Newcastle 1-0 Norwich – Match highlights

toonsy

Match highlights of the 1-0 victory over Norwich City for you all to enjoy now, including Papiss Cisse’s rather splendid finish which inevitably won the game for us.

If this is Papiss just settling in then I can’t wait until he is settled and firing on all cylinders!

It wasn’t pretty by all accounts, but after four games without a win I’d suggest that it wasn’t the performance that was most important thing and instead it was all about getting three points on the board.

It’s amazing what one result can do though isn’t it? I mean previously all the talk was of the Mackems and Everton possibly catching us up while Liverpool were a certainty to finish above us. Now we’re just two points behind Chelsea – who play Manchester City and Tottenham next, five points ahead of Liverpool and ten ahead of Sunderland and Everton.

Maybe the charge or 5th is back on?

Howay the lads!

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.

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101 thoughts on “Newcastle 1-0 Norwich – Match highlights”

  4. Perch definately MoM. I’d give him 8/10.

    I thin Cabaye is getting a bit too much stick. He was much further forward than in previous games a made a few chances, Himself and Perch bossed midfield. I’ll admit some of Cabaye’s passes were poor though.

    Guthrie made far too many mistakes. I don’t think he’s in the right frame of mind at the minute.

    HBA had good periods and i was surprised when he was taken of.

    Where we went wrong AGAIN was in defense. A complete lack of concentration and COMMUNICATION at the back. Willo had an absolute shocker – less said the better, simmo was ok – played his role well but acouple of times their left winger got in behind him. Colo was pretty solid but went a bit too far forward for my liking and had a couple of messy passes.

    Ba actually had a good game contrary to what some people’s opinion of him was. Just because he didn’t score doesn’t mean he played badly. His role was to hold the ball deep and give it to Cisse.

    Some people have complained that guti didn’t get forward enough. DUH – THAT’S BECAUSE HE WAS PLAYING AT LEFT BACK 😆

    I like that formation… When tiote is fit i’d like to see Tiote-cabaye-perch as our 3 in the middle.

    In short… Upfront did well – maybe needs to be a bit more clinical.

    Midfield – We owned midfield but our passing left a lot to be desired.

    Defense – poorest I’ve seen them all season.

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  5. I think cabaye played well Liam!

    He had a couple of sloppy passes… that’s it.

    I think some peoples comments come a game late so they just jump on the band wagon to make them look like they know what they’re talking about 😉

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  6. I would like to know how much ground he covered though he was everywhere. His distribution wasnt always great but when you have lack of movement around it aint half hard to play decent looking balls 😉

    Personally thought that a win was all the was required nothing else. It could have been a sticky game but we have goals in the team with cisse, ba, hba upfront. Our defence is weak willo and simmo in particular are suspect and better teams have and will pick them off.

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  8. Cabaye was ok, not great, not terrible. The same could be said for most of the team….3 points though and that is the only stat that matters to me :mrgreen:

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  9. Nobby – Im not alone! 😆
    I am suprised at the negativity really. Our confidence is clearly low and we looked jaded which worries me.
    I think BB said yesterday that we have had no cup run etc so why are we tired??
    Could it be we have to play so much harder than the opposition to get a result? Either way it highlights the lack of depth we have in the squad really.
    Im going to get slated for this but actually missed obertan thought his pace could have caused them problems and as norwich werent playing that well he could have gained a bit of confidence too

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  10. I thought Guthrie, although inconsistent, had some good spells. People don’t like him but some of his passing and movement is actually top draw. There was one point where Jonas was out of position and he actually got back to put a tackle in that probably saved us, but people only pick out the negatives. Perch was fantastic and that holding midfield role actually really suits him. Cisse is an absolute preditor, the finish on the outside of his foot was such a hard finish. He just looks like a natural goalscorer.

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  11. Liam Cabaye was fine. I think he has set such a high standard for himself that any sort of error now and people jump on it. He is clearly a top bloke and a top professional. He just gets on with it. He nearly got an assist as well.

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  12. DJG – I dont think its fans dont like him I think its more that they dont have a relationship with the player. With cabaye and tiote they are already cult status almost as they play most weeks and look good players.
    Whereas guthrie has been injured alot and never had a consistent run in the team hence the bias towards cabaye and tiote IMO.

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  13. DJG…Perch was sound, as he has been everytime he’s been called on this season. It won’t stop some slagging him based on nothing other than they havn’t liked him since day one though 🙄

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  14. Nobby yes Ba played well (does he ever not) but I was dissapointed when Cisse made way for Ameobi. I can understand why he did it but if there was one player that looked like scoring it was Pappis Cisse. He could have had a hat-trick in the first half.

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  16. I would say Cabaye was allright like most of the team, but they are capable of a lot more.
    Yeah at the end of the day its the 3pts that count, but we were ugly to watch and imo lucky to get the pts

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  18. Big Dave couldn’t agree more but I said I want 3 points don’t care how and I will be happy, so I am just happy. 😉

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  21. Is it just me or is the ENTIRE TEAM just based around how we can fit in HBA? I think he is either world class or average on the day it just depends which HBA turns up and yesterday he was average I thought. I still think we need to fit HBA and Cisse in to the team though. If it is the world class one turns up then we cannot have that just sitting on the bench.

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  24. dave your right ,its a shame taylor got injured as we would defo be in champs leauge position now 👿

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  26. Thought Willo had a shocker, as many have said. Sounded like the crowd began to turn on him though, which isn’t cool. Every time he had the ball people were laying into him – can’t be great for the lads confidence.

    I also thought Guthrie was awful. I usually rate Guthrie, but he wasn’t tracking back often and generally looked disinterested. Tbf, I thought he did OK going forward, but I was almost glad to see him injured as I was calling for him to be taking off long before he was.

    Actually thought Gosling looked tidy in his brief cameo.

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  27. Batts I was going to write that imo if Saylor had of been in the team we would have been well ahead of chelski, because although I think Simmo gets alot of unfair stick, he does go walk about quite a bit but when Saylor was in the team he kept him right, and wasn’t to shy to give him a bit of stick at times

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  28. Regards Willo, he was a top defender in the championship. Then he was playing well and probably punching above his weight a little. He doesn’t look to have the quality for this league any more though and he doesn’t have the all out aggression and win every ball in the air attitude to make up for it (like S Taylor and possibly JT do in my humble opinion) He has a case of Routledgeisis IMO, sort of caught between the championship and premier league.

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  30. Thought perch had his best game for us, Jonas was decent, Not vintage but three points is three points ive seen us play well and lose too many times to mention so ill not turn me nose up at a scrappy 1-0

    Also good subs by pardew shola, gosling and santon helped us keep the ball and killed any slight threat norwich had…

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  31. Cabaye played well yesterday almost had 2 great assists, 1 with ba where ruddy saved it with his finger nail and the ball that played cisse in where he got the lob wrong. other than that he ran ragged every were, tiote is back against west from.

    i would like to see perch tiote and cabaye in the centre.

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  32. Santon is a better option than Jonas at LB. If him getting forward is a problem then surely Pardew can tell him to stay back a bit, he would understand surely? he’s not a dog.

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  33. is Kadar still at the club or has he bin cleaning the toilets to earn his wage, i really would love to see him get a game ahead of willo, as he scares the living day lights out of me. he doesn’t look comfortable on the ball. how he is a professional footballer i will never know.

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  34. I see Norwich fans vandalised the Sir Bobby memorial garden yesterday. Real classy! 🙁

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  35. Unless they are protecting his dodgy knees?? Otherwise I can’t understand why Santon isn’t playing.

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  36. Another game we’ve won while playing poorly. I notice people mentioning all kinds of different points as to why but for my money it’s bleedin obvious. Simpson and especially Williamson have everyone nervous the whole game. Colo and Krul are on edge, we simply can’t bring the ball out, or play it through midfield which unsettles the midfield and the forwards are stranded on the half way line waiting for progression. Williamson looked like he’d never kicked a ball before. Dreadful. I’d play the tea lady instead. Anybody . . .

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  39. Georgio – A man that speaks sense! I’ve been saying the same thing for ages. We are no longer utilising our hard working midfield for attacking purposes, they have to constantly defend and chase down opposing players because we have reverted to hoofball.

    Our last 2 goals have both come from playing a little bit of carpet football, and it was the same for the first 10-12 games of the season.

    Loosing Saylor and seeing us progressively get worse is no coincidence, the lad is a top defender who helped Simmo out loads and helped keep the other defenders relaxed. Plus his distribution wasn’t half bad either.

    The sooner we get him back, sell Willo and buy a Premier League CB the better. When all our aspiration was to survive last season Willo was fine, but our targets have moved on and he is no longer good enough for where we want to be and should be moved on in the summer.

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  42. As good as Perch was, I did wonder why we were playing something like:

    ———–Cisse—-
    ——Ba——–Ben Arfa
    ———–Cabaye——
    —–Perch——-Tiote
    Guti, Colo, Willo, Simpson

    When, for me, this would have made more sense (sticking with the same formation):

    ———–Cisse—-
    ——Ba——–Ben Arfa
    ———–Guti——
    —Cabaye—–Tiote
    Perch, Colo, Willo, Simpson

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  44. There were plenty of highlights – Cabaye and Jonas produced two moments of absolute brilliance to set up Cisse who probably should have done a lot better.

    Unfortunately we also made a lot of mistakes that the neggers would prefer to focus on. What miserable lives they must lead!

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  47. TC – I agree, I don’t think it was a great performance but I thought Cabaye was better (still not back to his best) and if Cisse had scored with the pass he made it would have been looked at as world class…IMHO it was but because a goal wasn’t scored from it then it’s over looked.

    Cisse really should have had a first half hat-trick, but the lad is looking really good and we haven’t seen the best of his ability yet.

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  48. I understand not going with Remi Streete as he has had no 1st 11 experience however Kadar has. Right now Williamson’s confidence is shot. At best he is a lower half prem player and thats when he is at full confidence. Williamson as he is now is just embarassing – i almost feel sorry for the lad.

    My point is that to keep on playing him is detrimental to the team and also the player; hence stick Kadar in.

    IMO

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  49. i don’t believe we were playing long ball tactics yesterday. most plays came up the left wing passing through the centre or hba bombing forward.

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  50. Players like simmo and williamson dont breed confidence in team, they make the crowd edgy (naturally) and in turn this creeps onto the other players.

    I was at the game yesterday and noticed at times DG and also YC just flinging their arms in exasperation when Willo would knock it long, miss them out and put the ball into touch or on a Norwich players head.

    I dont blame AP, I just think our RB and CB positions need to be addressed in summer as a matter of priority.

    we are punching in this league with team we have

    or the quality in league is just gash this year

    bit of both

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  51. Just replace Tiote with Guthrie, then. At any rate, I don’t understand why we played Perch and Guiterrez out of position when neither was really necessary.

    Gutierrez was great in a central role vs Chelski last season and awful at fullback for Argentina, and Perch is a full back.

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  52. I saw some daft **** saying we played better last season 😆 And then someone added that only being 1 point better off than what we achieved in the whole of last season with 9 games to go is proof that we haven’t really progressed 😆

    Someone else then chimed in with our record of 1.1 points per game in 2012 being relegation form, even though that would get u 42 points from 38 games 😳

    I honestly reckon some of our “fans” would give the Mackems a run for their money! 🙄

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  53. Some people have short memories

    when williamson came back from injury and replaced perch at centre half, for the next few games people were like… ‘we look much better with a proper centra half’… ‘colo plays much better with a proper centr half’ ‘williamson played class today’

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  54. I also seem to remember a recent article by Statto that showed that Simpson was not only our best FB by a country mile, but was also one of the better performers in the Prem. Still gets so much stick that he closes his twitter account. I must admit that if I was a NUFC player reading these blogs I would wonder why I bother. Best Fans my ****.

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  55. i disagree BLIP… You can’t have Perch being the best player on the field (which he was) and say he shouldn’t have played. He was 100 times better than guthrie was yesterday. Also defensive midfielder is perch’s prefered position although he is known as a full back/centre back.

    He’s like R Taylor. He a brilliant utility player that you use when ever someone is injured. because they can cover a few place then they still get plenty game time.

    Guthrie is far too inconsistent to be a full time starting player.

    Guttierrez looked good at left back and you could argue that he’s been our best left back of the season from that performance.

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  56. I think the reason we are doing so well is because somehow we have aquired 2 top strikers, thats 2 more than Norwich and a lot of other teams have. Where would we be without Ba’s goals?? Answer = bottom 5. Cisse is like a magic duck that will keep laying golden eggs. He has to start from now on.

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  57. DJG – I don’t get your argument. It’s like saying if we didn’t have a goal keeper we would leak more goals…

    He’s a striker which we brought in to score our goals which he has done.

    But the whole season has been a team performance and it baffles me that people don’t see how hard working we have been.

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  58. @Nobby, I never said Perch shouldn’t have played – just seemed odd to play him and Gutierrez where they were, when I think we’d have looked more balanced if they swapped.

    There’s not much attacking impetus in a midfield 3 of Guthrie, Cabaye and Perch. Gutierrez in there might have linked the midfield with the front 2 a bit better.

    Any way, I do agree that lots of fans are being too harsh on the team, but that’s what happens when you spend a season in the top 6 – you start to believe the hype. I just find it weird that, when we were playing quite well and winning, the press kept predicting the bubble bursting. Now, when we’re playing badly, all we hear is “Newcastle not playing as well as they can do” and predictions like “Newcastle will be too strong for X”.

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  59. Where would we be with say Shola or Lovenkrands as our main striker? You make it sound like Ba is the sort of signing that we just ‘snap up’ every summer whenever we feel like. He’s not, teams have payed a lot of money for strikers that haven’t got half his goals.

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  61. Anyone see Pardew’s comments about winning 4 of the remaining 9? Apparently 5/9 would be beyond the team! I can see why he’d be keen to manage supporter expectation, but it can’t help the teams confidence to hear that!

    Anyhow, 4 wins (and 5 losses, for clarity’s sake) = 59 points if we can do it. ‘Pool would then need 5 and a bit wins and the Scum 7 and a bit to catch us.

    Looking at Liverpools run-in, think 6th is theirs if we can’t win more than that. But I’m not so scared of Sunderland anymore – they still have City, Utd, Everton and Tottenham to play.

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  62. Also interesting that with a strikeforce containing Ba and Ben Arfa, we’ve only scored more than 2 goals in 3 PL games this season – and we chose 2 of the hardest times to do it (Man U, and Stoke (A)).

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  63. and what does best fans mean?? in terms of following the team in numbers to away and home games, ya, we are up there definetly. sell every away end and always make shedloads of noise

    in terms of not criticisng players, and being fickle – we as NUFC fans are amongst the worst at that

    in terms of idolising players who come in and do well, making them honoury geordies and naming our kids after them – then again, we are the best at that

    thats just geordies prem – passionate as fook. as king kev pointed out; going to St.James is more than just going to watch a game

    its more than that; much more. and we expect (right or wrong) a performance as well as points

    even AP said it takes a special player (right charcter) to play for this club because of the nature of us as fans

    if he knows it as a londoner why don’t you?

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  64. Everyone knows Willo, Perch, etc are not top class but they are not doing THAT badly and we will stengthen in the summer. What is the use of going on and on about how they’re *****?! Who is this helping?!. I think Willo’s biggest problem is keeping his cool on the ball and picking the right pass, but he’s certainly not the only one who’s been guilty of that lately.

    It’s been a great season and if we can relax a bit and stop with the hoofball we can finish above those filthy scousers!! 🙂

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  65. Blip – he’s just setting a realistic goal. Colo said 5/9, its just to give them something to aim for, not saying they can’t do better. Same way they set point targets every month and pards gave the defence the goal of 10 clean sheets for the season. That doesn’t mean he’ll now say oh ok you concede as much as you want now. They’ll try to reach that goal as soon as possible and then push on from that if they can.

    And who says he wanted 5 defeats? Is it not more realistic to the 4W, 3D and allow for two defeats against say chelsea and city?

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  67. @Dubtoon, I see your point, but I think the phrasing could have been better. Rather than “I don’t see us winning 5/9”, why not “we’re targeting as many wins as possible?”.

    Obviously he’s not going to be telling the players to win 4 then stop trying, but I’m sure some of them read/watch his interviews.

    As for the win 4/lose 5, I never meant the team would be happy to do so, it was just a simpler calculation than win 4… some draws… some defeats.

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  68. Jon R – i was saying this to solano last night. Yes, we won’t get a long term fix til the summer bvut would it not be worth trying, say, Perch at cb. Willo’s confidence is shot and we don’t need to go into his problems. Perch was one of our better players when filling in for saylor vs norwich and swansea. Yes we conceded 4 (3from set pieces) vs norwich but that was more a result of having simpson playing cb with no experience and no height. Kept a clean sheet vs swansea in the next game? Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, but he cant be more shaky than willo at the moment. He’ll be full of confidence. I don’t think it can hurt to try him.

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  69. I truely hope whoever vandalised the Sir Bobby Robson Memorial Garden has met a grisly end in an horrific car crash on their way back to the land of the twelve fingered people.
    Completely unbelievable.
    Anyhoo, ***** 2nd half, 3 points in the bag. Happy days.
    Also Papisto, 3 goals in 4 starts. Couldnt ask for more really.
    😆

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  70. Blip – maybe you’re right, the only interview i saw he said he wanted 4 more wins, didn’t mention not being good enough for 5. I’d still say though that’s a slip of the tongue more than anything. Probably a bit harsh to scrutinise too much. Anyway, he was 4 or 5 before the game and then after he wasn’t saying 3 or 4, he said 4, so already he’s expecting that little bit more

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  71. SW – 3 in 3 :mrgreen: came on for best vs villa. A technicality i know but still. He hasn’t played a full 90 yet has he?

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  72. DJG – Sorry I still have no idea what you are arguing. We sold a striker in the January for 35 million. We seen the rest of the season out with Besty who did admirably but wasn’t the long term answer. The club knew Shola’s legs had gone and that McLoven was probably not going to be able to step up to help us with a target of Europe (I believe the club had already set this as a target in the summer). And we still had that useless Xisco on the pay role so a big money striker was off the cards.

    We hear rumours of Cisse, but it never materialises but we sign Ba on a free who was a proven premier league striker who scored goals in a **** team…perfect for us along with the odd goals that Best can chip in. We play out the first half of the season then BAM! Out of no where we sign Cisse, obviously something that has been worked on for months.

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  73. @Dubtoon, I don’t particularly disagree with anything you just said. For reference, this is the interview I was working off:

    “It gives us nine games, and we’ve got to win four of them. That’s possible.

    “If we hadn’t have won, we’d have had to win five, and I don’t think we’d have done that.”

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  74. Funniest thing yesterday was in the first half Benny dribbled the ball out of defence in the Gallowgate corner. Seconds later Williamson tried the same and was all over the place.

    The three narrow in midfield had its moments but I wouldn’t persevere with it. In the end Guthrie and Cabbaye were getting in each other way and Perch looked the stand out.

    Why do we pass the ball to Williamson? He can do nowt with it.

    Also get the ball to Benny earlier this six or seven passes across our back line is never gonna come to anything

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  75. DIFSB I do regognise the passion. I also know the power that passion has. It can be a great motivating force, which you rightly identify AP as recognising. It is however, the demotivating effect that it can also have. The Players do notg live in a vacuum and if that passion is directed against players, it will impact upon players. Last year people were arguing whether Saylor would dislodge Willo. Now he’s not fit to wear the shirt. Some can’t wait to get rid of Simmo. Peronally I feel that passion is affecting our performance. Earlier on Ed’s blog someone was ranting that we deserve better than this mediocrity. Best fans was provocative. VERY passionate agreed. But lets use that passion creatively not destructively,

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