West Ham v Newcastle – Premier League match preview

Hammers v Magpies
Hammers v Magpies
It’s a delayed start for Newcastle following on from the first international break of the season.

With all games played this weekend already it is up to United ad West Ham to bring this latest round of Premier League fixtures to a close.

With the Magpies still looking for a first league win of the campaign and the Hammers looking for a first home win of the campaign it looks set to be an interesting game played out between two managers who have some competitive history between them at international level.

It was that match in the rain at Wembley where Slaven Bilic’s Croatia side pit an end to Steve McClaren’s tenure as England manager and earned him the now famous ‘wally with the brolly’ tag. While there may be a personal score to settle on that front undoubtedly the focus from McClaren will be gaining three league points for the first time as boss of Newcastle United.

West Ham

Former Magpie Andy Carroll could be in line to feature for the Hammers against the club where it all began for him. He’s never reached the heights he managed at St James’ Park in those formative years of his career and injuries have played a huge part in that buy on his day he is still a massive threat aerially which is not great for a defence which has a bigger fear of crosses than Count Dracula.

In other news Enner Valences is still out although three new signing – Victor Moses, Michail Antonio and Nikica Jelavic – are available for West Ham

Newcastle

Aleksandar Mitrovic will watch this game from the stands as he starts his three match suspension following his straight red card against Arsenal. Paul Dummett has suffered a setback as he attempts to recover from a hamstring injury while both Emmanuel Riviere and Sylvain Marveaux are some way off a return tof irst-team action desoite stepping up training recently. Otherwise McClaren has the majority of the squad he’s had available for the opening few weeks of the season to choose from after welcoming back his players from international duty and confirming that none of them picked up any knocks.

Previously…

The most recent meeting between the two sides was that memorable final day victory over West Ham which secured our Premier League status although away from home we suffered a 1-0 reverse in a fixture that tends to lean towards whoever the home side may be on the day. The betting odds for the match would also tend to point to a home win.

Overall there have been 122 games played between the two sides, with Newcastle being victorious on 48 occasions and West Ham on 39 occasions with 35 draws bringing up the total of 122.

Stats and facts

The draw against Manchester United ended a run of seven straight defeats on the road for Newcastle.

However United have lost only two of their previous nine visits to the Boleyn Ground.

Newcastle’s indiscipline has been picked up on but the reality is that neither team are exactly saintly. Newcastle have picked up nine red cards since the start of last season while West Ham have picked up six from their ten competitive matches so far this season.

Final thought

A lot has been made of our lack of possession in the league but rather conveniently the fact we’ve played over 45 minutes against Swansea (a possession team) with ten men and over 70 minutes against Arsenal (perhaps the ultimate possession team) has been glossed over. An away match against Manchester United has also been discounted as has the draw with Southampton who aren’t too shabby either.

Broadly speaking, 11 v 11 and the game against Swansea aside, I don’t think we’ve looked too bad. However looking ok is all well and good but eventually points need to be registered on the board and the longer we go on without a win the harder those points will be to come by. The aim has to be three points on our final trip to the Boleyn Ground with a point being acceptable.

Howay the lads!

Date: Monday, 14th September, 2015

Time: 20:00

Venue: The Boleyn Ground

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.

882 thoughts on “West Ham v Newcastle – Premier League match preview

  1. McClaren was hired as a head coach, right. How about we keep him as head coach and hire a Manager? Go back to the old model.

    I have seen a few people say that we spend so much money on transfer fees and wages for players but neglect the most important position on the team – the Manager. I know a good manager is hard to find, but they are out there. Give someone complete control, fck Carr and Charnley. They can stay and present players to the Manager and negotiate the contracts, and stay on the board. But the manager should have final say, go old school.

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  2. I certainly think we need a manager and not just a coach. The people running the club can’t run a bath so we need someone who knows what they’re doing on the football side.

    Personally if I was Ashley I would be getting rather twitchy if things haven’t improved at Christmas.

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  3. STUART the way I see it is if players are not pulling there weight,tiote,cissie goofy ect a “manager” would pull them out and made to train on their own that way he’s showing the other players he takes no **** and won’t coach them with the group,or as a coach has he got the power to do that or does that have to come from the board??

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  4. Georgio Collback has already had one game at left-back and he was lost. Not his position at all. Anita maybe.

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  5. Icedog: we babied Tiote like we have a lot of players. He was injured and they let him rehab in the Middle East. Why wasn’t he in Newcastle under the care and supervision of our medical staff? The rumour was that he and his Agents were negotiating a deal to leave NUFC. My point is that if you baby them and let them do what the fck they want they will act like babies because they are a bunch of prima donna’s anyway. We created the Tiote and Cisse monsters and now we are dealing with the consequences.

    The article posted by Gashley @821 says there are “poisoness” elements in the dressing room and specifically names Tiote. They are journalists so I don’t know how true that is but it has a ring of truth. It also says they have sent Tiote for check ups and cant find anything wrong with him.

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  6. I said I would give SM ten games before judge him its not looking good things seem a shambles with some players having the hump before a ball is kicked,all we need now is for S/Wed to turn us over,we could not have a better draw in these first two rounds

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  7. Spurs finally cancelled/paid up Adebeyor’s contract after he acted like a baby/c@nt for 3 years. Are we faced with the same choice with Cisse and Tiote? If someone makes an offer we probably should get rid even if it leaves us short in their positions. That’s assuming the stories are correct of course.

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  8. ERIC well it is true what Gash said,the guy on Sunday sky that he knows for a “fact” that are three players that are spilling poison and he can name them then said I will name one of the three tiote,thing is what is the club going to do about it now its in the public domain???

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  9. If you want to know what these footballers are like… Ronaldo ordered a SECOND waxwork of himself the other day. Nani had a giant bronze statue of himself in his living room. Hell even Brendan Rodgers has a giant grinning picture of himself in his foyer. This is all true.

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  10. Id make Tiote train on his own if he’s such a ******. Apparently he says he’s injured but the club can’t find anything wrong with him. **** him! Make a statement to the rest of the squad. I would also give Sissoko a kick up the **** along with Colo. But in fairness to Colo it’s not his fault he’s older and slower. It’s the club’s ridiculous decision to ignore the centre of defence (ex Mbemba) and give Colo another year!

    Who makes these decisions?

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  11. I know we should get behind McClaren now that he is manager but it is hard not to question the hiring process. Who hires a Manager who turned you down twice and was just sacked? Who has 6 months of Carver and doesn’t have alternatives lined up? Who has the whole of January when a few good managers were on sabbaticals and settles on Carver? He supposedly interviewed one other candidate, but did he really give him a chance? It seems the MD was always set on Carr’s buddy.

    I really hope it works out but the fact there seems to be dissension in the ranks already does not bode well. As Stuart says, Steve needs to make an example of somebody. Ashley will understand that. FFS he got rid of all the player committee players and Hughton because they were questioning his rule.

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  12. We’re better off changing our formation. We’ll struggle to score playing Cisse alone and lofting high balls into him, that’s pretty evident from the last two games.

    Let’s see a change, drop the lone striker and play 433

    Let’s see how good a coach SM is

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  13. @eric

    The same bloke that pulled the wool over our eyes in front of the sky cameras, nowts changed really.. Same policies as before, like for like manager…

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  14. I was looking to the Watford game to instill some belief in what the club is trying to do. But since the overall plan by Ashley has not changed one iota I wonder what I was thinking. Bottom 3 at Christmas? It seems likely. Then what???

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  15. I’ve been impressed with a lot of Troy’s comments over the last few months. His analysis of the club seems to be coming true. Pardew was a mediocre manager but we’ve really fallen apart since he left. Will McLaren be able to get us going? I hope so. Ashley has little or no understanding of the game so if it comes to sacking McLaren things could get even worse…

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  16. Kimtoon: at least Thauvin was available to receive the ball and ran at people. He was blocked a few times and some Refs would have given fouls. Hopefully, he will learn quickly that the PL is more physical than the French League and will adapt his game. He looks like he has plenty of confidence so I hope the crowd don’t get on his back.

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  17. Let’s look at the schedule in a bit of detail and see where some points might come from:
    Chelsea – loss
    Man City – loss
    Norwich (h) – draw
    mackems (a) – draw
    Stoke (h) – win
    Bournemouth (a) – win
    Leicester (h) – loss
    Palace (a) – loss
    Liverpool (h) – draw
    Spurs (a) – loss
    That’s the next 10 games and it looks like 9 points, so 11 points from 16 games!!!!

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  18. @eric.
    He certainly is a confident player, good on him for trying to beat players. It will take time for him to settle. It doesn’t help when he’s instructed to cross balls to a lone striker…

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  19. Eric, That’s what I meant with that link. Yes he has to improve, but there he is thanking the fans for an award and he wasn’t too bad first couple of games to be fair. Yet you get complete dicks tweeting stuff back at him like that 🙄 whey to go, how to build up a young players confidence at a new club and country. Wankers

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  20. Chelsea – draw 😯
    Man City – loss
    Norwich (h) – win
    mackems (a) – win 😛
    Stoke (h) – win
    Bournemouth (a) – draw
    Leicester (h) – draw
    Palace (a) – loss 😕
    Liverpool (h) – draw
    Spurs (a) – loss

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  21. Very bold Gashley mate….Very bold indeed. I like it!!!! 13 points from 10 games giving us 15 from 16!!!!

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  22. If this all goes tits up there is a coach out there now who might turn it around – Lucien Favre just resigned at Gladbach after a bad start. I think he got them to Chapions League, MM would know.

    I am not giving up on McClaren, just pointing out there is a good coach out there.

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  23. I really am not trying to **** stir but here are some quotes on Favre from The Guardian:

    “Favre, who saved five-times champions Gladbach from potential relegation when he took over in February 2011, led them to a third-place finish last season and a maiden Champions League group stage spot.

    Gladbach officials, who had called Favre “unfireable” only a week ago, had tried to talk him out of it but were surprised when he instead sent his resignation straight to the media before informing them.

    “We had hoped that we could convince him to continue with us,” the club president, Rolf Koenigs, said of his discussion with Favre earlier on Sunday when the coach first offered to quit. “His public resignation created a situation that hits us to the core. We had four and a half highly successful years with Lucien Favre and are very sad that our common path is now obviously finished.”

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  24. Should mention him to Charnley who probably would need it explained that he was the manager of the team we played in the pre-season 🙂

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  25. I just thought of something else as well because the whole of the media are seeming to gleefully pile onto NUFC and McClaren. Perhaps Ashley’s media ban, picking preferred media partners, charging for access and banning specific journalists like Luke Edwards is beginning to come home to roost.

    If we don’t turn this around soon, the whispers about the quality of McClaren’s CV will become screams. Luke Edwards already mentioned today that McClaren failed in his previous 4 jobs. I wonder if Charnley looked at McClaren’s CV as part of his process in January when he said he had more than 80 applications 🙂

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  26. So SM wanted to add pace in the 2nd half so he replaced Cisse with Siem De Jong 😯

    I’ve seem more pace on an asthmatic amputee than de Jong..

    When watching Motd every team has something we seem to be void of, certain type of player, pace in attack, passing ability…

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  27. Maybe the problem is that McClaren isn’t just a coach – he’s on the board too. How much extra work is that creating for him behind the scenes that we don’t know about. We needed someone to come in and fix the team – they brought Mc in to do that and said ‘while your on you can fix the club too’.

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  28. the slug will give mcclaren till crimbo to turn things around,theres noway jabba will want to miss out on the massive tv money about to flood in.

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  29. sharpy mcclaren being on the board is just a title nothing more,he will have very little influence on how the club is run,look at the players brought in this summer,id put money on it they wernt mcclarens picks.

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  30. Sharpy: I think it is the opposite to what you are saying. McClaren was brought in to coach and saw it was so bad that he demanded a seat on the board to have some say. He saw – an iffy Scout who was anointed as the Messiah of scouts after a couple of lucky picks. And a neophyte MD who had just given him his dream job after he was sacked by Derby FFS and all he had to be was better than John Carver.

    After coming off 4 total failures, what is one more for Schteve???? Give him 10 games as Troysta says 🙂 I am half joking 🙂

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  31. When you are replacing John Carver the bar is set extremely low. All you have to do is string a coherent sentence together and you are ahead. But, if we lose to Chelsea and Man City I think that even Carver’s record in 2015 will beat Schteve;s in points-per-game. YCMIU.

    However, I am not ready to give up on McClaren yet. I am just making fun of our terrible 2015.

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  32. It is only 6 games. This can be turned around. Leicester did it. Advocaat did it. Pards did it at Palace FFS.

    I am telling you, the pundits like to pile on to NUFC and make a bad start into a crisis and a crisis into a catastrophe. They love it when we fail and even some ex-players like to point out how bad we are compared to how great they were. Human nature, I suppose, living in the past and reminiscing about past glories.

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  33. Hitman – I don’t believe for one second that anyone working for Mike Ashley gets a title or wages without working for it.
    The recruits this window may not have been his pick, but I reckon he was satisfied with them.

    Eric – We can blame Carr for the players in, but the parameters that have been placed around his role are ridiculous. We expect him to perform miracles every window.

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  34. I can’t believe McClaren has been over worked by being on the board. He’s probably had to go a couple of board meetings. Carr, Charnley and Moncur are there to worry about everything else although I doubt their credentials.

    Problem is we have people in every position at the club who are pretty much failures, or they have been for the last 2/3 years. It’s hard to get rid of that feeling I reckon.

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  35. The main thing this team are lacking is a midfield playmaker. Cabaye came in and transformed our team. We’ve been dogshit since he left. None of the players we have can do that job. Not notice that in the summer Schteve?
    Things won’t improve until someone takes that role. We all bang on about strikers and CBs but with Cabaye we had a load of **** players (Willo, Gouffran,Obertan, Tiote, Raylor, Jonas) all in the same team and finished 5th.
    That’s what we need.

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  36. @georgio

    totally agree. Ive been saying it for yonks. Every team has someone to make the team tick. we just have defensive runners.

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  37. We lack of a playmaker who could be de Jong. We dont lack pf pace at all, we’re a heatless smartless team full of weak players. I blame McClaren for his line up: he has to put at the same time the most athletic skilfful pacey and committed team. We need to put Willo/Lascelles along Mbemba and Id like to have Janmaat CM, Mbemba and Dummett full backs. Our front 3 should Ayoze Mitrovic and one of Thauvin/Aarons

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  38. —————————–Krul—————————–
    -Mbemba-Lascelles-Coloccini-Dummett-
    ————————-Colback—————————
    —————–Janmaat-Wijnaldum—————
    —Ayoze————Mitrovic————-Aarons–

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  39. Georgio- When we finished 5th, we had a solid defe sive FB in Danny Simpson, actually the most valuable RB we had since promtion. We had Danny Guthrie who stepped up when Tioté was off, we had Obertan starting on wing and he briught discipline if not quality. We had key players: Krul, Coloccini, Taylor, Cabaye, Jonas, Ben Arfa, Ba. We signed Cissé which created Ba’s unsettlement. But overrall we had a core strong enough. Leon Best and Shola were not great but they defo did the job as target man and had good chemistry with Ba. Raylor showed up, Perch showed up.

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  40. Cholo – I’d like to think De Jong could be a playmaker but it’s still doubtful he can play in England. He’s been totally anonymous whenever I’ve seen him. He had 15 mins at Old Trafford (maybe Arsenal) and didn’t even manage to touch the ball. He’s far too slow and unathletic for our football.

    Those players you’ve listed were very ordinary players – it was the playmaker that made it work. We have better players now but no one to make it work.

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  41. lol everytime I see De Jong strolling around I imagine him with a pencil behind his ear and a tape measure attached to his pocket.. he’d look a better joiner than a prem player.

    Does he have a 3rd gear??

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