Newcastle v Norwich – Premier League match preview

Magpies v Canaries
Magpies v Canaries
A fortnight after our mauling in Manchester we get ready to take on Norwich City in as we attempt to record a first league victory of the season.

The international break has allowed us a time of reflection but it has also brought us the bad news that Tim Krul will miss the remainder of the season after picking up an injury with Holland.

Losing your first choice goalkeeper is not good, especially when I personally can’t really work out who our backup is. On seniority it’s Rob Elliot who suffered his own long term injury last season and is still being monitored. Or is it Karl Darlow who is also absent through injury?

Anyway, going back to our last match it’s all too easy to look at the scoreline abd think we plated awful. We did in the second half against Manchester City bug in the first we were actually very good and maybe, on chances, should have been effectively out of sight.

It is that first half that needs replicating more often if we are to start climbing the table. A win against Norwich won’t take us out of the bottom three and it won’t improve our situation but it will increase confidence heading into the game against Sunderland next weekend. I still, perhaps foolishly, believe we possess some good players. The thing is its up to them to show it.

Newcastle:

As detailed above the situation with our goalkeepers isn’t great but there is also good news with regards to the rest of our injuries. Jack Colback, Daryl Janmaat and Massadio Haidara are all in training and are expected to return to the side while Paul Dummett edges closer to a return to first team duties.

That’s where the good news ends though as Steven Taylor, Rolando Aarons, Karl Darlow, Kevin Mbabu, Gabriel Obertan and Emmanuel Riviere are all still out.

Norwich

Wes Hoolahan has recovered from the heel injury he picked up in their last game against Leicester City and is likely to start. Striker Gary Hooper is closing in on a return to action but is likely to sit this one out but Youssouf Mulumbu is still out of contention for Norwich boss Alex Neil.

Previously…

A total of 52 matches have been contested between the two sides in all competitions with United winning 22 of them. The other 30 are split evenly between draws and defeats with 15 of each.

There were no games between the two sides to reflect upon from last season due to Norwich slipping into the Championship so a look back at the 2013/14 will show the Magpies picking up four points against the Canaries with a 2-1 at St James’ Park followed up by a 0-0 draw at Carrow Road.

Stats and facts…

The last five meetings between these sides have produced just five goals, including two 0-0 draws.

Newcastle have scored six goals this season, the joint-lowest total in the Premier League prior to the weekend fixtures.

United have also surrendered a league-high seven points from winning positions this season.

Norwich have not kept a clean sheet in any of their eight Premier League matches this season.

As mentioned above Wes Hoolahan will be fit to start which is bad news as only David Silva has provided more Premier League assists to date this term.

Final thought…

I said last time out that I didn’t expect much against Manchester City and in the end I was right to expect nothing. This time is different. We are at home, we have to be the favourites and I expect a lot more from this match.

Having said that it won’t be easy and it will be a nervy game in front of the Sky TV cameras but these are the games that will make or break our season, not the games against the Manchester City’s and so on. It’s time to deliver.

Howay the lads!

Date: Sunday, 18th October, 2015

Time: 16:00

Venue: St James’ Park

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.

24 thoughts on “Newcastle v Norwich – Premier League match preview

  1. From the previous thread.
    Joe Hawkins
    That’s what I’ve preached from day one and tried to educate the Pardew bashers on here. The facts were, whoever Ashley replaced Pardew with, he was never going to be better. So we had a steady pair of hands in Pardew, an average premier league manager, but by changing him was always going to be a risk. Yes, we might have got another average manager, creating the same problems but the risk was that we would get worse and face relegation. It looks like Psychs and the rest YKWYA got what they wanted and now they don’t like it. 
    Pathetic really. :-/

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  2. I think we are going to be in a battle with the teams that are currently the bottom seven, plus West Brom. Two massive six pointers coming up and we need four points at least. HTL we can beat Norfolk canaries come on!

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  3. Troy – wasn’t your patience running thin with Pardew?, I can’t recall the comments verbatim, but I’m pretty sure you questioned how much longer Pardew would get before the Leicester game last season.
    I’m not attacking you there, which is why I’ve avoided saying you were calling for Pardew to be sacked or anything like that – I’m just saying, it wasn’t just the extremists who had or were loosing patience with Pardew.

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  4. Sharpy: Troy loves to reinvent himself. He said that if we lost to Leicester then Pards should be sacked. He always forgets that Pardew quit. He said that Carver would be made the permanent manager. He hasn’t said a lot about McClaren except he will judge him after 10 games. Apparently Commissioner Troy has the bat phone to Ashley and will let him know what to do with Schteve.

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  5. And I do know it was Batman that had the batphone to Commissioner Gordon just in case The Troystar wants to split hairs.

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  6. Eric – to be honest, I agreed with Troy at the time. I likened us to Stoke at the time in that their fans weren’t happy with the style of Pullis play. They knew the new manager weren’t be much better than Pullis in terms of league finishes, but they wanted a more attractive style of football to watch. That was how I felt about Pardew anyway.
    But I agreed with Troy that with this lot in charge, it was highly unlikely we would get that – based on the fact when DL left they replaced with JK and when he left replaced with LC. To me that is clear evidence that we don’t replace with the best possible candidates – if fact I would question if those jobs were even advertised.
    As for Pardew, he was neither sacked nor did he walk – he was under contract, so couldn’t just walk. A club came in for him that he had an interest in – a rival club I might add. He was allowed to leave because Palace met Ashley’s valuation.
    Ashley could have easily said no!. He could have said ‘I’ll allow you to leave in the summer’ – then Palace would have had to find their own Carver to see them through. But instead, Ashley coined it in and wrote our season off, whilst we watched Palace climb the league.
    It wasn’t the fans fault, nor was it Pardews fault – that was all Ashley again.

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  7. Sharpy: Troy gets it nearly right quite a lot of the time. He is calm now as well. If you think back to just before that Leicester game he was doing a lot of woo wooing, and reality train type stuff and letting anybody that didn’t agree with him have it. He is much better now that I have trained him to be calm 🙂

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  8. Sharpy: I just read your words @7 again. I never really thought about it like that, and you are probably right. Although, if Fatty hadn’t let Pardew go it would have been bad for everybody because Pards would have been in a bad mood and let everybody know about it.

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  9. Haha. I’ve always said, it doesn’t matter who the manager is, if you are in a relegation spot and running out of games then you have to sack the manager. We were in a position that if we got beat off leceister we would have been in that position. However, I was virtually the last person still giving him that extra game. He won and my faith was justified.
    It’s funny how people who were wrong try to blame others who were right. YKWYA; -)

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  10. Eric – Balls to Pardews mood. Ashley could have and arguably should have sacked him in the summer, or when he laid one on Myler. Ashley stood by Pardew when many owners would have shifted him. A negotiation could have been made for Pardew to leave in the summer if he desperately wanted to go & Palace were prepared to wait – which based on how much they paid for him, I imagine they would have.

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  11. Troy – you did always say that, and I think you & Stu (from memory) continued to make the case that we wouldn’t get better than Pardew. But the point I’m making is that before that Leicester game, you as someone who saw the benefit of keeping him, began to have doubts.
    He wasn’t having a good time of it – a bad 2nd half of the season & poor start to a new one. The Leicester game turned things around, but you can understand why people had lost patience with him?.

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  12. Sharpy
    I’ve said it many times. I would have replaced him at the drop of a hat but I knew with Ashley in charge, we won’t going to get better and a good chance we would get worse.
    I maintained the anger should be driven at Ashley and not Pards. The same goes now as then.
    For some bizarre reason, the likes of Psychs and others believed we would get better.
    YKWYA

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  13. Troy, I see what you were saying although i was not a massive fan of Pardew.
    Hindsight is a wonderful thing and you can now see what a job he did do under the constraints Ashley has at the club.
    My problem with him was not the football side of things which is always going to be **** under Ashley but his constant a**e crawling.
    Now you see McClaren doing the exact same thing so it makes you wonder if they are forced into this pathetic display of kowtow ?

    You could have Mike Ashley and his cronies at Newcastle United for the next 20 year and they still will achieve nothing !
    After all his sh**e patter about bolting carts onto horses and not leaving until he wins anything well the only trophy he is likely to win at Newcastle is “The Johnstone Paint Trophy.”
    I have always said this club will end up playing third tier football under his stewardship and after 8 years of his mismanagement it is still on the cards.
    He got lucky the first time around but this time will see us fall straight through The Championship and into League One.
    You only have to look at clubs like Wolves, Coventry, Wigan, Sheff Wed etc to see how easy it can happen.

    Mike Ashley will be the dunder-heed to accomplish that very feat !

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  14. lol Troy youre so full of ****. you were in exactly the same mind-set as the pardew ousters. the fact you gave him 1 game shows you had lost faith in him. Youre just as bad as the people you call.

    I bet you wish you hadn’t ever made the one last game statement. You could of rubbed it into our faces for ages. 😛

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  15. Gashley
    Not at all. I stick by my decision. It’s the sensible thing to call for someone’s head if they drop into the bottom 3 and games are running out. It didn’t happen and he still had my support.
    The big difference between me and the others like you, was I didn’t blame Pards. I always said he’s doing a decent job under the circs. I was proven right.
    You hate the fact I’m right and you are wrong. Deal with it. ;-D

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  16. Georgio
    It’s down to others to change the subject. I quite enjoy reminding the twisters what they’ve brought on.
    I have no idea about today. We haven’t won yet so I have no confidence in us winning.

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  17. The thing non of us can argue about is Alan left the club and his Palace side are in relative safety and playing some decent stuff.
    We are languishing at the very bottom of the league so i’ll bet right about now he is sitting at home p***ing himself laughing at us mugs lol

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  18. Georgio@19, there are a couple of lads on here who go all Kylie when it comes to the legendary Alan Pardew 🙂

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  19. Well. I see that McClaren says to judge him at the end of the season now. He seems pretty safe and secure that he will last. I still haven’t made up my mind about him. He failed at his last 4 jobs, plus England but did take a very small Dutch side to a title and won the treble with Man U. Hopefully a couple of wins and a few returning players will get the season started and he won’t be using them cliches about the season starting now or every game is like a cup final.

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