Newcastle United vs Southampton match preview and banter!

Posted on December 14th, 2013 | 80 Comments |

Newcastle United v Southampton.
The Saints are marching in!
Venue: St James’ Park, Newcastle.
Date: Sat 14th Dec, 2013.
Kick off: 3.00pm.
Referee: Mike Jones.
UK TV: None.

Hello, good afternoon and welcome to my latest ‘match banter’ feature for this afternoon’s game against Southampton.

This could be the last one for a while, if at all. I thought I’d do one last set of matchday blogs though to let all you regular readers know that I won’t be doing any more for a while at least as there are far better things I could be doing with my life right now.

Anyway looking forward this afternoon’s game, one intersting statistic is that Southampton are the last team Newcastle United managed to score more than two goals against in a competitive match. That was way back on the 24th February when the Magpies won a 4-2 victory at St James’ Park on an embarrassing and contrived ‘French Day’ where Geordies collaborated with Mike Ashley in reducing the entire history of one of Europe’s greatest countries down to mustachioed Breton Onion Johnnies and Can-can girls.

That game was in the early days of manager Mauricio Pochettino at Southampton, whose high pressure football in the opponent’s half can be highly effective, but occaisionally prone to the more ‘direct’ approach as displayed by Pardew’s Magpies on that day, when they caught the stylish Saints ’round the back’ as they say on more than one occaision. Far more recently, I can recall even Jose Mourinho employing similar tactics to conquer them by a similar two goal margin.

Recent form.

Though Newcastle and Southampton are as close as they can be in the Premier League table with Newcastle in seventh and Southampton eighth, as you can see below, their recent form in the Premier League has been like chalk and cheese.

Newcastle and Southampton last six Premier league games (most recent first) .

Team Results Points
Newcastle United W|L|W|W|W|W 15/18
Southampton D|L|L|L|W|D 5/18

Well time marches on so I’d better crack on now and leave my usual reminders that I will be posting links to watch the game online, as well as highlights and a full match video for those of you who can’t watch it live.

Howay the lads!

Team sheets.

Newcastle United (4-4-2): Tim Krul (G); Mathieu Debuchy, Mike Williamson, Fabricio Coloccini (c), Davide Santon; Moussa Sissoko, Cheick Tiote, Yohan Cabaye, Yoan Gouffran; Shola Ameobi, Loic Remy

Subs: Rob Elliot (G), Massadio Haidara, Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa, Gabriel Obertan, Sammy Ameobi, Hatem Ben Arfa, Papiss Cisse

Southampton (4-4-2): Paulo Gazzaniga (G), Calum Chambers, Dejan Lovren, Jos Hooiveld, Luke Shaw; James Ward-Prowse, Jack Cork, Steven Davis, Jay Rodriguez; Rickie Lambert (c), Dani Osvaldo.

Subs: Cody Cropper (G), Maya Yoshida, Jose Fonte, Morgan Schneiderlin, Gaston Ramirez, Adam Lallana, Sam Gallagher

Poll

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NUFCBlog Author: workyticket workyticket has written 1091 articles on this blog.

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80 Responses

  1. Newcastle United (4-4-2): Tim Krul; Mathieu Debuchy, Mike Williamson, Fabricio Coloccini (c), Davide Santon; Moussa Sissoko, Cheick Tiote, Vurnon Anita, Yoan Gouffran; Shola Ameobi, Loic Remy

  2. The only surprise is Obertan preferred to Jonas and Marveaux on the bench. I find it really strange because Jonas used to be one of Pardew’s favourites.

  3. Lallana not starting ? Time to get at them from the off especially the central midfield pairing.

  4. “This could be the last one for a while, if at all. I thought I’d do one last set of matchday blogs though to let all you regular readers know that I won’t be doing any more for a while at least as there are far better things I could be doing with my life right now.”

  5. Goofs sixth goal this season. If Remy manages twenty and Goof 15 in a season that’d leave Shirley to grab one :)

  6. sirjasontoon says:
    December 14, 2013 at 3:42 pm

    “Anita is just getting better and better it’s taken a while”

    He was a good player before, SJT, but most people didn’t seem to notice. As I’ve mentioned several times already, he was our greatest creator of scoring chances last season and we wasn’t even supposed to be a playmaker.

  7. Possession stats are Southampton 66%. It doesn’t feel like that.

    I think we have been the better team but Southampton are still a threat.

  8. Andymac: Shola takes the penalties. You said you wouldn’t watch until we lost and we lost against Swans. You are missing a good game.

  9. Yus but I sneaked a peek against Swansea about 30 seconds before Dyer scored the opening goal. Turned off immediately afterwards but the damage was done :)

  10. I never warmed to he Worky always thought he looked hesitant – easy mistake to make is suppose

  11. Need to just lose or draw and I’ll settle back into the armchair again with the other half :)

  12. sirjasontoon says:
    December 14, 2013 at 4:01 pm

    “I never warmed to he Worky always thought he looked hesitant”

    SJT, if you mean Anita there is something in that. He was brought in as a defensive player but he was actually contributing more in attack last season.

  13. Adam Lallana and Morgan Schneiderlin come on for Southampton with James Ward-Prowse and Dani Osvaldo taking a rest. Suggests they’ll go with 1 up front with Lallana prompting ? Hope Pardwho sees the changes and does something to counter ?

  14. hugh l says:
    December 14, 2013 at 4:17 pm

    “everything direct from us yet again”

    hugh, as I pointed out in the blog above, it can actually work against Southampton sometimes.

  15. GS says:
    December 14, 2013 at 5:06 pm

    “Worky: there wasn’t much in it.”

    GS, I meant that Southampton were better in the second half than they were in the first.

  16. Why is “Andy Woodman and Jimenez from Saints apparently ?”
    awaiting moderation WT ? Snot like I wrote S C U N T H O R P E :)