Newcastle earn well deserved win at Wigan.

Shola Ameobi.
Shola delivers the goods against Wigan.
As football matches go, this one won’t be remembered as a classic, and it certainly won’t be making any game of the season lists, but the result will do Newcastle rather nicely.

One of the criticisms of this season has been the fact that we have struggled to beat the teams that are going to be around us come the end of the season, but a fairly competent performance made sure that we saw off one of those teams at the DW Stadium yesterday. The win will hopefully give Newcasle a bit of momentum as they head into another crunch game against another team that is sitting below us in the table when West Ham United venture up to St James’ Park for the midweek game.

There was no sign of Andy Carroll despite rumours that he was going to have a late fitness test on his thigh injury, but that gave Alan Pardew the opportunity to play Shola Ameobi and Peter Lovenkrands up front together. To be fair, it was a good move and the pair worked well together. Shola looked ‘up’ for this game, and Loverman seemed to understand what he was going to do as they linked up superbly throughout the game.

In fact it was Shola Amebi who could have given us the lead just three minutes into the game when Danny Simpson crossed for an unmarked Shola to head wide from just about four yards out. It didn’t look so bad at the time as I happened to be stading at the other end of the ground, but I’ve seen it on TV since and I have to say that if Andy Carroll was aiming that header we would probably have gone a goal up.

Still, it wasn’t to be and Wigan quickly established a foothold in the game. Indeed they could have opened the scoring twice through Tom Cleverley, but the on-loan midfielder was denied by Steve Harper for the first attempt and by a lack of balance for the second one as he blazed over the bar.

The only goal of the game came on 19 minutes when Joey Barton took advantage of the Wigan defence, in particular Steve Gohouri, dallying on the ball. He stole the ball and volleyed a shot at goal that the Wigan ‘keeper spilled straight to Peter Lovenkrands. Lovenkrands stabbed the ball towards to goal but it struck the foot of the post and rebounded for an onrushing Shola Ameobi to smash into an empty net and send the Toon Army into raptures.

Newcastle continued to have the upper hand, in fact they had the upper hand for most of the match, despite not really playing that well. Wigan hit the bar through a Gary Caldwell header, but that header was dwarfed by Fabricio Coloccini’s 18-yard header that smacked against the Wigan crossbar, which kind of sums up the game for me. Everything that Newcastle did was just that little bit better than the hosts.

Wigan looked to assert themselves at the start of the second-half, but despite having the bulk of the ball they never really looked like they knew what to do with it. In fact the only thing Steve Harper had to in the second-half was pick up any loose balls that may have made their way through to him, although not a lot got past the excellent Fabricio Coloccini in fairness.

Newcastle had the only two clear cut chances of the half when they struck the crossbar again through Steven Taylor and when Leon Best fired wide after losing control of the ball on a probing run from the half-way line. To be fair, Newcastle could afford to waste these chances. Wigan looked like a side in real trouble yesterday, and without their star-man, former Magpie Charles N’Zogbia, they lacked that spark that can unlock teams.

Honourable mentions must got to our two Argentinians who both had excellent games. Colo was outstanding, and Jonas created problems all day for the Wigan right-back. Joey Barton was decent again and created most of our chances whilst Chiek Tiote had a great game in the middle of the park, and he didn’t pick up a booking either!

Alan Pardew deserves a mention aswell to be fair. I know he attracts a lot of stick from certain elements of our support, and he isn’t my first-choice by any stretch of the imagination, but the decision to bring on Wayne Routledge when he did was a good move that nullified their left-side, which looked to be their most dangerous attacking option. Routledge game them something to worry about, which broke up that Wigan threat.

All in all, as I said earlier, it was no classic, but the result is just what the doctor ordered after two defeats over the festive period.

Howay the lads!

Wigan: Ali Al Habsi, Steve Gohouri, Antolin Alcaraz, Gary Caldwell, Ronnie Stam, Hendry Thomas, Ben Watson, Jordi Gomez, Tom Cleverley, Mohamed Diame, Hugo Rodallega.

Subs: Mike Pollitt, Steve Caldwell, Adrian Piscu Lopez, Maynor Figueroa, James McArthur, Mauro Boselli, Callum McManaman.

Newcastle: Steve Harper, Danny Simpson, Steven Taylor, Fabricio Coloccini, Jose Enrique, Joey Barton, Cheik Tiote, Kevin Nolan, Jonas Gutierrez, Peter Lovenkrands, Shola Ameobi.

Subs: Tim Krul, Mike Williamson, James Perch, Alan Smith, Wayne Routledge, Leon Best, Nile Ranger.

Attendance: 15,277 (with roughly 4,000 Toon fans).

About toonsy

A lifelong Newcastle fan and current webmaster of this very 'blog who has the sole aim of creating a place by Newcastle United fans, for Newcastle United fans.

40 thoughts on “Newcastle earn well deserved win at Wigan.

  1. Hey up ILM 🙂

    I started it up on Saturday. Not many people are supposed to know about it yet lol

    What do you reckon?

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  2. The only way to start the day off, with gossip from that bloke of twitter 😀

    “Ashley at training ground on Monday to sign off permanent Ben Arfa (3.2m fee to be paid) & sanction deals put in place by Pardew”

    “Bentley, Ben Arfa (perm) striker on loan. Ashleys in town tomorrow”

    “Done deal! Bentley will soon be a #nufc player, striker also on loan, Ben Arfa announced tomorrow”

    Also reckons Dzeko has signed for City for £30 mil, so suppose we’ll find out soon how accurate he is.

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  3. morning batty
    toonsy the place looks great, the layout and colours are increadibly user friendly.
    Will be the place i’ll come from now on

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  4. Ben Arfa, Bentley and a striker would do me just fine for this window 😀

    Hope the bloke is right 😆

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  5. ILM – Cheers man. As I said, it’s only been going a couple of days, and I was at Wigan yesterday so didn’t have much time to tinker, but I’m working on it. As you may have guessed I’m not overly happy on .org so thought I would try and spread my wings lol

    I won’t be making this place public though until I’ve finished tweaking and got it looking spot on, but over time I want to make this place big 🙂

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  6. seeing that toonsy hadint even thought of a name 2 days ago lol aye nice and bright with the same great articles 🙂

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  7. Just bear in mind that it’s going to be quieter to start with until I can get this place oin Newsnow. 6 months they reckon, although I reckon I can get on earlier 🙂

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  8. yeah, as anyone who has followed him in the past knows, he does seem to know someone in the loop, he was bang on last summer with signings. The Dzeko signing, if true, will break soon enough so we’ll see how in the know he is.

    But on subject, he said a few days ago,
    Ben Arfa (perm)
    2x loan signings
    Young/squad players

    and I reckon that seems sensible anyway. Thing is in our situation, you need players ho can come in will do a job now, who don’t need time to settle in, we just couldn’t afford that. So because of this, any player from a foreign league linked with us I reckon will be rubbish, I would expect us to get loan in British, Premier league experienced players, who can start straight away and hit the ground running.

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  9. fair play mate, the .org blog has turned in to a bit of a circus really. I just want somehere to go to read the news, catch up on a bit of transfer gossip and talk about football.
    All got a little personal for me.
    And from the way the place looks already mate, i’m sure you ont have a problem getting the place popular

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  10. I agree, although looking at it objectively you could pretty much discount Ben Arfa. He is more like a summer signing if you know what I mean? Like he won’t be back to his best this season kind of thing.

    That would only leave us with Bentley really who is capable of playing from day one, so we still need more in my opinion. A striker would be good, but it depends on who it is.

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  11. And I’m keen to keept that off here 🙂

    I know it will happen at times, but I don’t want it to dominate things. Don’t get me wrong, things get heated and such and things will be said no doubt which will probably end in arguments lol but as long as it is done and doesn’t go OTT I don;t mind, and I don’t think others do really as long as it doesn’t start to dominate things.

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  12. Batty – I’ll get the numbers sorted out mate. Just writing another article at the minute 🙂

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  13. exactly batty
    he got the ball and it was not a malicious tackle but it was also a bit dangerous so can’t argue with the booking but for Poll to write some stuffs like this is silly.

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  14. why cant they get over them selfs and leave barton alone ,there was a load of worse tackles in the ragers celtic game yesterday

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  15. It’s the fact that Graham Poll pretty much said that they deserve special treatment because of their past that gets me.

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  16. love that too.
    and that practiced set-pieces from Barton’s corner to Colo just immense
    would be one hell of goal if that went in.

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  17. Well didn’t see the game yesterday but in my all consuming worry about Saylor I’ll say he was terrible anyway 🙂

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  18. it wasn’t pretty but the well deserved 3pts r pretty enough.
    Tonnsy this place is going well mate keep up the good work fella, and it wont b long till ur on ur 100th lol

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  19. Lads, I don’t want to jump on the “slagging off bandwagon” which has been doing the rounds on various toon blogs lately, but this post by Magpiemay 13 regarding Poll’s comments, really got my goat.

    This kind of comment by Poll is libellous in my opinion, dreadful reporting, and should not be allowed !

    Joey Barton is no saint, but if one follows the slow-mo of the tackle, he actually concentrates on the ball !

    At the same time, sad to say it, but Joey Barton seems to have mayble lost his timing of tackles since his spate of injuries. Reminds me somewhat of a certain Man U midfielder who alway seemed to be 2 seconds late for the tackle. Pity really, because a good tackle is part and parcel of the English game

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