Ba boom boom boom – Demba’s hat-trick finishes off Blackburn. Match report.

September 24th, 2011 | 25 Comments |

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…)