Back in contentionNewcastle United injury round-up and manager’s opinions ahead of Saturday’s visit to Old Trafford.
There’s good news for Alan Pardew as the word on the street is that Gabriel Obertan will be fit for Saturday’s game, although it remains to be seen whether or not he gets a start. Less encouraging news is that Tiote is still ‘doubtful’ with his knee ligament problem, although as far as I understand he hasn’t been ruled out yet.
Leon Best is likely to be back in contention for his usual place up front alongside Demba Ba too but I wonder how Pardew will set things up. Hatem Ben Arfa showed signs of some of the skills we bought him for when he played against Manchester City, but is it enough for Pardew to start him even with Best fit?
Anyway, Pardew fears a backlash from Man United’s midweek draw and said:
“I know he will be smarting from Wednesday’s draw, so unfortunately, we are on the back of a negative from Manchester United’s point of view, so it will be a tough game for us.” (more…)
Martins - Scorer in our last match at Old Trafford.It’s getting close, very close, to kick-off time for the new Premier League season. Once again we will be Old Trafford bound, where it is fair to say that our record has less than impressive over the years.
It’s been 38 years since our last league win at Old Trafford, and I don’t see that run coming to an end this season. You never know though I suppose, stranger things have happened at sea and all that.
Anyway, Manchester United away is probably the toughest away fixture out there to be honest. It isn’t often they lose at home, but they have picked up a reputation for being slow starters to the league campaign. That is a bit of a myth in fairness, but I’ll go into that a bit later. First, lets take a look at how Newcastle United tend to kick-off the new season. (more…)
Our magnificent support.I wrote yesterday about how it appears that our away allocations for the first few away matches of the season have been cut.
If you missed that article, or wish to read it again, you can have a look at it here.
I’ll give a brief re-cap of what was uncovered yesterday. Basically it came to light that our away ticket allocations appear to have been cut for the forthcoming season.
Instead of over 3,000 fans at Old Trafford on Monday evening, we will now have just 1,800. The same applies to Wolves, where we again could have had around 3,000 fans, yet we are only taking around 1,100. This means that a lot of fans are going to miss out, fans that either can’t get to, or don’t want to go to, St James’ Park will now find it more of a struggle to secure a match ticket for an away game. Those £20 memberships may help, but they most definately aren’t as helpful as they once were. (more…)
Our magnificent support.Newcastle fans get called all sorts of things, some of them less than complimentary. Deluded, impatient, demanding, passionate, partisan, thick, stupid are just a few tags that I have read about us.
There is one word I have missed out of all that though: Loyal. I can remember scenes from last season where we took 7,000 to Barnsley, 5,500 to Nottingham Forest among others. Clubs cashed in our away following, and rightly so. Why not?
We sold out practically every away end last season, and most of them gave us roughly the same amount of tickets as teams in the Premier League do. The demand is there. Newcastle have a massive fanbase from all over the country, all over the world in fact, and quite a few of those don’t get the chance to go to St James’ Park very often, for differing reasons, which means an away trip, to perhaps a more local team, is the more viable option. (more…)
Joey Barton looking forward to Old Trafford.The season draws ever closer, which means Manchester United away also draws ever closer. It’ll be a tough ask to try and get any result there, but the players believe they can do it.
Particularly Joey Barton and Jonas Gutierrez who both reckon that this Newcastle squad are capable of getting a result at Old Trafford. Confidence – I like that!
I can see it from their angle, what is the point in playing football if you fear getting beat? It’s going to happen at some point, and lets be honest, our record at Manchester United was never exactly sparkling, even with our “superstar” players of the past, in fact we have been on the end of some proper thumpings at the hands of the Red Devils before! (more…)
