Game On! Tottenham v Newcastle

Game On at the Lane
Game On at the Lane
Good morning all! It’s an early trip down the lane this morning as United visit Tottenham Hotspur for this televised encounter.

A high-noon kick-off is probably not what Tottenham would want after participating in the Europa league on Thursday evening, but to be fair they have depth within the squad so should be able to cope better than we managed to last term.

In fact a quick look at the Premier League table will show that indeed they are coping better with the rigours of a Europa League campaign. A win will take them into third place in the Premier League table which is no mean feat, yet for whatever reason the natives at White Hart Lane aren’t overly happy and have been critical of their own team at times this season. Would they like to swap places?

Whilst Newcastle can’t quite hit the heady heights of third place with a win, there is indeed progression to be made. A victory for Alan Pardew’s men will propel us to ninth in the table and a win combined with a shift in goal difference depending on our result and that of Manchester United against Arsenal could see us end the afternoon ahead of the Red Devils in eighth place. However, feet on the ground and all that.

A positive result for me would be a draw. Tottenham have been in fine form and have been grinding out results in a rather mechanical yet effective fashion. Defence has been their strong point but I do fancy us to get a goal. We’ve scored in every league game apart from the opening two fixtures so we do present a threat. In theory anyway…

Team news will be published below as and when it becomes available and keep an eye out for any links to any internet stream that are posted in the ‘comments’ section below if you’re struggling to find a way to watch the game. If you’re looking for a bit of a preview then why not have a mooch at Marktoon’s most excellent match preview by following the links below.

Which neatly wraps this up leaving us nothing to concern ourselves with now apart from the match itself.

Howay the lads!

Tottenham: Friedel; Walker, Vertonghen, Dawson, Chiriches; Paulinho, Dembele, Eriksen, Sigurdsson, Townsend, Soldado

Subs: Gomes, Kaboul, Lennon, Lamela, Holtby, Defoe, Sandro

Newcastle: Krul; Debuchy, Williamson, Yanga-Mbiwa, Santon; Sissoko, Tiote (c), Cabaye, Gouffran; Shola Ameobi, Remy

Subs: Elliot, Coloccini, Anita, Obertan, Sammy Ameobi, Ben Arfa, Cisse

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.

249 thoughts on “Game On! Tottenham v Newcastle

  1. AMF I bet you’re happy you stayed up for that one mate 🙂

    Have to agree with KK, the better team lost 😉 fanny awld game innit 🙂

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  2. We shouldn’t get carried away.

    We could of had a hammering against both Chelsea & Tottenham. We’ve been extremely lucky not to concede in both games.

    Agree with the comment above – we looked poorer when Shola went off but perhaps Pardew is just trying to keep him fit?

    Pardew, predictable again. Same formation, same style, same subs at the same time!!

    He deserves some credit for the way we created chances in the first half but everything else was poor

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  3. Amazing result today. Krul definitely MOM for me but Gouffran was fantastic once again. He was everywhere today and ran his *** off. Great assist for the goal.

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  4. Well i predicted we would get hammered last week and we would loose today so what the hell do i know . What a defensive display they earned their win today the hard way but hey i am happy .Oh yeah i now predict we wont win agin this season 😆 😆 😆

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  5. 😆 Because you dont deserve to win just for have lots of possession and 14 shots..

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  6. Well, Brilliant result.

    Havnt seen the game but I saw the starting line up and formmation. Thought it was good from Pardew.

    Have to give him enormous credit for the last three results. But still a long way to go before I believe he can do it consistently.

    Fantastic results though. He’s got the last three spot on.

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  7. Shola did his job for the first 55 minutes. The bloke is 32 man, he can’t last longer than that 🙂 but he played his part for sure.

    Well done to the whole team, rounded off a perfect weekend for me. Can we also hope for Man Shitty cuffing the great unwashed too ? …surely not ….
    😳 😳

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  8. Is Marveaux’s career at nufc over?

    Ben Arfa can’t get a game despite saving pardew’s job, single handedly winning us 6 points & being responsible for more than a third of our points?

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  9. It started at 8pm my time Eminem, no late one for me.. wrapped with the win, sorry the loss we deserved but didnt get…

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  10. Aussie – ‘Spurs didnt score so they didnt deserve to win.. ridiculous comment!’

    Sorry mate I read this post as you suggesting Spuds did deserve to win. Scratch that buddy, totally agree with your last post. Goals win games and if they had that much possession and that many chances – to me it means our keeper and defence played better than their forwards today – and all credit to them for that.

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  11. KK
    Cudda, wudda, shudda, we had chances to score before we did in both games and we scored and they didn’t, end of.

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  12. BD, too late for me mate.. will relish the win over a beer or two over the next few days! :mrgreen:

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  13. @amf

    Are you sure you watched the game.

    Every football fan who has ever watched a game knows that:

    1)sometimes the better team loses
    2)sometimes the poorer team wins.

    We had a good first half, slightly better than Tottenham. We could have been 2 or 3 up but the same could be said about Tottenham.

    Second half they (as a team) were much better than us. We had the best performing player (krul).

    Therefore we won, Spurs deserved the win, Tim Krul deserved it the most.

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  14. KK – I absolutely think we should get carried away, because if we lost against both Chelsea and Spuds then a great many would have slagged players and called for Pardews head.

    Yes we could have got a hammering against both, because both spent over £100m in the summer and have the players that can batter teams. But I don’t think we were extremely lucky at all. I think we have played excellent as a team defensively and showed a great deal of discipline in our performances.
    The players and Pardew deserve a huge pat on the back, because I don’t suppose many had 1 or 2 points from those games nevermind all 6.

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  15. Toby,

    The only reason we would possibly look a worse when Shola went off was because, being a goal down Spurs came at us hard.

    Just seen Remy’s goal. How are we going to keep him? For me in this form he’s as good as Henry was.

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  16. Just what do the team need to do to stop some people being negative? We won away against a top 4 side. Yes we got battered in the second half but we still kept a clean sheet.

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  17. Football has nothing to do with ‘deserving’ things, it’s about who stays onside and sticks the ball in the net the most times and that’s literally it. What about all the free kicks the ref gave to them, and they still couldn’t score. 🙂

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  18. HBA,
    Just seen your ridiculous Defoe vs Soldado comment.

    Soldado is ten times the player Defoe is. If anyone is overrated it’d Defoe.

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  19. Credit to Pardew. When we were poor he rightfully got the blame. When we are winning he too must get credit its only fair. He has done a great job since the liverpool game and the results and performances are showing. Dropping Cisse has revolutionised our game and team congruence.

    Remy is God sent as he finishes his chances and does not need the ball placed on the line for him to score.

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  20. Great performance from the lads today. Credit to Pardew too. Who would have thought we could win at Spuds with Ben Arfa, Colo and Cisse on the bench!
    Yes we had to defend for our lives in the 2nd half. Players deserve credit for that though – it’s a team game and we defended magnificently. Thoroughly deserved 3 points because of the attitude shown throughout the team.

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  21. HBA will get his chance in next two games. He`s my favourite player alongside Gouffran but I still think Pardew`s team selection has been top notch lately. Would have brought HBA on instead of Cisse but still conrgatulations to AP.

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  22. Michael – Pardew said something like, ‘if we can two create chances for Remy, you know in this form he will finish one of them’ on the radio before the game. He was dead right!

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  23. Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa got to be careful with his clearance at times, or he will be drop pretty soon with Fabricio Coloccini( the captain) back from injury.

    😐 😐

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  24. The question now is will Colo be back in the team any time soon ? with the defence keeping 2 clean sheets against 2 top 6 sides their is no need to change but Colo on the other hand is club Captain .

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  25. I don’t know how anyone can be anything other than delighted with how we’ve been since the Everton game.
    Four great performances against Cardiff/Liverpool/Chelsea/Spurs
    Sunderland – wasn’t great but derby-day is always unpredictable
    Man City – impressive performance, but they just shaded it due to their bench
    I don’t know why people belittle defensive performances. It is 50% of the game. In these matches we expect the opposition to be all over us – it is a test of our defensive resolve as a team. We have smashed the last two tests.
    Games against Norwich and West Brom are going to be where we can scrutinise our attacking play.

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  26. Axel –
    I wouldn’t. Half the key to defensive resolve is a consistent back 4.
    They said before the game that Spurs have fielded 3 of their back 4 for every single game, and West Ham result aside, they’ve been great.
    And look at Arsenal – Vermaalen is their captain and having to wait for his chance to start again.

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  27. JJ
    I don’t know about Henri, but I must say Remy is better than I thought he would be. He’s starting to look better than Demba Ba at the moment for me, as he is a better team player IMO. Ba spat his dummy out if he wasn’t through the middle, Remy seems to want to play anywhere for the team but he is the best forward on the pitch wherever he plays. 😯

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  28. Willo and Mbiwa have done well but they don’t deserve all the defensive praise.

    Tiote has regained his form and has been a huge part of that. So too has the return to form of Yohan Cabaye.

    Santon and Debuchy have also played mire defensively which has solidified the defense.

    That along with Remy’s form are the crucial factors.

    Michael,
    To suggest that its simply because we dropped Cisse is ridiculous.

    For me however we need to be more offensive against the weaker teams like Norwich. So these same tactics won’t cut it.

    They are good tactics in restricted the big boys as long as we have a striker who can put that one chance he gets away.
    Ie. Remy… Cisse did the same job for a good year. But he is out of form now.

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  29. @SHARPY17

    If we had lost to both Chelsea & Tottenham but deserved the win (because we had them on the backfoot, unfairly denied a goal or prevented from scoring by worldclass saves & tackles), i would praise the performance.

    To me, performance matters more than results. If we’re doing the right things, eventually we’ll get the right results.

    Our best performance this season was against Liverpool. Liverpool should have easily won with 11 players vs 10 with us only having 1 recognised centre back. They didn’t win & they didn’t deserve to – because we out performed them.

    First half of the game today was the best i’ve seen us play in the final third all season but defensively, not great, not good.

    Chelsea should have scored 2 or 3 against us – they were below par and seem to be in a patchy spell right now.

    Tottenham – 31 shots, 14 on target. They should & would have scored at least 2 (probably more) were it not for Tim Krul.

    Yes, it’s good we’ve got 6 points from 2 top 6 teams but that doesn’t mean we’ve been playing anywhere top 6 level.

    If we get carried away we should expect to hammer Norwich & finish the season alongside Liverpool, Chelsea, Tottenham.

    Top 4 anyone ❓ ❓

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  30. It’s telling that while Krul made a number of great saves, neither Chelsea or Spurs ‘missed’ that many good opportunities.
    I.e. they were, mostly, restricted to speculative efforts.
    They didn’t miss any absolute sitters.
    Paulinho and Erikson had their best chances.

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  31. @solanostrumpet – i’m going to disagree

    Spurs reminded me of how we played earlier in the season.

    So slow building up from the back but our attacking play in the first half of today & against Liverpool has been our best all season.

    Defensively we could have conceded so many goals against Chelsea & Spurs it’s unreal.

    Our attacking play has improved (maybe because of Shola).

    Defensively we’re sitting way too deep.

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  32. KK,

    I agree with you to a point.

    We had some great fortune to beat both Chelsea and Tottenham.
    I think Pardew played the tactics right for the most part. But I don’t think he is some tactical genius for getting it right.

    He should be getting it right on a far more regular basis than he is.

    I want to see us dominating the likes of Norwich. And I think the team should be more offensive for that game.

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  33. @SolanosTrumpet – 188

    Both Arsenal & Chelsea fans know they stole a win that they shouldn’t have.

    Both Dortmund & Mayern Munich fans will feel hard done by.

    Perfect example of a team not deserving a win – Man Utd, Champions League final in 1999.

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  34. KK
    Again.
    See Arsenal V Dortmund
    Chelsea V Bayern Munich
    All of your points can be applied to Chelsea/Arsenal.
    Defending is just as important as attacking. Krul was very responsible today, but he is a NEWCASTLE player. He is part of the team.

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  35. Thanks JJ

    For everybody else – I’ve given credit to Pardew for the way we’ve attacked against Liverpool & Tottenham.

    Anybody who thinks Chelsea & Spurs couldn’t have hammered us though, wasn’t paying attention.

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  36. @JJ

    I agree about all the defenders though Santon still looks a bit shakey at times. I think Debuchy has been our best defender all season puting tackles in left right and center.

    Very tough call on who is going to get dropped to tailor for Coloccini.

    Also loved how many times Anita won 50/50’s when he come on god dam foreigners have no bottle lmao Xenophobic bullshit.

    Also if Ameobi scores for us will the commentators still bleet on about no English players scoring for us 😛 Is he technically English or Nigerian?

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  37. @KK
    But are the pundits praising for them for the results? Yes…
    If you have a weaker team than your opponents of course you are going to spend most the match defending.Jesus.

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  38. DJG
    Defoe is a 1/3 striker. He is overrated.

    I could argue Cisse would have stuck those chances away. He has a better goals per game and goals per shots ratio than Defoe.

    Also just watched the first half.

    Incredible movement and pressing in defense from Toon. That’s what we’ve been lacking for ages.

    Only player who didn’t seem to have energy was ShOla but that’s normal.

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  39. @KK

    What are you talking about Chelsea were **** on the day they barely had a sniff at goal. We easily could have beat them by 2 or 3 more goals.

    Spurs i don’t think anyone is saying that it could so easily be a different scoreline.

    Why that matters to you i don’t know.

    A few weeks back before this run of difficult games people said they would be happy with 4 points how delighted are they with 7 which is all that matters in the end. All about the points.

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  40. @newkie – 196

    Tell that to Stoke fans who have had to put up with boring performances for the sake of safe results.

    A win is nice, but i would rather lose to Liverpool 4-3 than watch backs against the wall, lucky 1-0 hoofball win.

    That wasn’t the case today – today we were slightly better than spurs in the first half.

    Second half we were very fortunate.

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  41. KK – so if you were a Chelsea fan you would have been disappointed winning the CL final. Because in your words performance matters more than results!.
    What about being a Blackpool fan the season they were in the PL – well I don’t mind getting relegated because we’ve played some great football this season?!.

    This was Spurs away! A top 6 team that actually have a league position this season thanks to a few 1-0 Soldado penalty wins.
    You want to stand toe to toe with these teams, I’d say look at what happened when we did that against Arsenal last season!. Yeah we scored 3 goals but they scored 7!!. Are you saying that because we went after them you were pleased?.

    I’m not sure what you mean by performance matters more than results?. Today we showed a disciplined performance, our goalkeeper put in an outstanding performance, our defensive performance was excellent. Most of the players performed well today and stuck to their task.

    I’ve read all week that Cisse isn’t good enough because he’s a striker and his main role is to score goals. Well the Spurs forwards had chances to score goals today and didnt perform well enough to score. So if they haven’t performed well enough to score, despite the chances – why should they win the game?.

    As for Chelsea. We were solid for 60mins and performed excellently defensively as a team. But the final 30mins for me, we were far the better team.

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  42. Well done lads what a good 6 points, win and we are still holding on to Manure, lose them and we would have been down with Norwich and Swansea in the bottom half. Lets hope we kick on now from this.

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  43. Oh dear. 😯

    Dear me how? 🙂

    What are the Pardew knockers saying now????? 😆

    Bootsy and TGS will be shuffling on their squeaky arses feeling very stupid now. 😛 😛

    Has TGS been on shouting, ” SACK THE FOOL!”

    Thought not. 😛

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  44. I actually feel Soldado is suffering a bit like Cisse last season in that he has no support in attack. He is normally left very isolated because Spurs play two deep central midfielders.

    Last season Cisse had two deep defensive midfielders out of form and a defensive winger in Jonas.

    The addition of Remy and Gouf is huge for us. Gives us an extra man in offense and some much needed pace and energy.

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  45. KK-Stoke are still fucking boring, they enjoyed not hoofing it ever opportunity, bet they will regret it if they get relegated though 😉

    Well I’d rather win every weekend whether we deserved to or not. It’s obviously better if we do, but half the time it doesn’t work out like that. That’s football.

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  46. @solanostrumpet – 197

    I’m not complaining that we spent most of the match defending. We didn’t. First half we were more dangerous.

    I am complaining that we are sitting too deep, allowing spurs to get 14 shots on target & having to rely so much on 1 player for the result (tim Krul)

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  47. @Richie
    If we perform to our capabilities and win our next 2 games we’ll be on 23 points.
    Guess how long it reached us to get that many last season? 😯

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  48. Santi,

    Agree, Debuchy has been outstanding.

    Just seen Krul and Mbiwa double save. Brilliant stuff. Desperate defending. But again, Pardew must get some credit for getting the attitude and desire right for this one – can he keep it there though 😐

    I still think Cisse is a better option than Shola, but I have no problem with him sitting on the bench for a while. I think it takes some pressure off of him. When he gets a goal, it’ll be a bonus and slowly he can get his confidence back.

    What I would do against Norwich however is put Ben Arfa/Marvauex in behind Remy as a proper no.10.

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  49. Having watched the last 2 games and seeing Pardew playing Shola up there. I do think he’s done a job but he’s nee goal threat like, so I’m wondering if the Gomis move who be a good option after all?. He could do a similar job to what Shola has done but could well get the goals Shola doesn’t.

    I hate to say it but I spent most of this game thinking, we better prepare for life without Remy, because game by game I think we’re going to find it difficult to secure him. If we could get him (if he’s not a rapist) then it would be a huge signing.

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  50. @MDS

    That when we are at our worst during “very winnable matches” 😥 I am started to hate the attitude we should be getting 3 points today as it always seems to be the days we lose or draw.

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  51. JJ – any deal would have to be agreed by Remy and his team. I don’t think he wants to play for us long term (tho I think he is enjoying it just now), but he’s a player good enough to be in a squad competing for league titles and qualifying regularly for the CL IMO

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  52. May sound a bit churlish after such a wonderful result but Santon was about the worst I’ve seen him play. He could have easily gifted them at least two goals. What was with the ref? He seemed to be encouraging Spurs. Sissoko I thought got the ball when he got his yellow card and near the end when we were well into their half down our left the Newcastle player near the touch line with the ball was clearly pushed in the back off the ball. This happened right in front of the ref and he just waved play on to start another Spurs attack. Second half – did Spurs press or did we sit back? Given our history I suspect we sat back. Great result though and very pleased. Commentators seemed to be willing a Spurs win.

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  53. AngelOfDeath@207, Danny Guthrie should bladder his style advisor. The bloke looks like a complete knacker with that hairstyle 👿 👿

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  54. It’s quite easy to understand this football lark.

    1st line of defense is your front line. – at the toon this is pretty much non-existant, at least in the second half today.
    The next line of defense is the midfield, who at times today in the second half were overrun, though who contributed to there own downfall by sitting too deep, and getting confuddled by AVB’s tactical change in the second half. Bit of a minus point here from Pardew to be honest, not getting it sussed. There again, Spurs were at home and the onus was on them to win the game.

    Next line of defense is ……..err…our defenders, including Tim Krul. They played brilliant, and we won. …because they did there jobs superbly, plus we had a bit of luck on our side.

    I’m not sure what a couple of punters on here actually expect from the toon ? Do they expect us to go to White Hart Lane and play them off the park ? I’m not quite sure with who they are measuring the level of the toons improvement. WUM’s I say…

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  55. Would of been the perfect day if not for the Scum result 👿 how the hell they won that I will never know. 😕

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