Trip down memory lane to better times.After the last two abject displays away to Derby and Swansea, there can be no question that Newcastle need to turn in a convincing performance and take all three points from the game against Coventry City at St James Park tonight.
With West Brom’s draw Tuesday evening taking them back to the top of the table on goal difference, and Forest’s win closing the gap between us and them to 2 points but with our two games in hand, we need to make our next two home games count by taking all six points.
Coventry won’t be a pushover. They’ve moved up to the top half of the table after finding a little run of form. Coventry City midfielder, Gary Deegan, has described the Sky Blue’s Championship match at Newcastle United tonight as a great opportunity. Speaking to the Coventry Telegraph, Deegan who scored the only goal against QPR on Saturday said:
“We have got two wins in the last two so let’s go up there and make it three. Why not?
“I think people will start taking notice of us now that we are showing we are not just a bottom half team.
“We have beaten Forest and QPR so we want to go up to Newcastle and beat them too.”(more…)
Cyril, the Swansea City mascot.A 700 mile round trip faces the Toon Army for tomorrow’s televised game at the Liberty Stadium, when 5th place Swansea City take on Newcastle United with an undecently early 12.45pm kick off.
This will certainly be a stern test for the lads, as Paulo Sousa’s team play good football and are unbeaten in their last four home games. They are strong defensively, and following our 3-0 defeat at the hands of Derby County midweek, they now have the same number of goals conceeded as us. However, all is not perfect as the strikers, or in fact anyone else having a go don’t seem to have much luck finding the target with only a paltry 26 goals scored in 29 matches. Only bottom club Plymouth have scored less.
The last time the two teams met at Swansea City was amazingly over twenty years ago, with Newcastle Utd. beating the Swans 2-1 in a second division match. Since that time Swansea have moved to a new 20,500 capacity stadium, and more recently have earned a reputation as a decent footballing side. That was evident under previous manager Roberto Martinez and has carried on with their current boss, another good young manager in the making Paulo Sousa. (more…)
Derby's Shaun Barker completes the 'Ram-Raid'.I might have known.
After spending the day having a lot banter with the Forest fans who were on jury duty with me telling them all we had to do was produce something like the performance we did against Cardiff a few days earlier and I would be a very happy bunny thank you very much. But that was the killer punch. We didn’t produce the performance and looked for large parts of the match like a team of strangers, which is not surprising when half the team didn’t know each other just over one week ago.It also seems we don’t like travelling to the East Midlands, with results this season against Forest, Leicester and now Derby all being testament to that.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I thought I would be late for this one so foot down, get parked 5 mins from the ground and race in. No time for anything to eat or drink and just got to my seat as the teams were being announced. Joy of joys, the same team as Friday evening. Hughton going 4-4-2 away from home, Nolan captain and Smudge on the bench. (more…)
Locking horns with The Rams.After the great performance from the lads against Cardiff City on friday, the Toon are off to the East Midlands this evening, visiting Pride Park to take on Nigel Clough’s Derby County. With the Rams attracting the second highest average attendances in the Championship it should be a good sized crowd and a decent atmosphere.
I think we’re all hoping for a repeat of the performance against the Taffs last week, with us coming out to play good attacking football with virtually the same team that played last Friday. However our away form has not been brilliant to say the least. The positives are we have only lost one of the last six, but too many draws have seen us losing out on points which were very achievable. I’m hoping that the positive noises from Chris Hughton wanting to see more of the same type of perfomance we turned in against Cardiff means he may field an unchanged side, although with Smudge now recovered from his injury he may be tempted to slot him back in the team. Certainly, with two good attacking wingers in Gutierrez and Routledge, we should look more balanced and be able to switch the play a bit down both wings rather than the over reliance down the left we have seen most of the season.
The new additions to the team have done well. Like many of you probably, I was worried about the effect on the defence of three missing first team regulars, but the new lads have coped admirably so far and the new back four of Simpson, Hall, Williamson and van Aanholt have been solid. (more…)
Bluebirds flying into Toon!With the disappointing performance against Leicester City behind us, we now look forward to the visit to St James Park of the second highest scorers in the Championship, and the team with the highest amount of away wins – Cardif City.
So, with David Jones’s men banging them in the net for fun up against the best defence in the league, let’s hope they dont just cancel each other out. Let’s face it, the team need to go for the home win and they’re not going to do that playing as negatively as they did last weekend. Hopefully Chris Hughton has learnt something from our last performance and will employ a much more positive approach this evening. I can’t remember when we last played on a Friday evening, but hopefully there will be a good atmosphere. Cardiff have sold their entire allocation and looking at their boards, it seems most of their fans are going to make a weekend of it up in Newcastle.
On the Magpies team news, apparently Simpson, Gutierrez and Ameobi are all fit and available for this game – with the only players still out with injury being Joey Barton, Steven Taylor and Jose Enrique. It will be great to see some of the new signings get a game and hopefully Best, the former Coventry striker and Wayne Routledge will add a bit of pace and fire power. (more…)
