A watershed moment in Newcastle United's season?Venue: St James’ Park, Newcastle. Date: Sat 22nd December, 2012. Kick off: 3.00pm. Referee: Kevin Friend (Leics). UK TV: None.
Hello good afternoon and welcome to this extra special Christmas match banter for Newcastle United’s home match with the “R’s” of Queens Park Rangers.
To say that this was an important game for Alan Pardew and the Magpies would be an understatement. With The Magpies being pulled ever closer into the relegation quagmire, a fairly daunting pair of away games against Manchester United and a recently resurgent Arsenal follow, not to mention a tricky home tie with sixth placed Everton to complete the Christmas and New Year holiday fixture list. With QPR being one of the few teams which are below in in the table at the moment, hopes have been pinned on this game as the best hope of getting a desperately needed 3 points. However, despite their lowly position at second bottom, even here the momentum is with today’s West London visitors. Even Pardew himself has acknowledged this. Speaking of QPR in a pre match interview he said: (more…)
Some very tough Christmas games for NUFC.Venue: St James’ Park, Newcastle. Date: Sat 15th December, 2012. Kick off: 12.45pm. Referee: Andre Marriner (W.Mids). UK TV: Sky Sports 2.
Hello, good afternoon and welcome to our “match banter” feature for this afyternoon’s game between Newcastle United and Premier League champions, Manchester City.
With a tough series of games coming up over the Christmas period, the Magpies will be hoping to get off to a good start against the “Citizens.” Whoever the opposition, Newcastle United need some more points, and they need them soon with only one solitary win amongst five losses in our last six games. Against such daunting opposition, even a draw would be welcome this afternoon, with hopes pinned on three points against our next opponents, Queens Park Rangers. For a detailed look forward to the game though, may I recommend you check out my latest match preview, which should fill you in on everything you need to know in the run up the kick-off. (more…)
A battle of the bairns in Bordeaux?Venue: Stade Chaban Delmas, Bordeaux. Date: 6th December 2012. Kick off: 6:00pm UK time (7pm local time). Referee: Menashe Masiah (Israel). UK TV: ESPN.
Hello, good evening and welcome to our “match banter” feature for this evening’s game, which sees the Magpies facing the Girondins of Bordeaux once again, this time at their place.
Both teams might already be through to the next stage, but this is more than a dead rubber as the teams will fighting to see who comes out as the winners of Group D, which will have consequences for the next round. Whilst it might not guaranteed that the group winners will avoid a difficult team in the next round for reasons which are horrendously complicated (as they usually are in the Europa League), what it will guarantee is that the winners will be able to play the second leg of their next knockout rounds at home.
Anyway, moving on to the game itself, you might know already that Alan Pardew and the lads were delayed by the weather in their trip over to France, but below is the squad he is taking, with an emphasis on youth, along with a few veterans (Captain Colo and Uncle Shola) to look after the bairns: (more…)
Worried about Wigan?Venue: Britannia Stadium, Stoke. Date: 28 November 2012. Kick off: 8:00pm. Referee: Mike Jones (Chester). UK TV: Sky Sports.
Hello, good evening and welcome to our “match banter” feature for this evening’s game at St James’ Park as the Magpies face the “Latics” of Wigan Athletic.
At this point I would usually try to point you in the direction of our regular “match preview” but I’m afraid I didn’t do one for this game. The ones on here always take quite a long time to prepare and after knocking them out for quite some time without fail, I’m afraid that time was just against me this time. Please let me take this opportunity to give my apologies to any of you regular readers who actually bother to read them!
Anyway on to this game. I won’t go into a long thing about how important this one is under the circumstaneces as I’m sure that nearly all of you know that it might precipitate a bit of a crisis for both the club and our Silver Supremo if we lose. Losing our fifth game in a row would be a record, and the last time we lost four on the bounce, it was in the season we were relegated. Here’s hoping it doesn’t happen as we have a very tricky set of fixtures over the holiday period including the two Manchesters and Arsenal, although the North London giants are hardly having a great time of it at the moment either, though I’m sure that most of us would be happy with merely being 19th in our current predicament. Oops! I did start going on about it after all! I will stop now. (more…)
Toon travel to the land of the giants.Venue: Britannia Stadium, Stoke. Date: 28 November 2012. Kick off: 7:45pm. Referee: Howard Webb. UK TV: None.
Hello, good evening and welcome to our “match banter” feature for this evening’s game, which sees Newcastle United facing the biggest, roughest, toughest, meanest hombres in the whole of the Premier League, the “Potters” of Stoke City.
Ti say that we need a win would be an understatement, with our last one in any competition coming exactly a month ago, a 2-1 demolition of West Bromwich Albion. The winning goal in that one came off Papiss Cisse’s backside in the last minute of injury time, and we may need that kind of luck this evening as no one else has managed to break the Potters at their Britannia Stadium home in the last 13 attempts. (more…)
