Game On! West Brom v Newcastle

Game on at The Hawthorns
Game on at The Hawthorns
An away day at West Brom is on the agenda this afternoon as Newcastle United look to banish the memories of their poor showing in the Tyne-Wear derby last weekend.

The Baggies are sitting comfortably in the top half of the table and whilst a stab at qualification for the Europa League may seem a long shot they need to win to keep any outside hopes of clinching a place in continental competition for next season.

Having recently bowed out of the Europa League, United are looking for the points for altogether different reasons. Relegation is the main concern these days and the quicker we can manage to get the points required to stay up the quicker we can turn our attention to perhaps trying to sneak into the top half of the table just in time for the season to end.

Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves though. As things stand our destiny is in our own hands but a helping hand wouldn’t go amiss. This is why the rest of the fixtures today provide an interesting backdrop to our game today. Those fixtures are as follows:

Fulham v Arsenal
Norwich v Reading
QPR v Stoke
Sunderland v Everton
Swansea v Southampton
West Ham v Wigan

All of those fixtures involve at least one team that are in and around us currently. It’s tight, very tight, and looking at the West Ham fixture demonstrates just how tight it could be. A Wigan win would mean we are just one point above them in the table assuming we lose, whilst a Wigan win will see us draw level with West Ham on points should we win. The other team not mentioned in that, Aston Villa, visit Manchester United on Monday evening.

For a bit more background on the match itself including news on the injury front for both sides, a history of the fixture, some facts and stats and a rather depressing ‘final thought’, why not have a look at my match preview if you haven’t already done so? You can view it by clicking here.

The game itself, being a 3pm kick-off, is not being shown live here in the UK although it is scheduled for broadcast on plenty of channels overseas. Only 3,000 (approximately) fans will be able to make it inside the ground today so plenty of people will need access to streams. This is the part where we all help each other out by leaving links to streams in the ‘comments’ section below.

Team news will be added in below by either myself or Big Dave. I’m currently off having a picnic with the wife and boy but I may well be back in time to add the team news in myself. If I’m not then Big Dave will ride to the rescue and fill my boots once more.

That’s about it to be honest. I’m not feeling confident at all, I just hope that the players show more urgency, passion and commitment than they showed last week which in fairness won’t be hard to achieve.

Howay the lads!

West Brom: Ben Foster; Billy Jones, Gareth McAuley, Jonas Olsson, Goran Popov; Graham Dorrans, Claudio Yacob, James Morrison, Chris Brunt; Marc-Antione Fortune, Romelu Lukaku

Subs: Boaz Myhill, Kemar Roofe, Markus Rosenberg, Steven Reid, Shane Long, Liam Ridgewell, Jerome Thomas

Newcastle: Rob Elliot; Mathieu Debuchy, Steven Taylor, Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa, Massadio Haidara; James Perch, Yohan Cabaye; Yoan Gouffran, Moussa Sissoko, Jonas Gutierrez; Papiss Cisse

Subs: Steve Harper, Mike Williamson, Vurnon Anita, Dan Gosling, Hatem Ben Arfa, Adam Campbell, 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.

542 thoughts on “Game On! West Brom v Newcastle

  1. Santii-aye, as if the season wasn’t bad enough we have divvies on the tv talking absolute *****.With the Perch tackle I was almost expecting Chris Waddle to jump out from under his rock and make an appearance…PELANTY

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  2. The penalty call … Perch got the ball but followed through and took out the player. It was a reckless (sorry, wreckless) challenge and most of the time those sorts of tackles are blown up by refs.

    Wasn’t the call from the Wigan people that Macwhateverhisnameis played the ball first? Sure, there’s a big difference in the two tackles as far as player safety is concerned, but the principle is the same.

    I think we dodged it. The ref wasn’t sure what to do and bottled the decision. The ref did that a few times.

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  3. Bris-don’t see how you can compare those two challenges at all, Perch did the only thing he could in securing the ball, there would have been at least one of those challenges in every game this weekend imo, some might have been given as free kicks, some not. But then we get into the territory of refs and how they award pens…obviously an infringement should be dealt with the same wherever it is on the pitch-but it never is.

    Macmanaman just wanted to break a leg and the little ****** knew exactly what he was doing.

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  4. Santii – it’s morning, mate.

    Newkie – I’m not saying I think it was a foul or that it compares to McManaman’s, just saying that refs give those sorts of things. Refs give a lot of things that I don’t agree with.

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  5. @agree with Bris 517 basically every word.
    Worried because we all know Wigan can pull it out of the bag. Can we? It’s a disgrace from the board, to the manager, to the team, to Anita the tea lady that we are in this position.
    They gave me a quick smart phone access from my handcuffed positio in Eldon.
    The thought of going down again and wasting all the class building we’ve done makes me feel physically sick. Basically HBA is going to start next game and cement himslef as one of the most idolised toon players ever, he hasn’t played nearly enough, but ****, he is talented. I back AC to get a crucial goal as well.Probably against pool or wham.

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  6. @519 “Also – we’ve got about 6 coaches at the entire team, from school team to senior team. It’s farcical. Man Utd have more physios than we have background coaching staff.”

    If that’s true it probably explains why we failed to achieve Category One status for the academy – one of the requirements is that clubs should have a minimum of 18 full time staff. I don’t know what categories of staff they’re talking about, but presumably the majority of those 18 would need to be either coaching staff or physios.
    http://espnfc.com/news/story/_/id/1128929/newcastle-united-fail-to-achieve-eppp-category-1-status

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  7. http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/alan-pardew-newcastle-united-players-2949725

    Pardew is seriously starting to grate on me now. he just cant stop talking ****. the guy is seriously deluded.

    first he criticized the fans last week for over-reacting to getting beat @home by the tramps now we’re good enuf for the top 10. seriously? we’re a few points off bottom 3 and he was happy with the squad at the beginning of the season before the french lads came…

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  8. I try and stay off here after games because it gets a bit emotional 🙂 🙂 Eminem, well done for talking B&B down from that ledge mate (days of our lives, comes to mind) 🙂

    Look they way I see it after our game is that we do not work hard enough when we have the ball and more concerningly, when we don’t. We do not press teams hard enough and it allows them time to pick their passes. We seem to jog about and watch as the ball gets passed about. We look unfit to be honest or maybe it is just laziness. What ever it is, the work rate is poor.

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  9. “I try and stay off here after games because it gets a bit emotional”

    Bit of an understatement there Aussie 😉

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  10. AMF@537 you crack me up dude 😆 😆

    I tried my best with B&B but I see he still hasn’t put his Big D doll and knitting needles away 🙁

    HBA39 and djebs9 both touched on some interesting points regarding power and athleticism within teams. It seems as if our general flow to our play is often stuttering. I’m not sure if it is the coaching or the technique of the players. Our team often seems to be disjointed and not always operating as a unit.
    I know that most of the teams in Germany play with the intention to retain the ball less than 3-5 seconds before they move the ball on. This creates a completely different tempo to the game and also demands a higher level of speed, decision making and technique from each individual player.
    Of course the intensity of the EPL may be higher than the Bundesliga, but it is still football at the end of the day.

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  11. Toonsy and AMF isn’t football an emotional sport ?
    What type of game do you guys watch ? 😆

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  12. Eminen, my missus says that I am not in touch with my emotions mate 🙂 I get pissed off watching games but I have learnt to wash it off before it gets me to down too much..

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