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…)
Demba Ba: Hat-trick hero and M.O.T.M performance.Right, let’s have some ratings for the Blackburn win!
It was pretty much good stuff all round with a decent showing from a team that’s starting to gel. Very few black marks, the odd smudge, but nothing we couldn’t surmount.
Here goes!
Tim Krul 7.5:
Tim is fast becoming yet another top Toon ‘keeper and Toon legend at a young age. He did most things well, well, he didn’t have too much to do! Maybe needs to bark at his retreating defenders a bit to get them into position when facing an attack, as it was a case of players stood waiting for the shot that got Blackburn back into the game with a goal. Not wholly his problem though.
Danny Simpson 7:
Getting better with every game. His only smudge was backing off a bit when Olsson put the cross in for Hoilett to score. Got up the field to support (even in the dying minutes), but got back to defend. Good fitness too. (more…)
It was fantastic, says DembaDemba Ba talks about his hat-trick for Newcastle United and how a happy squad is one of the keys to good performances on the pitch.
Shortly after yesterday’s 3-1 win over Blackburn the BBC interviewed Demba Ba and this is what he had to say:
Interviewer: Demba, your first goals for Newcastle and your first Premier League hat-trick – how does that feel?
Demba: It was fantastic, scoring a hat-trick here in these conditions and on this stage. It was fantastic.
Interviewer: Your team mates all signed the ball for you as well.
Demba: Yes, I’m very happy for that. The ball’s going to be home and the whole family is going to look at it and they’re going to be happy because they all came down from Paris to watch the game today, so I think they’ll be happy tonight.
Interviewer: It seem a happy team at Newcastle and all the players seem to get on. How important has that been with the good start that Newcastle have made this season? (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…)
Up to the task?Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew says we have to find new ways of scoring goals now that we’ve sold all the people that scored them for us last season.
It already seems like a geological time era has passed since the last Newcastle match and we still have to wait until Monday. There seems to be a general feeling of post-transfer window depression amongst Toon fans and we need a match to – preferably a winning one – to help lift the gloom.
Whilst Alan Pardew has allegedly ‘got over’ the disappointment of not signing the striker he was after in the transfer window, he does still seem a little unsure where our goals are going to come from. Pardew said:
“We are going into the unknown to a certain degree because a lot of the goals we created and scored last year are not in this team.
“But we have got a lot of new talent and that new talent is exciting and they have shown that in games. We are going to be leaning on them to make us look a little bit different and to create a different type of goal.” (more…)
