Game On! Newcastle v Stoke

Game on at SJP!
Game on at SJP!
A home game against Stoke is on the agenda today as United look to bounce back from Derby day defeat last weekend.

And with it being Halloween Steve McClaren will be hoping that he isn’t left looking like a pumpkin at the full time whistle!

The last time we played a game on the day of Halloween was in fact against Stoke City at the Britannia Stadium with Newcastle running out 3-1 victims courtesy of a Demba Ba treble. A repeat of that will be most welcome as the home side look to start putting some points on the board and some daylight between us and the bottom of the table.

The match preview went up earlier and can be viewed here. It details all the stuff you need to know ahead of the game including injuries, suspension, transfers out, some stats and facts and a look at the history of the fixture.

We’re also still running our competition where you have guess where a goal is going to be scored. It’s now open to a second round of letter picks just in case there is an irregularity with the first selections! You can view that here.

Team news I will endeavour to deliver as soon as it becomes available but there is always inevitably someone who beats me to it and posts it in the ‘comments’ section below so have a look there shortly after 2pm and you’ll find it. The same is also true of internet streams.

I touched on this in the match preview but again I firmly believe we’re playing much better football. We now need to start picking up the points to match it. Hopefully starting today.

Howay the lads!

Newcastle: Rob Elliot, Daryl Janmaat, Chancel Mbemba, Fabricio Coloccini, Paul Dummett, Moussa Sissoko, Vurnon Anita, Cheik Tiote, Gerginio Wijnaldum, Ayoze Perez, Aleksandar Mitrovic

Subs: Freddie Woodman, Jamal Lascelles, Massadio Haidara, Yoan Gouffran, Florian Thauvin, Siem de Jong, Papiss Cisse

Stoke: Jack Butland, Glen Johnson, Ryan Shawcross, Philipp Wollscheid, Eric Pieters, Xherdan Shaqiri, Glenn Whelan, Charlie Adam, Amrko Arnautovic, Bojan Krkic, Jonathan Walters

Subs: Jakob Haugaard, Stephen Ireland, Marc Wilson, Ibrahim Afellay, Marco Van Ginkel, Mame Biram Diouf, Peter Crouch

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.

118 thoughts on “Game On! Newcastle v Stoke

  1. Can’t agree Kimtoon lass. Too often our play is absolute drivel. People have forgotten what a good team looks like. We’ve had patches of decent play in certain games but not nearly enough to be competitive in this league. Without huge intervention from Ashley we are going down. The defense is simply not good enough. Players like Dummett should be nowhere near first team football. Others should have been long gone years ago. Nothing has changed. Excuses are for losers I’m afraid.

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  2. Wijnaldum doesn’t have fitness or pace for this division. Alright then.

    Glad for more proof that NUFC fans are completely delusional. The fan base fits the club nowadays.

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  3. Dunno what you people are watching but we are playing better football than we did under Carver or Pardew. Yes results have been mostly **** so far but I don’t think we will be fighting relegation come the last few games of the season. Things aren’t going our way with the early fixtures, suspensions, dodgy refereeing decisions etc. but that wont last forever.

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  4. theres fans that want mcclaren to fail,so they can have i told you so moment.
    im all for critising the bloke when we are playing bad ,but today wasnt the case.

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  5. Sad, really sad. It’s wonderful to be optimistic but surely it should be based on facts. It’s like saying well the earthquake just destroyed the entire city but at least it happened on my day off.

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  6. Paulos, spot on mate, at some point we will get the points we deserve, I have faith it will turn in our favour.

    Hitman@74, dead right that’s exactly what happened today.

    Our defence is our Achilles heel but even the defence did well today, but we are definitely creating far more and passing better too.

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  7. The club has become a place for supporters who love to be the downtrodden underdog Troy mate, instead of a source of pride based on excellence. Sir Bobby is turning over in his grave as we speak. Sad state of affairs.

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  8. The hatred for McLaren is clouding judgement for a lot of fans imo. I didn’t want him but I’m not gonna get on his back yet, we are carving out chances and look better, we just aren’t getting our just deserts. Defensively we are still poor but hopefully we can address that properly in January.

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  9. We are playing better of that there is no doubt. But we are miles away from being premiere league class.
    It’s a start.
    But we have a long way still to go and little time to do it.
    A change of luck would help mind.

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  10. The 2 views of things on here simply aren’t reconcilable. I look at things like number of wins, goal difference, and number of goals allowed as well as how we play. Based on the important stats we are an utter failure again. I don’t like it and I wish it weren’t true but that’s what the numbers and the position in the table tell us.

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  11. F’kin Hell !, What has Steve McClaren done that is so wrong ?
    Yes the results are not there but they were not under Pardew or Charver !
    If it doesn’t improve in the run up to Xmas then by all means vent your spleen but it is getting there and they are playing something approximating football.

    It’s not going to happen overnight but if we can beat Bournemouth next week it might look a lot better this time next week.
    There’s far too many people shouting before they are hurt here and just want to revel in hatred for the sake of it.
    I think Steve is a calm head in and among some right heed the baals !
    Nee wonder we get called deluded with some of the patter here.

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  12. G2 – 😆

    Using your logic then do Chelsea stand a chance of getting dragged into the relegation mix?

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  13. Probably not Toonsy. They’re clearly having huge problems but they will climb out of it based on the quality of their players. I’m shocked at how poorly they are playing and it clearly wasn’t predictable. But we are a vastly different kettle of fish as you well know.

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  14. I would predict somewhere between 5th and 8th for Chelsea and somewhere between 15th and 18th for us short of a big spend by Ashley in January. Predictions are meaningless though as we all know. Results are all that matters and we need some good ones soon.

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  15. I’m using your measuring yardsticks.

    They’ve lost the same amount of games as us, conceded the same as us, only scored four more than us….

    You see that’s my point. I can see an improvement in our play which will unfortunately take time to manifest itself into results. But I can see it happening which is why I’m generally upbeat. I can also see qualities in our play we haven’t had for a long long time.

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  16. G2, Have we not gotten the better of Chelsea in recent times, even with our less star studded side?

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  17. Lots to think about from this. More to come from the Bournemouth match. Another big one. I said I thought we needed a minimum of 7 points from Norwich, Sunderland, Stoke, and Bournemouth. We have 4 from the first 3 of those so 7 is doable. But only just.

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  18. He should change his name to “GEORDIETOOBAD” with the level of depression on display !
    Yer whaddn’t get a job for “The Samaritans” any time soon unless you used to work in Bridgend by any chance ?

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  19. Well said Joe! I think? Not really sure what you’re talking about. I’m sure most teams near the bottom of the table have supporters who aren’t all that happy.

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  20. Well G2. I’m with you. We could sneak out the relegation zone but it’s a big shout.
    We’ve just been beaten 3 nowt against the Mackems who were propping the table up and we can’t score a goal at home to a bottom half team at home but some, including Toonsy see the promised land.

    Be realistic please.
    YCMIU. 🙄

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  21. Other clubs play well and are struggling. It’s not just us.
    For me, the manager is not playing to the players strengths. We will huff and puff all season unless we change formation and try and play with wide men getting crosses in.
    Mitro will never succeed with this style of play.

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  22. Quite a few on the blog pleased that we are now playing some good football. Just a pity that our football is not producing the wins we desperately need.
    Beginning to understand the Derby fans who told me recently that they played some good football under McClaren but that he would never have got them promoted.

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  23. Troy – It’s not that I can see the promised land. Just I see something more promising.

    But i wholeheartedly agree with everyone saying that change is needed. IF it’s needed. I’m just willing to give more time until I get to that point.

    The only defeats didn’t have mitigating circumstances are Watford and Swansea – even though we were down to ten men for over half the game. The City humping wasn’t too great but they’ve jumped Man U by 6 goals in recent seasons too and can on their day do it to anyone.

    Sunderland we controlled that game until the sending off and penalty….

    Playing Arsenal with ten men for 70 minutes….

    The draw against Southampton is hardly unexpected – they qualified for Europe last season while we scraped survival on the final day of the season.

    Chelsea we blew a two goal lead to a worldie from Ramires and a howler from Krul.

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  24. Butland was magnificent today and cost us the game. The ref gave no protection to our players at all. Is there a refs’ club that has it in for NUFC? Janmaat is so unbelievably slow. Must be the poorest RB we have had for some time and Mac should show some balls and sub Sissoko when he stops putting in the effort, other than this I must say that this is the best football I have seen from NUFC for the past three years. We are having several shots on goal whereas under Pardew there were many games where we never tested the keeper. By the way Colo worked his socks off today. If you want to have a go at a defender look no further than Janmaat.

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  25. The game changed once Tiote went off. Tiote was outstanding. His partner in midfield Anita was a waste of space.
    Dummett is a serious weak link.
    Overall the performance was good but we didn’t sustain enough pressure on the Stoke goal
    .

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  26. The odd way fans and pundits look at our striker situation is hurting my head.

    Mitrovic is 21 and getting some comments from pundits at fading in and out of games and not scoring that much and those pundits also excuse Perez of this because he is young – despite Perez being over a year OLDER than Mitrovic.

    I have faith these two can be a great striker combo for us, the old school Little and Large team but I think we need to try and find a way to utilise Cisse as the older, experienced head.

    Mitro and Perez will learn to work together over time but they have no one to teach them. They won’t learn the secrets of the game. They can only develop so far.

    The ignorance and almost excusing Perez of his lack of goals based on age when he is the older guy in the strike team is baffling to me though. Mitro is held to a higher standard because he is tall it seems.

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  27. The front two didn’t get enough of the correct help from our midfield today. More than often our attacking line was a flat four. We need to have a front two with midfield runners sometimes running beyond the front two.
    Hope that all makes sense as the pinot grigot is starting to take effect

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  28. Decent game, this is about our level with this squad of players.
    SM is finally producing decent football, shame he hasn’t got better players

    Fatty, as feared, didn’t back his bullshit about horse and carts with real investment. We’ll always be playing catch up with Ashley in charge

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  29. Look at Villa and Scum, both showing absolutely nothing to say they can escape relegation at the present time. We on the other hand do look like we have something about us, we just need some luck and good refs and the rest will follow.

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  30. Mike Ashley takes to long to sort anything out. We should have hired a manager the second Pardew left for Palace. This way the manager would have time to work out who and isn’t good enough to be in the team. He then waits 5 years before he spends any money on players, making it easy for team’s to advance ahead of us. We are playing better football and we are not scoring goals. Are defence got a clean sheet today but are luck will be hoping Sunderland and Bornemouth losing.

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