Game On! Swansea v Newcastle – Santon starts at left-back!

Game On at The Liberty
It’s Game On again right now as the Easter fixture schedule springs into action with Newcastle travelling to the depths of South Wales to take on Swansea City.

Newcastle go looking or a fourth win on the spin, something not achieved for a good few years, but it won’t be easy against a team who have capacity to cause damage and who will be looking to get back to winning ways after two defeats in a row.

It’s an excellent game in prospect, with much being made of Swansea’s slick possession game coming up against our pacey and creative attack. We can win, but we’ll need to be on top of our game right from the word go to get something from a ground which has proved fruitless for Premier League “big guns” like Manchester City and Arsenal.

Of course something that may tip the balance in our favour is the fact that we have something to play for still, with Europe on the agenda for Alan Pardew and Co. Swansea are safe and have little to play for other than pride, so maybe that is something that can work in our favour? Maybe not? Who knows? It won’t be long before we find out though…

Team news will be featured below and will be updated as soon as is humanly possible. For a change I’m actually off today so Big Dave and Jobey and the rest can put their feet up and let the master take the reins once more.

For more background, build up, analysis, stats and facts ahead of the match you need look no further than our very own match preview. You might have missed it earlier as I posted another article about ten minutes later so if you haven’t had a read make sure you do so. Mind if that’s not enough then make sure you have a peek at NUFC_stats’ marvellous “Stat Attack”.

And that just about wraps it up…

Howay the lads!

Swansea: Michel Vorm, Angel Rangel, Steven Caulker, Ashley Williams (capt), Neil Taylor, Leon Britton, Joe Allen, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Nathan Dyer, Wayne Routledge, Luke Moore.

Subs: Gerhard Tremmel, Alan Tate, Garry Monk, Josh McEachran, Mark Gower, Scott Sinclair, Danny Graham.

Newcastle: Tim Krul, Danny Simpson, Mike Williamson, James Perch, Davide Santon, Yohan Cabaye, Cheik Tiote, Jonas Gutierrez, Hatem Ben Arfa, Demba Ba, Papiss Cisse.

Subs: Rob Elliot, James Tavernier, Shane Ferguson, Ryan Taylor, Mehdi Abeid, Dan Gosling, Shola Ameobi.

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.

414 thoughts on “Game On! Swansea v Newcastle – Santon starts at left-back!

  1. @310…. i said 3-0 the toon in the first half!! relax… jesus is a geordie

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  2. If this holds, there has to be a lot of praise for Pardew today. The 4-2-3-1 with Cabaye just behind the striker, the orders to keep Swansea’s right side quiet, as evidenced by Ba and Cisse spending so much time back there defending, conceding Swansea their own half and totally congesting our half has worked very, very well.

    On Ba: he could easily have had the goals today if those two chances from Cabaye had come when Ba was up top, no?

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  3. **** off Ashley Williams.

    I have no idea how Swansea don’t have more cards, they keep possesion and if they lost it from a loose ball they charge down and generally foul the opposition to stop a quick break. Decent tactics for them maybe, but not pretty.

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  4. We should not read too much into Bas demeanor ,he may just be under the weather or have had a knock like.

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  5. I don’t recommend anyone read the live BBC text thing, some of the comments are pure ignorance.

    Talk of Tiote, Cabaye, Ba, Cisse, Ben Arfa, Krul and pretty much everyone going in the summer. One **** even said “Ben Arfa has to go to a big club this summer, he won’t want to stay at NUFC”.

    The muppet is a Chelsea fan, who are below us. Morons.

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  6. Unsung heroes today perchinio and jonas. Cabbaye and Cisse will get the headlines

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  7. Nothing created down our right or through the centre really, just a few problems down the left. Yet another solid showing from Simmo and Willo, Perch well, class is permanent 😀

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  8. Think Williamson has been good today also. Not a lot has got past him.

    Just thought I’d be unfashionable there like 😉

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  9. Dippers fans **** must be boiling when they look at our £9M goal machine upto their £35m dud 😆 😆 😉

    FUNKY@328 BBC =Bloody biased **** 😉

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  10. Seriously though Ba needs to chug some syrup down and chin up, his moodiness is getting on my tits

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  11. Possession stat: Newcastle 35% vs. Swansea 65%
    Score State: Newcastle 100% vs. Swansea 0%

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  12. There you have it lads and 4 points ahead on my points predition too 56 and climbing woo hoo.

    Are you watchin Sunderland , mind the gap. 😈

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  13. Sunderland and Man City wins tomorrow, and a Wigan draw at Chelsea, would do very nicely thank you… 😆

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  14. Kimtoon,

    To be fair, it isn’t the BBC saying that, it’s the people tweeting their account saying those things. They seem totally ignorant of our players and are shocked at the quality and assume the “big teams” have a divine right to pick them up as if we are a feeder club.

    I now totally understand how teams like Wigan, etc. feel when they find a real gem at a cheap price and some big team swoops in and takes them like we used to do a decade or so ago.

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  15. Glad to see the “modern manager” Swansea have got taught a lesson by out “inferior dinosaur” today 😀

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  16. Cisse is just fucking amazing. 9 goals in 8 games. Every club in the world should sit up and take notice. Hopefully Fat Mikey will realise that he’s worth more playing for us than the 40mil we’ll get offered for him over the summer.

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  17. Just realized that there is a high probability that we will end up in 4th by Easter. If Arsenal lose to City which is very likely, and we beat Bolton, we’re 4th 😯

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  18. Great 3 points. Didn’t get to watch a lot of the game and any bits i did see were on my phone but I thought we played well. Yeah Swansea had a lot of the ball but thought we handled it well. Cisse is immense. Simple as.

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  19. Hopefully Cisse has shown Mike Ashley that while his penny pinching has worked so far, it DOES work to spend big money if you believe the man is right.

    We can’t work on free transfers and cheapos forever if we want to really push to be top 6 regularly.

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  20. Will you all forgive me for wanting the sad mackems bastrads to win tomorrow

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  21. Richie-Nah mate we’ve got plenty of strikers that don’t score , Shola and Bestie don’t get that hissy.
    Fair enough Best sometimes tried ridiculous shots, but Ba doesn’t even seem to want to celebrate anymore….and we shouldn’t be changing the formation just for him. Still, hopefully he’ll get another soon.

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  22. To be fair Toonsy, Swansea were very good, but pretty isn’t everything! Points are!!!

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  23. Toby-we’re all in the same boat there mate. They’ll probably lose on purpose to spite us though! 👿

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  24. So what do the neggers think? Still think you can run the club better than fatty?

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  25. TC….can’t possibly give pardew, Ashley, llambias any credit…it’s the tea lady, bar staff & car park attendants who are making the difference 😉

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  26. I’ve just seen the stats for the match, it was as one sided a game in terms of possession as the game at SJP but in reserve (we dominated at SJP is what I mean) – difference again is strikers in form!!!

    How much did pay for Cisse again?! What a steal that lad is!!

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  27. Marvellous defensive display. Great organisation. The back line were immense and the midfield covered a lot of ground.I think we played an intelligent game without the ball, and that has a lot to do with the manager.

    Over the moon with that win. Swansea just don’t have a playmakeror the necessary striker to make their system work. If they don’t get a few people next season I can see them struggling – everybody knows how to play them now. There are no more surprises.

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  28. Everyone down on Ba now .I really hope the media don’t make a big deal outta that .He may just of been feeling ill or something .To be fair he has always been first to celebrate with Papiss when he scores.Ba looked slow and out of sorts today but I don’t think he was in a huff,more likely unwell .

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  29. Newkie…. top goal scorers aren’t happy when not scoring, if it didn’t bother them then they wouldn’t be top strikers….as for Shola and Bestie, they are just happy to be at the Toon and they’re not top goal scorers/strikers.

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  30. @FJ
    Yeah I really hope the media don’t brew up a storm, he didn’t look happy to come off but why would he? No players are thrilled to be subbed, and strikers are always disappointed not to score, it’s not like he threw a strop or anything. I’d be more concerned if he was ecstatic to be subbed!

    Judge a player over a season, every player goes through purple patches and leaner patches, he isn’t on scintillating form but only THE very best players are constantly on top form. In terms of strikers in this league, we have 1:RVP.

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  31. Joe Allen was the MOTM? What a joke, do swansea enjoy watching painfully boring football?

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