Game On! Newcastle v West Brom

toonsy
St James' Park.

St James' Park.
Game On at St James’ Park
Newcastle welcome West Bromwich Albion to St James’ Park this afternoon in a match in which the home side will be looking to put to rest some alarming stats against the Midlanders.

As pointed out in my match preview. we have a rather alarming run of recent results against the Baggies with only one win in seven matches against the Midlanders post-relegation and following the subsequent promotion of both sides.

Not just that but we also have a penchant for suffering after our European exploits. Both league defeats this season have followed our exploits in Europe, although I blame the fact that both defeats were against superior opposition in Chelsea and Manchester United as opposed to any lingering “continental hangover” effect. Having said that we’ve only scraped one win after a European game with the other match ending in a draw. None of the performances have exactly been sparkling but that will have to change this afternoon if we are to get anything from this game.

The game is not scheduled for live transmission here in the UK, but it being broadcast in other parts of the world. Please feel free to leave a link to any decent stream in the ‘comments’ section below.

As always team news will be up in full as soon as I can get it published. You may have to bear with me a little bit though as I’m at a family dinner right now so will have to sneak away from the dinner table to publish it. Again keep an eye on the comments section though as there is always somebody hot off the mark and willing to share the teamsheet if you look closely enough.

Howay the lads!

Newcastle: Tim Krul, Danny Simpson, Mike Williamson, Fabricio Coloccini, Davide Santon, Hatem Ben Arfa, Yohan Cabaye, James Perch, Jonas Gutierrez, Demba Ba, Shola Ameobi

Subs: Steve Harper, Steven Taylor, Shane Ferguson, Vurnon Anita, Gabriel Obertan, Sammy Ameobi, Papiss Cisse.

West Brom: Ben Foster, Gabriel Tamas, Gareth McAuley, Jonas Olsson, Liam Ridgewell, Youssouf Mulumbu, James Morrison, Peter Odemwingie, Zoltan Gera, Graham Dorrans, Romelu Lukaku.

Subs: Luke Daniels, Gonzalo Jara Reyes, Goran Popov, Yassine El Ghanassy, Markus Rosenberg, Shane Long, Marc-Antoine Fortune

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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213 thoughts on “Game On! Newcastle v West Brom”

  3. Kim 🙂 🙂 mine’s spilt too 🙂

    Newkie, I was talking about shola not tracking back for the full 60 mins he was on. He should not have been playing in front of Simmo. One of the few times he did he played them onside….

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  8. I’ll settle for a point here. Ben Arfa and Cabaye’s second half performances have been shocking for international players.

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  12. We need to buy some players in January. We can’t go the entire season with this squad and with Europa as well on the side. 🙁

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  18. So lucky… We really needed that.

    Happy for Cisse. He deserved some luck. Glad Sammi has done well too.

    Cabaye has been terrible today.

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  24. Football sometime is hard to explain. 😆 😆

    When a striker goes on drought scoring,any sort of goal indeed needed. 😐

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  28. Victory will deflect A LOT of criticism. But we were poor again today.

    The players just don’t seem to understand their roles at all.

    Biggest problem is the complete lack of movement in midfield.
    Every midfielder wants to sit deep and play a holding role.

    We need to drop one of Jonas or Cabaye. Can’t play with three DMers at home! Very negative…

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  29. Aussie-Don’t really get what you mean about Shola-he shouldn’t have been playing top right? Where else can you play him in a front three, and he assisted Ba and put in a great cross, did well. As for tracking back, he did a fair amount but WBA are a pacey, counterattacking side, Shola was never going to keep up for half their chances and I’d imagine Pards knew that. I just can’t see how you can blame their goal on him.

    Anyway, nee worries now, cheeky win, Cisse firing, the blog needed summit to drown out the misery anyway! 😆

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  30. @Munich Mag
    Its not to defend Benny. Second half was really poor but the guy doesn’t touch a ball for the first 20 minutes half. So he must be so frustrated that after he tries the impossible when he touches the ball. But at least he brings something, he tries to produces something to be dangerous. Cabaye was **** from the 1 minute to the last minutes.
    for me Santon was the best today

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  34. That goal sums up our season so far, clueless but trudging along.

    Come on Pardew study the opposition before games. every game we are surprised what we are up against like we have not done any homework before hand. Sort it out FFS!

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  37. Newkie, accommodating shola pulled our team way out of shape… good header for the first goal but he should be a target man in the centre or on the bench.. Cisse will hopefully start next game..

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  38. hmm looks like im in the minority here…imo except for dead ball situation and a couple of mistakes cabaye was pretty decent. spread the ball well and contain the opposition.at worst he was average. surely not terrible or **** level yet

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  40. Be going to bed now a bit disapointed with the display but not half as fecking angry as I was anticipating with 30 sec to go.. nite all 🙂

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  41. Massive 3 points there. We may not have completely deserved it, but we played S-lad off the pitch with 10 men and only got a point from it. That’s football- t al evens out over the course of a season….

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  42. Glad for cisse but WBA played us off the park at times and simpsons defending is worrying at times, constantly backs off. 3 points none the less but we need to perform better than that.

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  43. This is the turning point of the season a fluke goal to nick the win is often 😀 the sort of thing it takes .

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  44. Is this really only the second match that Ba and Cisse have both scored in? 😯

    I don’t think its a coincidence that they weren’t on the pitch together for either goal….

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  45. Aussie-Out of shape? We were in last years 4-3-3 but with Benny switching wings essentially, the players were just below par. Ba is fine with the forward role and Shola showed last year he could come on and do damage in that role (he came on for Ba and assisted Cisse with a good cross, can’t remember which game now..) Pards clealry went for Shola’s crossing over Cisse’s crossing, the right choice because he’s better at it to be honest.

    Anyway yes, hopefully Cis will start and we can adopt my formation… 😉

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  46. JJ – I agree mate. Midfield was poor today, and I thought Cabayes goal last week may have got him going but it certainly didn’t today like!.
    Also, I’m not bashing Jonas but he’s looked lost this season. He may run around alot but has very little impact on the game. Sammi looked good when he came on and Fergie would be our LWs now with Marv sniffing for him place too.
    If Jonas is going to be considered anymore it must be as a CM or FB for me.

    I wasn’t confident of victory today and on reflection I think I was right not to be. But a good 3 points against a decent team.

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  48. Not a great performance but 3 points none the less….I suppose you could say as a plus, last season we were playing better than we are now and WBA are possibly better this season than last, yet we’ve got the win at St James’ that we couldn’t get last season 😉

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  49. At the moment the defence and the front line pick themselves.

    The midfield is way out of balance in my opinion, and our ability to hold the ball within the team pretty poor at the moment.

    Ecstatic about the win at the end of the day, but we’re still stuttering as far as I can see.

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  50. Richietoon, I like it when we beat our supposed bogey teams, and West Brom have had the heebee jeebees on us at SJP over the last couple of years. 😉

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  51. MDS-Yup, the other one was Villa, Cisse’s first match I think as he was subbed on after Bestie got injured.

    Personally I’ve come to the conclusion that Allah can only bless one striker at a time and he has to pick and choose between them, but it makes it easier for him if there’s only one on the pitch obviously 😉

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  53. As for the midfield, I suppose people are only bashing cabs and Benny because they know what they can do-for me, Perch was very poor. Gave the ball away with poor passing, made some very silly tackles-akin to Tiote there I guess and then just completely disappeared from the match after his first yellow. Colo was also average-I don’t think he does well when the spotlight is on him, personally I just hope the media stfu and go back to talking about kompany and moaning over his every tackle..

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  54. Well, thank **** for that. We needed a win and as many said before the game “I don’t care if its not pretty”, cus that win sure as hell wasn’t. Had hope we’d score a goal on the counter, was listening on the radio and just hoping we’d break away. We’re not playing well and I don’t know why, Pardew needs to figure out why and soon.

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  57. Newkie agree about Perch i expected more from him , possibly a chance for Bigi too start the next game . Its now obvious that Pardew rates Williamson ahead of Saylor which i just dont understand .

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  59. Watching the game again, we actually started off pretty well. It’s a strange one, last season we took leads and held them very comfortably generally,but WBA made us very uncomfortable, and more so as the game went on..

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  60. Axel..I’m not so sure, I don’t think it would have been right to drop Willo for this game after he played so well v the scum, and I reckon the reason he didn’t play Taylor v the scum was because it would have been a big gamble playing him and Colo together after they’d both been out injured. As it was Colo couldn’t see out the game it would have been disatrous if we’d had 2 cb’s doing that. 😉

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  61. Richie – 👿 👿 wish he was at the toon for what he’s costing!!. He’s going from a free transfer to an £8-10m CF again.

    Interesting that Torres send off for Chelsea today and their only other CF scores against us today!, they must be kicking themselves for letting Lukaku go out on loan now like.

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  62. Richietoon….maybe there’s a disciplinary action from Pardew against Staylor for shooting his gob off against the makkems ? Cannot be down to Willo being a better player than Staylor surely 😆

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  63. MM..no, just think it’s for the reasons I already said, I’d have been shocked if he’d started Colo and Tayls after both coming back from injury and to be honest it would have been bad management imo, then because Willo played so well he couldn’t really drop him, also maybe because Tayls is so injury prone he’s bringing him back gradually.

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