Win needed or it’s 5 defeats on the trotDate: Saturday 19 April 2014. Time: 15:00. Venue: St James’ Park. Referee: Chris Foy. UK TV: None.
Newcastle host Swansea at St James’ Park this weekend as both teams seek to improve on a bad run of form.
Newcastle have looked like a team already on their holidays lately. The rubber alligator is on the roof rack of their Bentley Continentals, the caravan is hitched to the tow-bar and they’re halfway down the M5 on the way to Cornwall. Or at least that’s the way it seems if recent performances are anything to go by.
But the combination of a home fixture against a team also amidst a poor run of form and the return of some key players from injury might give us half a chance of some points this weekend.
Allegedly, the target Mike Ashley set for Alan Pardew this season was a top ten finish. We’re currently in ninth place, three points ahead of Stoke and even if they overtake us we’ll finish tenth and achieve Ashley’s target. However, thanks to a victory against Everton at Goodison Park this week, Crystal Palace are only six points behind us in 11th place and in fine form having won their last four games on the trot, including a creditable win against Chelsea. So a top ten finish is by no means guaranteed yet.
A stiff test for Carver this evening.Date: Tues 25th March 2014. Time: 7:45pm. Venue: St James’ Park. Referee: Lee Mason. UK TV: None.
Hello, good evening and welcome to our match banter for this evening’s game aginst Everton.
Once again, miscreant manager Alan Pardew will be restrained in his Benton office, leaving assistant John Carver to handle things in the dugout once again. This time though, it will be against a tricky Toffees side who have won their last three Premier League games.
Recent form.
You can see the recent form of the two teams below for their last six Premier League games (most recent first).
Team
Results
Points
Newcastle United
W|L|W|W|L|L
9/18
Everton
W|W|L|L|W|L
9/18
As you can see, in terms of recent form in the Premier League this evening’s two protagonists coudn’t e any closer with three wins, three losses and 9 points out of 18. Could it be a tight contest this evening? (more…)
Pardew takes on his former club.Date: Saturday 22nd March 2014. Time: 15:00. Venue: St James’ Park. Referee: Lee Probert. UK TV: None.
Hot on the heels of defeat at Craven Cottage, we face lower table opposition again this week as we host Crystal Palace, which is of course where Alan Pardew played his football between 1987 and 1991.
Back in December we beat Crystal Palace 3-0 at Selhurst Park thanks to goals from Yohan Cabaye, Hatem Ben Arfa (penalty) and Danny Gabbidon (own goal), so we’ll be looking to do the double over them on Saturday.
The league form for both teams from the last eight games looks like this:
P
W
D
L
F
A
Pts/Max
Last 8
Newcastle
8
3
1
4
6
15
10/24
W|D|L|L|L|W|W|L
Crystal Palace
8
3
2
3
6
7
11/24
W|W|L|W|L|D|L|D
As the above table shows, Palace’s form in the last eight is similar to ours, although they’ve conceded far fewer goals. We can’t really argue that we’ve had tougher games either. In the last eight games we’ve faced three top half sides (Spurs, Chelsea and Villa) and so have Crystal Palace (Arsenal, Man Utd and Southampton).
Who’ll win the tactical battle?Date: Sunday 23rd February 2014. Time: 13:30. Venue: St James’ Park. Referee: Martin Atkinson. UK TV: Sky Sports 1.
It’s a mid-table battle at St James’ Park on Sunday as Newcastle play Aston Villa and I reckon both teams will think they can win it too.
Villa will fancy their chances against us given our recent atrocious run of form. But having the home advantage against mid-table opposition should give us some hope that we might be able to use this fixture to halt our recent decline, which would be a welcome relief.
The league form for both teams from the last eight games looks like this:
P
W
D
L
F
A
Pts/Max
Last 8
Newcastle
8
1
1
6
3
15
4/24
L|L|L|W|D|L|L|L
Aston Villa
8
2
3
3
10
12
9/24
D|W|L|D|W|L|L|D
As you can see, Villa’s form is better than ours to the tune of five points over the last eight games. Villa managed a draw away to Cardiff in the last game whereas our last point was at Norwich on the 28th January. We haven’t scored a goal since the match before that – away to West Ham on 18th January – and it’s probably no coincidence that we’ve been without Yohan Cabaye for all four of the intervening games and without Loic Remy for the last three of them. (more…)
Bantam cocks vs headless chickens at SJP this evening?Hello, good evening and welcome to a rather impromptu ‘match banter’ post for this evening’s game, which sees the Magpies at home against Tottenham Hotspur.
I say “impromptu” because I thought I had already written the last blog on here for some time at least, and that the server this blog is hosted on would run out on 21st. Well, to get to the other reason for this blog, it is to keep all you regular readers informed that after intense late night discussions yesterday evening, it was decided between myself and Hugh that the server, including this site, could stay up after all! Things are still the same with myself, ie I’ve been doing stuff on here pretty much non-stop for well over four years now and I need a break to concentrate on other things. However, despite my previous information, the server will be staying up for the forseeable future, and Hugh might even have a bash at a few blogs if he can, although he is very challenged at the moment too so we’ll see.
