It's Demba Ba day on NUFC Blog!Demba Ba got his Newcastle goal tally up and running against Blackburn on Saturday at Saint James’ Park in sensational fashion.
After early indifference from some, when he was not quite up to pace due to his religious commitments, he’s slowly started to build his fitness. He started to show some of his movement, touch and hold up ability last week versus Villa and before that in a brief cameo at home against Fulham.
Like all players coming into a new club, and in this case a ‘new’ team, it was always going to require a little patience while he found his feet and got to know his new team mates and surroundings.
Well it seems he has!
What a cracking first goal for your club at home his first strike turned out to be! (more…)
A Demba Ba hat-trick sees Newcastle United cruise to a 3-1 victory over Blackburn Rovers and maintain their 4th place in the Premier League.
On paper we should be the better team this season, but Blackburn have a record at St James’ Park second only to Manchester United in the Premier League, so the superstitious amongst us might have had cause for concern.
A disclaimer before I start: I watched the match on a very shaky internet feed and missed bits of it here and there, so if my match report contains glaring holes, you know why.
The Toon analysts in the dressing room had clearly been doing their homework as they appeared to have identified Givet as the weakest link at left-back in Blackburn’s defence and almost from the off we started attacking down the right, which was to become a familiar pattern for a lot of the game with Obertan making a lot of the running.
We dominated well for 25 minutes before the first goal, with Ba, Best and Gutierrez having chances on goal only to put them over the bar. Blackburn’s David Hoilett was the only player to give us any real signs of trouble when he dribbled easily past Gutierrez into the box and it took a great piece of defending by Coloccini to counter the danger. (more…)
Leon Best: 9 goals in 12 games.Aston Villa 1 (Agbonlahor 13) Newcastle United 1 (Best 57)
Both teams went into this game unbeaten in the Premier League so far, but with the Magpies four places ahead in the table through an extra victory, with nearly all of Aston Villa’s games being draws. And so it proved today once again.
Despite being dominated for long spells of the game and tailing off pretty badly at the end of each half, Aston Villa held out for another draw, their fourth out of five so far. It was a fairly exciting encounter overall, though in one respects it was like Newcastle United’s previous game against QPR. This time however it was the Magpies who were in the driving seat for much of the game, and would have been almost certainly disappointed to walk away with only a point.
We got off to a much better start than we did in that game with some great pressure. Unfortunately though, it wasn’t to last. Unlike that last game, Aston Villa had Darren Bent and Gabriel Agbonlahor instead of Jay Bothroyd, and as soon as a real chance presented itself to the Villans, the latter of the two made no mistake. After around ten minutes of the game, Gabriel Obertan almost left our former goalkeeper, Shay Given with egg on his face as an attempted forced a tip-over from the Irish shot stopping supremo. Three minutes later though, it was the dominant Magpies who had egg all over as the babovementioned Abonlahor picked up a Bannen cross, holding off Captain Colo to slip in a nice low short range finish in the box. It must be said, or even written, that our defending could have been better there though. Damn and blast it all! Aston Villa 1-0 Newcastle United.(more…)
It's that man again.Venue: Loftus Road, London. Date: Monday, Sept 12th, 2011. Kick-off: 8:00pm. Referee: Phil Dowd.
I don’t think it would be unfair to say that Newcastle United were very, very lucky to pick up a point here, in a match which saw Quuen’s Park Ramgers utterly dominant in the first half, and still on top in the second half too.
Before kick off, the news was that ex Toon Twittergate refugee, Joey Barton, would be the new QPR captain. In a team which was bristling with new arrivals, the West London club were remarkably fluent considering the lack of time their new players have had to ‘gel’ with the rest of the squad before being thrown into the thick of it. This was especially the case with ex Manchester City benchwarmer, Shaun Wright Phillips, who gave a ‘Man of the Match’ performance. He scared the Magpies with some great crosses from the flank, along with a few chances on goal for himself too. QPR’s much vaunted player of the season from their promtion year, Adel Taraabt, was also a signifcant threat from the other flank too, however thankfully for us, Jay Bothroyd’s finishing was not quite on the same level. If a first class finisher was in his place, we might have been done for! (more…)
