Wigan: Can be tricky customers late in the season.Venue: DW Stadium, Wigan. Date: Sun 17th March, 2013. Kick off: 4.00pm. Referee: Mark Halsey (Bolton). UK TV: Sky Sports.
Hello, good afternoon and welcome to our “match banter” feature for this afternoon’s game, which sees Newcastle United taking on Wigan Athletic at their place, the DW Stadium.
Of course in recent seasons, Wigan usually spend much of their time toward the bottom of the Premiership, then suddenly come into form at just the right time to save themselves from the dreaded drop around this time. Although they took a bit of a pounding against Liverpool in their last game but one, the signs have been there this season too, as the game before that Liverpool defeat was a convincing 3-0 victory over fellow relegation strugglers Reading, and in the one after they knocked Everton out of the FA Cup by the same scoreline. (more…)
The Premier League’s top six on recent form.All you Magpies fans out there out there may have noticed that their has been a distinct upswing in Newcastle United’s form since the end of January, with the club rising from 16th to 13th in the Premiership table.
Our last six Premiership games since that time, starting with a 2-1 victory over Aston Villa at St James’ Park on 29th January has seen a return of 12 points from four victories and two defeats. As you can see from the images above and below, this now places Newcastle United at fourth in the Premier League’s club form table, measured on Premier League clubs’ performances over their last six games.
To put this into context, the side’s previous six games before that resulted in only one single victory with a draw and four defeats, bringing in a total of only four points. Hence, we have been exactly three times as good in our last six Premiership games as we were in the six games before that! (more…)
NUFC Blog’s latest blog on metro.co.uk is out now! Just a quick note to let you know that my latest piece for metro.co.uk” has now been published.
Entitled “Alan Pardew says the funniest things sometimes,” it is a brief (they’re only supposed to be around 500 words in there) reflection on some of Pardew’s words after Newcastle’s victory against Stoke, where he marked the cards of foolish romantics who prattle on about how teams need a “fantastic spirit” to win a game once they’ve gone behind. Instead, he insisted that only teams with “world class players” like Yohan Cabaye can change a game once they are a goal behind.
Just to refresh your memory, his exact words were:
“People get them mixed up sometimes, they talk about the spirit of the side and ‘You must have a fantastic spirit to come back from a goal down’. (more…)
