having knee surgery after picking up a fairly bad injury in the Champion’s League against Basle.
Likely squad: David De Gea (G), Anders Lindegaard (G), Ben Amos (G), Rafael, Rio Ferdinand, Chris Smalling, Patrice Evra, Phil Jones, Ezekiel Fryers, Larnell Cole, Michael Carrick, Antonio Valencia, Park Ji-Sung, Darron Gibson, Anderson, Nani, Ryan Giggs, Wayne Rooney, Danny Welbeck, Dimitar Berbatov, Javivier Hernandez, Mame Biram Diouf, Will Keane.
What The Managers Are Saying
Alan Pardew: “Fortunately, we’ve come through Liverpool unscathed, Gabriel’s fine. We were a bit worried about Gabriel’s toe after Liverpool, but he seems much better.”
“We’ve had a run of hard games, and injuries and suspensions haven’t helped us,”
“For our fans, it’s important that we put in a proper performance. It’s a game under the floodlights, and we know our fans will be roaring us on.
“Regardless of what happened to Manchester United at the weekend, this was always going to be a difficult game.
“They’ll be up for it. They lost against one of the bottom teams, and will come with a completely different team.”
“We feel we’ve not really had any luck against the big teams,”
“We’re just a bit frustrated, really. Against Chelsea, we were looking like getting the equaliser at 1-0 down. We could have taken the lead against Manchester City.”
Alex Ferguson: ”We’re trying hard to get Rio Ferdinand and Ryan Giggs fit, which would make a good difference to us,” Ferguson told radio station Sirius XM.
“Anderson should be better; he had 45 minutes on Saturday after four months out.
“There are no other ones to come back immediately. And Wayne Rooney will be available of course.
“We had a few training sessions which he missed. You’ve got to be fit to play in this league, you can’t miss training sessions.
“We’re getting a lot of impact injuries, contact injuries. Maybe the way we play creates that because we’re always wanting to have the ball and we’re always wanting to play.”
Prediction
That’s easy! United will win!……………..But which one?
Seriously though, a tough one to predict. If Manchester United play well, they rarely get beat. On the other hand, if they couldn’t beat us at Old Trafford when we were down to 10 men, what have we got to worry about?
I’m going for a scoring draw.
Actually i prefere Obertan’s lack .When he is on the pitch it seems we’re playing with ten people.Most useless player for us this campaign which convinces me that Pardew has no idea for our squad- confirmation with the”genius” decisions about Ben Arfa, R Taylor, Vuckic. Continuing in this way and no surprise why we will have no wins over Man Utd, Chelsea, Man city and..soon.
In time like this I wish we had a coach like Martin Jol or O’Neil.
Good luck tomorrow lads!