Newcastle 1-1 Aston Villa – Match highlights and interviews

Match highlights of the 1-1 draw with Aston Villa yesterday for you all to ponder over now.

It should have been three points yesterday but it wasn’t to be and in the end I would say that a draw is a fair result. Paul Lambert’s side worked hard for their share of the spoils and caused us problems all afternoon whilst we once again looked bereft of ideas until a moment of magic from Hatem Ben Arfa.

The thing is we are relying on him too much. Villa did a good job of marking him out of the game in the first half and we saw nothing from the talented Frenchman. That wasn’t especially his fault as there is only so much one player can do when he has two or three following him around.

However this is where his team mates should be stepping up and taking some of the strain and to be fair they just aren’t right now and that needs to change.

The pleasing side is that it is plainly obvious we can play better than we have been doing and I’m pretty certain everything will click into place at some point. When it does we’ll be fine but the longer our disjointed performances go on the harder it will be to keep up with the big boys like we did last season.

Onwards and upwards I guess…

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.

85 thoughts on “Newcastle 1-1 Aston Villa – Match highlights and interviews

  1. We have Jonas, Perch, Fergie, Tav, Anita who can all cover Rylor, Simmo and Santon.

    We have Anita, Jonas, Cabaye, Tiote, Bigi, possibly Abeid and Gosling to deal with holding midfield positions.

    We have enough flexibility within our squad to cope with a few injuries – and the right blend of experience and youth. Just need to utilise it correctly.

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  2. I agree shamrock we have enough cover for defense and midfield , I would be worried about up top. Hopefully we dont get many injuries to Cisse Ba and Shola til Jan!

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  3. JT – I agree re: striker. It’s the 1 area we needed somebody. Dongt think Campbell is quite there yet. I do think however, that once match sharp Vuckic will make a great withdrawn striker behind either Ba or Cisse. He has a knack of being in the right place at the right time and he knows how to shoot from range. Just needs to sort his touch out, which will come with game time. – So even up front we are not desparate – but that will obviously change in January if we lose the two Demba’s to the ACON…

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  4. Shamrock , yeah very true about Vuckic , I forgot about him! He done alright against the Greek side and fair enough his goal had a slice of luck in it , he still scored it! I do think we have a good underbelly of youth there , Ferguson Sammi etc etc and its up to them to grab this oppurtunity. I dont think all will but if we 3 of them we d be doing very well

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  5. Yeah, question marks over Sammi, Tav and Campbell (very young and inexperienced yet) for me – but Vuckic, Fergie and Bigi should all make it given the right blend of game time and tutoring. I reckon Fergie will be OK, great ability – just needs to seriously sort his stamina out. I think his problem is learning to pace himself. He gives his all and burns himself out. Just needs to learn when to step off the accelerator a bit!

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  6. Still disappointed we didn’t start 433 yesterday. Could have been very different game, especially if Marveaux replaced Cisse on the 60th. Just frustrating to watch

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  7. I think we have a good amount of depth and flexibility. Just need to find some goals that don’t require a moment of absolute brilliance. No more 4-4-2 please

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  8. Rodz, the scary thing is the fooker would score a few too 😯

    Would rather stick toothpicks in me eyes than watch that git ply his trade in our colours though… 😀

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  9. I have similar sentiments, Shamrock. He’ll probably only last 2 games for whoever he signs for anyway. And no doubt he’ll want stupid money too.

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  10. …it’d be nice to think we have a striker lined up for January, when Ba and Cisse do one to Africa.

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  11. Problem as I see it is that we don’t seem to know how to set up the strikers we have. We seem to have 3 players where hope that if we get the ball to them they will somehow create a moment of magic and a goal will result. Nolan knew how to get the best out of Carroll. Best the best out of Ba. But now, what’s the plan?

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  12. I can’t understand why they keep persisting with this 4-4-2 system when nine times out of ten they have to change it at half time because it isn’t working anyway. We just haven’t got the players to play it. If we are going to play 4-4-2 we need wingers that can cross the ball into the box and Jonas and Ben Arfa don’t do that. The only winger that puts crosses into the box is Obertan against a slow fullback! Jonas is more suited to being an a 3 man midfield where he covers the ground and when we played the 4-5-1/ 4-3-3 system at home to Everton we outplayed them. I wish they could realise that we haven’t got the players to play 4-4-2 and play to our strengths. Ba and Cisse just spent all day chasing hopeful long balls.

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  13. Whatever the plan I just don’t think cisse and ba play well when paired together. Either play ba on the left of a 3 man front or play Benny off a lone forward and alternate ba and cisse. Plenty of minutes this year to keep both happy I reckon

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  14. MDS, I agree, I think Pardew is just playing the ‘big guns’ when they are available. Eg. when Ba is fit, he plays, when Cisse is fit, he plays. When Jonas/Cabaye are fit, they play. The trouble is though, the players need to be able to fit into a system; not fitting a system around the players.

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  15. PREMANDUP @13

    I think you hit the nail on the head when you said, ‘We seem to have 3 players where hope that if we get the ball to them they will somehow create a moment of magic and a goal will result.’ And yesterday it took a moment of sheer class from HBA. Other than that there is zero ideas, even set pieces have been awful atm and no-one seems to want to take them. What happened to Cabaye? 😕 Pardew said on the radio that wet plays were an area they were going to work on and they have got worse IMO not better. 🙁

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  16. Last Season Tiote & Cabaye were the two hardest working midfielders in PL . Jonas was needed to protect the defence. Obertan was our out ball. HBA was not ready. Best & Ba worked well together. 4-4-2 made sense. Now it may work against teams with weaker midfields but we look better 4-2-3-1. Still fergie favours 4-4-2. Wonder when we will go 3-3-1-3.

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  17. We played our best stuff 4-3-3 last year and really battered teams on the counter. Cabaye was at his best in a forward role. Place him in front of Anita/bigi and tiote and bring Jonas off the bench or play him at fb cuz 4-4-2 hasn’t worked for awhile now

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  18. Djg I think you are right with pards. He seems to go out of his way to keep the big ones happy. I know that is part of management and important for the season but so is making difficult personnel decision. I just think that with Europe this season he has enough matches to have it both ways

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  19. Jonas is a valuable player and he does work hard but I just don’t think it is working playing him as a LW. He spends most of the time covering back or trying to dribble the ball into a dead end. Villa just stuck 2 players on him and nullified him. The most productive thing he does is win free kicks in most games. Why not put him in a 3 man midfield with Tiote/Bigi and Cabaye as the creator. Let him cover ground and do what he does best. Tiote fills the space of 2 people anyway so don’t need 4. I thought Anita looked good at RB, why not play him there? Then Jonas etc. can just concentrate on defending and have 3 dedicated attackers.

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  20. Got to disagree with most on here. We created plenty of chances and the Dembas just missed them. And our CBs went missing to allow in their goal.

    There’s no big science to it – our senior players just made mistakes they wouldn’t have last season when they were in form. They’ll come good.

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  21. No more 442 and I will be happy. Don’t like the Dembas up front together it simply don’t work . Keep Anita at RB now Simmo is out as he looked o.k though I appreciate he will get sterner test ,still it’s worth a try. Bigi looked good and was impressed with Oba in the short time he was on .We must play to our strengths which isn’t suited to 442 mostly, but most of all we need to press more .Yesterday Villa pressed us all game and worked their socks off ,our lads simply didn’t put in a shift .Regarding Pards ,yes he was a smart **** prior to the game but in his post match interview he gave a lot of praise to Villa and how hard they worked.I saw on a Villa forum one fan posted Pards post match comments and praised him for being so respectfull of their performance.

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  22. Andymag@26 ,That’s mental if not a little bit scary 😆 She’s very pretty ,I wonder if Pards will be shown it by someone.

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  23. Think it is well deserved , could of been alot worse , he cant go pushing officals , even if they got a decession horribly wrong. The ball had gone out for a throw 👿

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  24. I’m assuming he wrote my name in place of Nobby’s otherwise it doesn’t make any sense? Unless i’m just being thick 😉

    And bloody hell, get in there Silver Fox, she’s bangin 😯

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  25. I think we made a few good chances-Ba’s cross in that Cisse hit first time, Benny’s header and Cisse’s fluffed header spring to mind. Thing is if they had been other players (I.e Shola because the lad can header 😉 ) or it had been last season with them in form then one of them would have found the net. I thought we were averaging out considering last year Ba and Cisse put away half chances most players could only dream of doing and now their spurning chances which I guess shocks some people.

    Still, start the next one in 4-3-3 or 4-3-1-2 please Pards, 4-4-2 is a joke with the players we’ve got for a number of reasons.

    And re Ramadan, I think it does have an effect, you can say look at Ben Arfa but i’d also suggest that he might not be quite so strict as Ba, not so sure about the Cis. Ba was definitely the sharper though.

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  26. Shamrock, the crazy one’s are the best though 😉 . Danger just add’s to the excitement. Besides, no chance she could outfox the Silver Fox himself.

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  27. Shamrock
    Pardew would have MR T and Mr Big to back him up, should she get stabby. Pards would deal wit himself though, the master tactition he is. I hope he sends her a signed photo 😆

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  28. I see eds on the situation aswell, sending an article on it 😀 , this girl probably didnt realise the attention she’d get from this 😮

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  29. Can she be the captain of our cheerleaders? To be honest if there’s one thing I liked about the american tour (along with the commentators) was the cheerleaders at half time…Better than a pie, they even give pints a run for their money…

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  30. i felt sorry for ba and cisse yesterday

    not one quality pass into them, just hopeful long balls. watching anita it was almost as if he was aksed to pump long diagonals into the box. That is not his game. Im sure he didnt learn that at the famed ajax academy

    shame really

    we have better players than the display we put on yesterday

    id rather lose 4 – 3 playing well than draw 1 – 1 playing like that

    then again, if we play well more times we will win 😆

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  31. (THIS IS A GOVERNMENT HEALTH WARNING. THIS POSTER IS LIABLE TO DISAGREE WITH YOUR POINT OF VIEW. ONLY ENGAGE IF YOU AREN’T SENSITIVE AND  DON’T TAKE HISSY FITS)

    @Newkie

    I meant to type Nobby not newkie. Soz. 😉

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  32. Anyone else see the news about the sewdish footballer who died on the pitch? It was only a few minutes after he scored 🙁 .

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  33. Andy-Didn’t see that, but I did look at a list of football fatalities a while back. Seems like these heart problems have been around for over a 100 years, was actually quite surprised by how often/how spread it was, I guess it’s not been publicized much here since Muamba.

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  34. So Pards got a 2 game ban and a small fine, thats not bad because I thought the would have made a real example of him.

    DIFSB I know what you mean but I would still rather have an ugly 1 pt than no points as it could make a big difference come the end of season, just think an ugly 1pt would have saved us from being relegated 😉

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  35. Newkie
    Aye, the muamba thing really opened our eyes to these things happening. We’re hearing about incidents like it all the time now around sport, making it seem like a growing problem, whereas the truth of the matter as you said is that its been happening for years, just not in the public eye.

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  36. Andy-Aye. Just one of those things unfortunately. I remember when I was at uni last year my housemate was doing the Reading half marathon and one of the runners who was a proper keen sportsman, early 30s and fit as a fiddle and had done full marathons in previous years just had a heart attack in the middle of the run.

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  37. Dave
    What would have happened if we weren’t relegated do you think? I do agree that the ugly points are just as useful as the beautiful ones, Man U have won the league several times from managing to win a match whlst playing **** football, but you have to be exceedingly lucky which unlike manure that is something we never were(bar the atromitos game).

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  38. Newkie
    Is a shame, sometimes doctors dont find out they have a problem till it is too late. I personally think they should do regular checks, for sports like football they should have checks at least once a month, whilst sports such as marathons, the runners should be checked the night before.

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  39. Andy god knows what would have happened if we didn’t get relegated, I know we had some deadwood etc but I still blame relegation on the several changes of managers and that fact that that caused the player to not really know what was happening, but I can still remember the yr before when KK got most of the same players playing well.
    As for luck I believe we got our own fair share of luck last season 😉

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  40. We drew our Villa away match last year in a very tight game which we could have lost. We went on to do well. The answer is simple, take 3 points off of them at their shitty stadium in a few months and we’ll be fine 😉

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  41. Scaramanger…think he’d be suited for Mick Mccarthy actually. Goldfinger would be Steve Bruce the fat *******.

    Also Goldie for Hoots 😆

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  42. Our league cup game v Man U is on SKY 26th September. Thought we had a Europa game near that time but I guess it must be later.

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  43. Hey who was it that posted the ten (or so) rules for running a successful football club? Or does anyone have a link for it? Trying to find it for an assignment but having no luck.

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  44. So what have I missed the past 5 days?? 😕
    I’ve been out hunting a rogue koala that has been terrorizing a small bush camping site. He was a ferocious little ****** and it took a few shots to finally put him down 😯 At least the good people camping can sleep safely in their tents at night now… 😎

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  45. I see our U21’s were solid again last night. Beat Stoke 5-1, hat trick for Innman and a goal for JJ Hooper but Campbell missed a pen :shock:, Good played and Tav captain.
    Looking at the team and I reckon theres a 5-6 with a real chance of making the first team in time.

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  46. Ice 😀 I used a Woomera mate and I gave him 50mm head start 😆 You should know what that is, with you nearly being part Aussie and all that :mrgreen:

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  47. AMF aye i knew you were a sporting sort of chap.
    what you think about sat game?it seemed to me the players are lacking that “bite”they showed last season some players dont look happy imo

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