Battling it out for sixth place this evening.Venue: Anfield Stadium, Liverpool. Date: Friday, 30th January, 2011. Kick-Off: 7:45pm. Referee: Lee Probert.
Hello, good evening and welcome to our regular match banter for this evening’s game, which sees the Magpies travelling to Anfield once again to meet Liverpool in a battle for sixth place.
For a more in depth look forward to the game, you can always check out Hugh’s excellent match preview, where you can check up on all the latest team news, squads, stats and stuff like that.
Of course, at least some of the focus this evening will be on ex Toon striker Andy Carroll, who was sold to this evening’s opposition in highly controversial circumstances 11 months ago. With his fellow striker Luis Suarez suspended for one game after giving Fulham fans the finger during Liverpool’s 1-0 defeat at Craven Cottage earlier this month, Carroll should be almost certain to start this evening. It will be interesting to see if he is still the victim of Toon boo boys now it has been revealed that both Derek Llambias and Alan Pardew misled fans over the circumstances of his departure in January. (more…)
Andy Carroll: Forced out and lied about?Love him or loathe him, there is still a question which has not been answered about Andy Carroll, a question which continues to split opinion amongst United fans to this day. Ahead of the imminent game against Liverpool at Anfield, it might be timely to examine this question one more time.
The question – when he was transferred, did he jump or was he pushed? This has never really been fully clarified for us, and opinion is divided. Let’s look at some of the facts and statements made by people close to the transfer deal. (more…)
Pardew's party finally hits the buffers.I think it would be fair to say that Newcastle United have had a rather poor run of results in our last six games.
Since our 2-1 defeat of Everton, we have picked up a mere two points in our last six games, 0.39 points per game. Despite our excellent start to the season which at one stage saw us in third place, if this form were to continue, we would only gain an extra 6.93 points between now and the end of the season, which would leave us with a total of only 33.93 points (OK 34 points) on the day of the last judgement in May after our final game with Everton. Dear reader, I probably don’t need to tell you that this was the same points total which saw us relegated at the end of the 2008/9 season, and that we would almost cartianly be staring relegation in the face once more if that were to happen again.
Of course, it is true that our recent bad run of form started with a terrible trio of fixtures against moneybags Man City, the current champions from the other side of Manchester, as well as moneybags Chelsea. However we also failed in a similar but less expected fashion against three other teams where we might have been expected to make up the ground lost in those previous three games, ie the Premiership minnows of Norwich City and Swansea City, and also the yo-yos of West Bromwich Albion most recently. Though we face another supposedly “easy” game against struggling Bolton next, we will then have two more clashes with big guns in the form of the leviathan of Liverpool, and then the mighty Manchester United once again. (more…)
Magpies v Throstles - Who will get the juicy 3 point worm?Good evening Geordies and welcome to our latest “match banter” feature for this evenong’s game, which will be yet another battle of the birds.
First it was Magpies v Canaries, then Magpies v Swans, and now the Mags find themselves battling the Throstles of West Bromwich Albion for a juicy three point worm. “Throstle” is an an English name for the Eurasian song thrush, and though you’d think the poor little song thrushes would have no chance against the mighty Magpies, they have proved to be fairly tricky customers in the past and we haven’t been racking up the results as we did in the earlier part of the season, with no win in our last five games.
Before I forget, please excuse me for the lack of our usual “match preview” feature this week, which was cancelled due to the horrors of Christmas. I shall endeavour to make up for that somewhat by incorporating a kind of mini preview into this article, starting with previous encounters, and then a bit of team news.
Steve: A very natural writer and a great human being..It was four days ago when I learned of the tragically premature death of Steve Thompson, aka “Thomma” to his friends, and in the NUFC blogiverse, “Bowburn Mag”.
He was a writer on this site from it’s inception in 2009, writing a total of 234 articles for us in our first year. It is probably thorough his writing, and of course numerous comments on several different blogs and forums that most will know him. As well as being a genuinely nice person, he was also a natural writer who had the capacity to communicate his real humanity in words and genuinely connect with the reader, which is a rare talent. It was this which inspired me to ask him to write some pieces here when the ‘blog was about to start. Even though all I had to go on at the time were his comments on other blogs, his talent still shone through. Being a keen footballer himself, he also had a very good understanding of the game, and with both of these qualities I genuinely felt that he could have been one of the best sports writers around if his life had taken another path. Sadly that life is over now so we will never know, but he still left some great pieces of writing which encapsulated perfectly his passion for football in general, and Newcastle United in particular. (more…)
