Greek tragedy averted! Atromitos 1-1 Newcastle

Taylor saves the day
Ryan Taylor hit a trademark freekick in first half injury time to spare Newcastle’s blushes and give them the upper hand in their Europa League qualifying tie against Atromitos.

With the score poised at 1-1 in the tie it gives Newcastle the advantage ahead of the home tie at St James’ Park next Thursday, with Alan Pardew now knowing that avoiding defeat will be enough to see us qualify for the group stages of the competition.

It was a case of “job done” as far as the fixture went. I dare say most of us would have liked a victory to return home with, but when you consider that nine changes were made to the first team in preparation for the game against Chelsea on Saturday, combined with a pitch that didn’t look great along with searing 38 degree heat, then all things considered it wasn’t that bad.

Gael Bigirimana made his debut while Adam Campbell becaume United’s youngest ever player to appear in Europe. Romain Amalfitano also made his competitive bow while Sylvain Marveaux and Steve Harper both made first team appearances for the first time in a number of months.

It was the home side who started off the strongest with left-winger Denis Epstein causing James Tavernier problems at right-back. Atromitos seemed to be focusing on young Tavernier, and to be fair it was a tactic that proved to be successful although neither side really looked like breaking the deadlock.

That was until the 24th minute when a long diagonal ball evade James Tavernier and found his tormentor Epstein who drifted in from the left and finished low past Steve Harper and give the Greeks the lead.

Newcastle immediately upped the tempo but with Papiss Cisse starved of possession for long periods ultimately chances to score were hard to come by. The best the away side could muster in response was a Taylor freekick which former Liverpool ‘keeper Charles Itandje kicked away.

However on the stroke of half time Newcastle managed to find an equaliser after Dan Gosling was pulled back 25 yards from goal allowing Ryan Taylor to do what he does best and bend his freekick over the wall and past Itandje into the back of the Atromitos net.

Half time: Atromitos 1-1 Newcastle

Newcastle were better in the second period. Sylvain Marveaux should have done better with a header from Papiss Cisse’s cross, and Cisse himself was unlucky not to find the back of the net after Itandje palmed away a cross which Cisse was shaping to shoot for. Gabriel Obertan fired a volley wide while Romain Amalfitano was denied the winner after intervention from an Atromitos defender.

At the other end Shefki Kuqi’s younger brother, Njazi, fired wide and Konstantinos Giannoulis shot wildly over the bar six minutes from time spurning the chance of a win for Atromitos with it.

Full time: Atromitos 1-1 Newcastle

As I said earlier, I’d have liked a win but I’m not overly disappointed with the draw. It gives us the upper hand for next week although I don’t want to be overly confident about anything just yet. Remember Partizan Belgrade anyone?

Howay the lads!

Newcastle: Steve Harper; James Tavernier, Mike Williamson, James Perch, Ryan Taylor; Gael Bigirimana, Vurnon Anita; Gabriel Obertan, Dan Gosling, Sylvain Marveaux; Papiss Cisse

Subs: Tim Krul, Davide Santon, Steven Taylor, Yohan Cabaye, Jonas Gutierrez, Romain Amalfitano, Adam Campbell

Attendance: 4,872

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.

89 thoughts on “Greek tragedy averted! Atromitos 1-1 Newcastle

  1. Liam sorry but I have to disagree with you if a player is poor he deserves criticism.IMO we don’t need to watch Oba 10 times to know that he should be doing more he was the same last season.
    So going by your theory we shouldn’t praise players either because they could be having a one off good game ?
    I won’t criticise Tav because he is young and inexperienced and should have been getting help from Oba and Willo but most of the time they need someone to help them, Oba for me offers a lot less than Routledge, Willo well as Moreno said fouled and gave the ball away atleast 7-8 times what a total waste.

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  2. SHARPY sorry for late reply,i only put that link up as i know how layed back about transfers you are 😀 😀 😀

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  3. LST i dont think oba will get any better as long as he has a hole in his ***,sorry but thats my view of him,sir red nose strikes again 😉 😀

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  4. SHARPY just to cheer you up a bit more i was just checking all the teams in the top 6 of the PL have spent 30mil plus on new players this window apart from us that is,is that the way forward??

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  5. We’re still trying to do it on the cheap and it just won’t work anymore. I wonder if something big is coming in the way of a sale at the end of the window for us. That would give Ashley the money to spend in the January window without dipping into his purse again. Wouldn’t be surprised. As for Obertan,he seems to have completely lost confidence in himself. He looks far worse now than when he first came to us. I saw one decent cross from him yesterday and he lost the ball many times. Tavernier looked lost on angled balls coming in to their left winger but that is only one game. Needs time to improve. Is Vuckic injured yet again? If not where was he?

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  6. Dave – I agree with you mate. I think the likes of Tav and Campbell can be afforded time and maybe even Bigi and Amal, but the poor performers for me was Oba, Gosling and Marv and for me they experienced enough pre-seasons to know how to be ready for game 1.
    The fact is that the Greek league hasn’t even kicked off yet so Atromitos players are still in pre season. The likes of Oba has European experience with Man Utd, he should have been one of our dependables last night!!

    Ice – wasn’t having a go at you, more the article, and the fact that I fully expect the board to come up with some bullshit excuses. Can’t see anything happening over the weekend so that will leave us less than a week to get in players we’ve known we’ve needed since before the JAN window opened!!

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  7. Ice @ 77 you know me I like to keep you right so you know you can always agree with me 😉

    Sharpy I agree with you agreeing with me mate like Ice i’ll always keep ye right 😆 I am finding it hard not ripping Jabba to shreds because he could pull a rabbit outta the hat while the window is still open, but even if he does it’s been real shabby leaving things to the last minute. but I think he already has his PR people lined up with excuses if it all goes wrong, we tried but the other teams kept moving the goal posts and we wont be taking for mugs and pay over the odds, even if we take others as mugs and make them pay over the odds. But then we are right nasty fukers

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  8. SHARPY didnt think you were having a go for one minute mate,i am as fed up as the next fan about lack of signings when we had such a great chance to move forward,one thing i didnt like was pardew kissing jabba *** for signing the dutch lad at 6mill wtf we got 3/4mil in and have about 40mil to come in,ime getting fed up now,and this **** pardew came out with last yr ;mike wants to know when we are going to sign a C/B,what a load of bullshit from the whole show,,,rant over 😀

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  9. Big D@83, I prefer to wait until the window finally closes and seeing what happens before getting mucked into Ashley and his lack of spending.

    At the end of the day, the majority of the fans are probably going to be disappointed when no-one comes in. However, I wonder what the rest of the big-hitters Cabaye, etc etc make of it all (and I include Pardew in that group) when they see that we are being left behind due to lack of investment.

    The toon PR mantra “we managed to hold onto our big-hitters, which in itself is great news” won’t hold too good next time round… cos they’re gonna be itching to get away..:roll:

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  10. MM I have to agree with you mainly because I have said about the players being pissed that we didn’t take the full opportunity to add 😀 so really your just agreeing with what I have been saying for a while 😉 well I suppose it’s better late than never 😆

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  11. Dave – I agree with you agreeing with me agreeing with you mate – you know I make sense 😕 😛

    Ice – In all honesty I’m not really bothered about the amount of money spent, so long as we improve our squad. For example, scum have just spent £12m on Fletcher. We could probably get Pieters and Rhodes for £12m (ish) or Douglas and Guidetti for a similar price, and I’d be happy with any of those 4.
    I think that’s the biggest annoyance to honest, the fact that fans aren’t expecting £15-20m signings – yet the board aren’t able to deliver the 5-10m signings.

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  12. Sharpy I think one of the reasons the Carroll interest was made public was to help keep the fans onside, I wouldn’t put dirty tactics past our board because we all know they are well capable of it. so they can say well we tried to get LDJ even though he had no interest in joining us, we tried to get Debuchy but the goal posts were moved and we tried for Carroll but couldn’t get it sorted 😉

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