No Joey Barton show this time.Venue: St James’ Park, Toon. Date: Sun 15th Jan 2011. Kick-Off: 1:30 pm. Referee: Chris Foy.
Hello, good afternoon and welcome to our regular “match banter” feature.
This time the Magpies will be facing the transitional Queen’s Park Rangers under new manager, Mark Hughes, he of the slightly annoying mid-sentence sharp intakes of breath.
Like ourselves, it will be a somewhat depleted QPR on the pitch this afternoon, with key players such as captain, Joey Barton, Alejandro Faurlín, Armand Traoré and Adel Taarabt out through suspension, injury and the African Cup of Nations (x2) respectively. Of course it goes without saying that another Toon old boy, Kieron Dyer, will be also be out to injury as usual. On the QPR’s opening game of the season he was carried off on a stretcher with an injured foot. After a lengthy layoff, he was finally set to make his comeback, then somewhat inevitably injured it again in a reserves game! (more…)
Spidermag returns to save us!A tale of absent friends made this cup tie somewhat less of an occasion than it could otherwise have been.
We knew that Demba Ba and Cheick Tiote wouldn’t feature in this game, but when Blackburn lined up without Yakubu and Samba – that was a bit of a bonus. Also missing was Paul Clement, the now ex-Blackburn Assistant Manager who clearly decided he’d had enough of the abuse from the Blackburn fans and joined Paris St Germain last week. Finally, there were the 20,000 or so United fans who didn’t turn up, for whatever reason.
Newcastle actually made four changes to the side that started against Manchester United in that glorious win (just wanted to mention it one more time!). Two were enforced of course, with some of our stars off to light up the African Cup of Nations. Abeid, Obertan, Ben Arfa and Best were brought into to the team with Shola Ameobi and Ryan Taylor returning to the bench.
Is another Ba the highest priority?Newcastle United are set lose Demba Ba to the Africa Cup of Nations soon, yet it seems the club is concentrating more on strengthening the team in defence rather than attack. Is this the right decision?
Much was rumoured recently about us not being in for a striker this January after the Maiga deal fell through but, with Demba Ba due to leave for the African Cup of Nations very soon, how will we cope?
When Pardew was asked recently if we can cope without Ba and Tiote, he said:
“Obviously, I am hoping so, but they are two massive players. You take a huge figure out of one of the other teams and it’s significant. If you took Rooney out of Manchester United, probably they wouldn’t look the same for seven games, so you have to accept that.
“Having said that, we have got players who are champing at the bit. Hatem Ben Arfa wants a chance, Leon Best wants to show what he showed last year, Peter Lovenkrands will be eager to throw his hat in the ring, so we have still got great players in the club and we hope that we can keep the momentum and the form going.
“We have just approached one game at a time, but we have got to the halfway stage in seventh place and that’s significant. It can only arm us with confidence to go forward.“
The Silver Supremo and Dreamboat - My men of the match (apart from the Toon Army that is).Firstly, let me just start by saying Newcastle thoroughly deserved their win and it was a win by United more than a loss by Manchester.
They were never allowed to settle on the ball, from the off. Newcastle also took the game to them, showed no fear whatsoever, gave no respect and pressed on with their own game regardless of what Man U brought to the party.
It wasn’t as if they had a depleted team, or even squad. When you looked at the team sheets, you would be forgiven for feeling pretty apprehensive, if not a little queasy. That didn’t seem to bother the Lads one iota though as they showed their intension to play a quick passing game, pushing forward as often as possible. The recent overuse of the long ball game was quelled, but it was used to good effect to catch the visitors on the break. (more…)
Cabaye and Ba get a goal a piece.A goal from Demba Ba, a free kick from Yohan Cabaye and – to add to Man Utd’s misery – an own goal by Phil Jones sees Newcastle United take all three points at St James’ Park.
The match started at a lively pace and it was pretty much box-to-box stuff for the first half.
The first decent chance fell to us on about 4 minutes when Simpson put in an excellent cross along the ground to Demba Ba, who was right in front of goal. Unfortunately it was slightly behind him and he couldn’t gather it for a shot.
Just over a minute later, Cabaye tested Anders Lindegaard after Ba nodded the ball down to him just outside the box. Unfortunately it was straight at the keeper and turned out to be an easy save.
Man Utd came close after 14 minutes though when a Berbatov header took a deflection and bounced off the post.
After 19 minutes an accidental handball by Cabaye led to a Man United free kick in a dangerous area. Fortunately Rooney’s free kick deflected off Tiote for a corner, which itself came to nothing.
