Well, that was exactly what the doctor ordered after an otherwise awful start to 2020 – even if it did get unnecessarily hairy late on!
The scoreline suggests it was close – and it was for the final 90 seconds – but we were deserved winners, with goals a Miguel Almiron double and second half strike from Valentino Lazaro sending us into the quarter finals of the FA Cup!
Steve Bruce persisted with a 4-2-3-1, playing Lazaro, Almiron and Saint-Maximin behind Joelinton, with Sean Longstaff and Nabil Bentaleb holding and a four-man defence of Manquillo, Lascelles, Schar and Rose and Darlow between the sticks.
We started the opening stages positively, dominating possession without posing too much of a threat, however we had one HUGE chance to go 0-1 up in the opening minutes – but wasted it horribly. Bentaleb stole the ball and created a 2-on-1 situation with Miguel Almiron alongside him, however his pass was behind the Paraguyan and the chance was gone.
Joelinton then headed wide after a clever ball in by Lazaro and the Brazilian was involved again moments later, beating his man and having a shot blocked after bursting into the box from the left-hand side.
A corner moments later then gave us another opening, with Joelinton peeling to the back post and heading across the box for Longstaff, who sliced a decent chance high and wide.
We were in total control in every department other than the score line – something we’ve not been used to saying this season – but our lack of final product where it mattered was letting us down in a game. Then, that changed.
Saint-Maximin went inches from scoring with a stunning 30-yard strike that smashed the upright, then he was at it again – only this time his brilliant work led to a goal, with him cutting in from the left and slipping a superb ball in behind for Miguel Almirom. The Paraguayan still had plenty to do, but slotted a left-footed strike into the bottom corner emphatically, giving us a well deserved 0-1 lead.
West Brom then came back into it, having a little more of the ball and applying a little more pressure in the final third, but we defended well and were on top again before long.
We looked set to go into the break with a well deserved 0-1 advantage, but were in dreamland just a minute before the break, where Almiron made it two after a clever move ended in a Joelinton back-heel that was lashed home on the stretch by Miggy – a goal which made him our top scorer.
Into the break at 0-2 and looking good, but there was still no room for complacency going into the second half, with us doing our best to throw away leads after positive first-half performances in our last two FA Cup away days at Rochdale and Oxford!
I hoped we’d learn that and keep playing in the same way moving in the final 45 – and we did exactly that!
Just seconds into the second half, some neat link up play saw Almiron pick it up out wide, and he wasn’t short on options with Lazaro bursting into space through the middle and Saint-Maximin in acres of room on the left. He chose Saint-Maximin, who controlled and passed across the box for Lazaro, who bundled home in front of the away end to make it 0-3!
More good football, a key pass from Almiron, another Saint-Maximin assist and Valentino Lazaro’s first goal for the club – which he thoroughly deserved in what was an accomplished and lively display from the Austrian.
The next 20 minutes saw us show slightly less intent from an attacking perspective, but remain in control at 0-3 – despite West Brom creating a few dangerous scrambles in the box.
Krovinovic’s introduction then changed the game for the hosts and they made it 1-3 via Matt Phillips, with his strike suddenly giving us something to think about given we threw away a 0-2 lead in our last FA Cup outing at Oxford!
They continued to cause problems and then made it 2-3 in extra-time through Zohore, making for a nervy final 90 seconds.
It should never have been this close, but that shouldn’t take anything away from what was a much improved performance and well deserve win to send the 5,000 strong away end home happy.
On a night where many arrived fearing the worst after some awful form in the league, that was a brilliant performance and a win that could give us a much needed boost ahead of crucial Premier League clashes with Southampton, Sheffield Utd, Aston Villa
For the first time in 14 years, we’re in the quarter finals of the FA Cup and just one win from Wembley!
HWTL!
Even though West Brom are in The Championship I think we are showing what we already knew. That we have decent players but just have to find a way to use them properly #NOMORE9ATTHEBACK.
Eric Sykes(Quote)
If we now see the MLS Almiron we will be very impressed indeed.
He was the best player in MLS by a mile and some MLS players have done well in the PL – goalkeepers, Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey, Brian McBride.
Eric Sykes(Quote)
I think we took our foot off at 3-0 but before that we looked very good – arguably the best we’ve looked all season.
Our forwards looked bright and more dangerous than in most games. I think the 4-2-3-1 system seems to really suit them – Almiron seems to favour the more central role and Joelinton is getting players around him to help him out.
I think it’s a system that would likely suit Gayle and Muto if we needed to use them up front too, so hopefully he sticks with it now.
Sharpy17(Quote)
Stuck on the last thread 🙄
https://twitter.com/elgalgojonas/status/1234495878733484032
https://twitter.com/NUFC/status/1234995888843456512
AMAZING SUPPORT
https://twitter.com/inthecrowdtw/status/1235010694560481280
KIMTOON(Quote)
The journos are now having a collective w@nk about Bruno Fernandez. He looks a really good player but they are acting like he will bring Man U a title by himself. After like 4 games.
Make Man U Great Again #MMUGA
Put it on a red baseball cap you bunch of lame suck-ups.
Eric Sykes(Quote)
I mean, the journos just seem desperate to have Man U back to Fergie Man U. I have no idea why they want this. CLICKS? It must be clicks.
If you ever look at tabloid websites the first stories are always Man U and Pogba and they have been **** for 6 years.
CLICKS.
Eric Sykes(Quote)
I see Bruce is at war with Craig Hope and called him out in last nights post presser.
Hope claimed he didn’t write that Bruce and ASM had fallen out.
Well they are clearly the words on the headline of the article, so either Hope doesn’t write the headlines or Bruce has just pulled his pants right down ??♂️. Kid looks a right clown now.
Fair play to Bruce though ??
Sharpy17(Quote)
Eric, i thought he was gonna lamp him one , good for steve.
KIMTOON(Quote)
Sharpy not Eric 🙄
KIMTOON(Quote)
Corona virus up to 85 now, that’s a jump of 34 in one day
KIMTOON(Quote)
So this book written was published in 1981
The eyes of darkness by Dean Koontz
Extract from said book
”..they call the stuff ‘Wuhan-400 because it was developed at their RDNA labs outside the city of Wuhan, and it was the four-hundredth viable strain of man-made micro-organisms created at that research centre. On another page ”In around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe attacking the lungs and bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments. Almost more baffling than the illness itself will be the fact that it will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrived. And attack again 10 years later and then disappear completely. Google the book name and see how this was predicted 40 years ago?!
spooky eh
KIMTOON(Quote)
ffs man city
nothings ever easy is it 🙄
KIMTOON(Quote)
The Gods don’t want us to win another trophy ever!
Plus points are we’re at home and the atmosphere will be good and we have taken 4 points off them in the last two seasons at SJP.
Stuart79(Quote)
Back from the states and bright as a button at 3:25! Ridiculous! Hopefully I will still be like this tomorrow night as I’m flying to Benidorm at 7am for a mates birthday weekend! As if my liver hasn’t had enough damage in the last week.
I notice there’s been 40 cases of Coronavirus In Seattle. I was there last week too! Oops…
Stuart79(Quote)
So, if I was a betting man, (I’m not) I would’ve bet that the gods would kick us in the nads and give us City in the draw, and hey ho, we draw City… I would’ve preferred it was in the final, but so be it. They are beatable, and we are at home.
Dubai Toon(Quote)
?
Eric Sykes(Quote)
Kim – yeah he looked like he was ready to flip the table ?.
I think he started annoyed at the article, but when the lad sat there and said ‘I didn’t say that’ – I think that’s what caused him to react like that.
It’s like a kid crayoning on the wall and you catch them holding the crayon but they say ‘I didn’t do that’. ?
You go from being annoyed by the act to raging about the lie.
I can see it getting to a point where managers will come together against the media if they keep writing BS stories though.
Sharpy17(Quote)
Kim – id be locking him up as prime suspect number 1.
I do feel that there’s a lot of drama and scare mongering by the media about this virus though.
Sharpy17(Quote)
Sharpy, it’s the stockpiling lot doing my nut in mate.
I buy two bottles of antibacterial handwash every week for me and Lewis carers who come in to help me . It’s really important that i have it for them to use along with gloves, aprons and paper hand towels.
I went to 5 shops yesterday and it’s totally out of stock, everyones gone nuts over it.
This begs a big question – Were these folk who are suddenly buying it not washing their hands before ? 😯 Dirty beggers.
There is no Flour, bog rolls, pasta, hand gel, on the shelves either, just crazy.
Don’t get me wrong, i do think it’s gonna be a lot of people infected and i am really worried about Lew as his immune system isn’t good, he currently has a stinking cold/cough and viruses tend to set off his seizures really bad . I’ve had a hacking cough since before xmas too, i’m getting some very angry looks if i cough when i’m out i can tell you , and i ALWAYS use tissues .
KIMTOON(Quote)
Oh and my cough was caught in the Hospital last time I stayed in with Lew in December 2019 ! , it’s the **** air con they have, really awful .
KIMTOON(Quote)
Kim – it’s when I read things the headline on Sky News this morning ‘coronavirus grounds flybe for good’ – Flybe was already on its ar$e.
Coronavirus now up to 90 in the UK – there’s 90 people in my village now with influenza but nobody is banging on about that. Flu will kill off f
Sharpy17(Quote)
… far more this year than Coronavirus.
You are absolutely right. People should have good personal hygiene regardless.
I’d be interested to see who’s been buying up shares in hand sanitizers coz someone is getting rich off the back of all of this.
The media never try to reassure the public do they?!?!!.
Parliament could be forced to close for months. Public services could grind to a halt. The world could end!!! …. or you might get a bit of a cold ? – please catch it, bin it, kill it as you always should.
Sharpy17(Quote)
Sharpy, spot on mate.
The Flu thing is odd, as you say it kills thousands every year yet the governments of every country are cacking themselves over this virus they insist is like a cold ! makes no sense if true.
KIMTOON(Quote)
Lewis and i both contracted Swine flu when it got here, hospitalised for 10 days in isolation room just after the christmas. Lew was very very ill, in status with temp of 40 when he was admitted, took 3 days to get his temp back to 37 and we were not right for weeks after too. 500,000 contracted it in the UK. There was nowhere near the level of panic for that that there is for this one.
KIMTOON(Quote)
Odd thing was he never had the cough with it just fever and fits, i had the cough and it was constant ,and i mean constant, never stopped. I dropped a shed load of weight as couldn’t eat a thing due to coughing. Every cloud and all that.
KIMTOON(Quote)
KIm you know this gel thing is a bit of a con,it does not work unless you wash your hands “before”you apply it it,thats from my Doc
icedog(Quote)
Ice, yeah, you on about the hand sanitisers. it’s the hand wash gel i wash on about mate, we use it for washing hands after the loo and cleaning up after cleaning up Lewis. Very important for obvious reasons and very frustrating i can’t get it. Maybe it’s time to source carbolic soap lol, remember that ?
KIMTOON(Quote)
I am guessing I am 100% to get this Coronavirus since I am meeting 2 friends in Mexico on Saturday – 1 lives in Seattle and the other works for the airlines.
Eric Sykes(Quote)
All Serie A matches are to be played “behind closed doors” until April 3rd because of Coronavirus.
When there is this media frenzy it is hard to know if you should worry or not.
If they are banning people going to football matches you would think they would ban people going to Opera, traveling on trains and buses, going to the pub…
Eric Sykes(Quote)
Eric – you should look through the dramatic headlines and cut straight to the facts mate.
The symptoms are no worse than the flu – infact, if there were no news about the coronavirus and you caught it, you’d think you just had the flu. Providing you are fairly fit and health, you would recover from it without knowing you ever had it.
It’s a huge media scare, and what’s annoying me is that in the UK the are 90 people now who have caught it. But the media have turned their back on the thousands of family’s who are either homeless or putting their homes back together after the worse floods in the UK for over 200yrs. The best the government came up with is £500 a house.
Boris the sh!thouse couldn’t even be ar$ed to visit these people – too busy with scan photos I suppose.
I do wonder if this media stir up is to scare the nation into believing we need US meds – putting the NHS back on the table when negotiating a trade deal with Trump and his cronies.
Sharpy17(Quote)
Sharpy: I am not worried about this media fueled frenzy at all. Not even getting a mask for my plane ride!!!
Eric Sykes(Quote)
Eric – I’m not worried about the virus, but I am worried about the impact of the scare mongering.
It’s obvious that a large part of the nation is buying this nonsense. People are stock piling, meaning people like Kim who genuinely need these products, can’t get them. It’s creating anxiety among people who allow themselves to believe this madness.
I saw Boris was getting interviewed asked – can the NHS cope with this??? You have 43,000 too few nurses!!! … there are 90 in the WHOLE of the UK who have this virus!!
The worse Country to be hit by this in Europe is Italy – with 3000 people diagnosed. 3000 in a Country with a population of over 60 million people.
The global media hype has to have an ulterior motive imo.
Sharpy17(Quote)
anyone seen this? I didn’t watch last nights game, apparently he went into stand to fight a fan who insulted him and his family. Shades of Cantona without the kung fu kick, must be something to do with the name Eric.
https://twitter.com/SBergwijn_/status/1235331816946577411
KIMTOON(Quote)
https://twitter.com/queercatholic1/status/1235332114452828162?s=21
KIMTOON(Quote)
aye i remember that still knocking about,remember mother scrubbing steps with it too
icedog(Quote)
Well they’ve got Shelvey and Ritchie signed up to new deals, which is good news imo. Whether they are first on the team sheet or not is unlikely – but they are good pros and good senior players to have in the squad imo.
I hope we can pin Manquillo and Matty to new deals now as well. Then get on focusing on what’s needed in the summer and start working on those deals too … ? sorry I couldn’t keep a straight face there.
Sharpy17(Quote)
Kim – I think we live in a society now with the likes of social media, where people get used to saying whatever they want without repercussions – and as such, turn up to things like football matches and think they can say what they want there too.
I don’t know what was said to Diers brother to be fair – and at the same time, is it a wise move him sat in the crowd. There is always a risk Eric will take stick from the fans – especially when over at the end of a game they just lost.
I suspect the lad heard someone slating Eric and said something – that person then turned on Eric’s brother and he jumped into the crowd to defend him.
It’s a football match at the end of the day though and emotions run high – especially in games like that.
Maybe they should offer the players a discount on the family executive boxes in that spanking new stadium of theirs.
Sharpy17(Quote)
Glad Ritchie and Shelvey have signed up. At the very least it means we will get decent fees for them if we get relegated. We have played pretty **** without them in the team this season and if 40 million is the going rate for a player now (Joelinton) then why not keep the decent players we have.
I have gone back and forth on Shelvey because you sort of have to base the tactics on him alone. I still haven’t decided exactly where I stand after much internal debate.
Eric Sykes(Quote)
ERIC i think Shelvey plays when “he” wants to, to lazy to ever make a top m/f player imo
icedog(Quote)
Icedog: I don’t think Shelvey is lazy. I think he is slow. Started to score a few goals recently but his career record is not that great. Still think he is a decent player but as I said I am always wondering what to do with him.
Eric Sykes(Quote)
This coronavirus has gone mental now. Product of 24 hr news cycle. It is not stopping me going out or going to Mexico tomorrow. Panic has spread to stock markets which is just insane. Dow and FTSE are overvalued and need to reset but coronavirus is just the excuse.
Eric Sykes(Quote)
If there is anywhere I am going to catch this coronavirus thing then it is at a giant airport like O’Hare in Chicago where thousands of Asians pass through every day. Or on a plane where the air is recycled. But fck it. I stick 2 fingers up at coronavirus and am going anyway 🙂
Eric Sykes(Quote)
Sharpy, agree about social media mate, it is over spilling into everyday life now, something very strange has happened to societies psyche in general. People seem quicker to judge, more selfish and outspoken. Anyone deemed to show empathy or trying to see an opposing view is called a snowflake or ‘woke’ like it’s some type of shameful label .
In the case of Dier’s brother, they say he had a go at a fan for making racist comments to one of Spurs players and it got heated which is why Eric ran up there.
As you say better his brother wasn’t sat with the fans but in reality he should be able to sit there and enjoy the game without listening to that sort of **** if that’s what happened.
He’ll likely get a ban now and you cannot argue against it cause he was wrong but so was the gobshite making racist comments.
KIMTOON(Quote)
Ice, kinda agree on Shelvey, he has undoubted talent but only seems to turn up every 3 or 4 games. He always strikes me as a complex character as well, gets riled too easily by fans and opo players alike. Rafa seemed to get him motivated not sure Steve has that ability.
Happy him and Ritchie have extended their contracts though, just need Matty now and as has been mentioned Manquillo too whom i do really like.
KIMTOON(Quote)
I see Redmond will still be missing for Saints so that’s a help.
KIMTOON(Quote)
Armstrong and Smallbone are also out as well.
Lets hope Ings poor form of late continues .
KIMTOON(Quote)
I think this is another hard lineup to predict because we don’t know what the loan players have been told about playing time. Also, hope Brucie will not revert to the ultradefensive 9-0-1 formation. Finally, I think Joelinton deserves a rest. I think he has started in all but 1 of our games. Cannot use him as a centre forward ever again. I would pick Ritchie ahead of Rose, so:
Dubravka
Manquillo Schar Lascelles Ritchie
Hayden Shelvey
Lazaro Almiron St Max
Gayle
Eric Sykes(Quote)
I keep coming back to Jeolinton. There is no doubt he has been a total bust because 40 million for 1 goal in like 30 games tells you that. But he was never a centre forward and IS never a centre forward. That has to be on Nickson thinking he could be somehow magically be transformed. Brucie should also share the blame because of his tactics. We will see if playing out wide makes a difference.
I have said this before, but for 40 mil you want the finished product. I am shocked that Ashley doesn’t get this given his reluctance to spend at NUFC in the past and him running sweat shops for Tat Direct.
From what I have seen Joe just doesn’t have that killer instinct. Hopefully playing in his correct position will give him some confidence. He looks more like Emile Heskey than Alan Shearer but Heskey did play a role and wasn’t a total waste of space. Maybe he will be the new Shola. But at 40 mil…
Eric Sykes(Quote)
Eric i did like the way he and miggy swap positions in the cup game, it was pretty fluid at times and he does work very hard. He is not a number nine and never will be imo but out wide given licence to rotate like v west Brom could well work given time.
It’s at least something they can work with until the summer when hopefully we get a new number 9 that actually is a number 9.
I see Martinez ruptured his acl, that’s a bit of a blow for them . Think that was what was behind Miggy’s celebration after he scored, he used to do it with Martinez , a kind of thinking of you thing.
KIMTOON(Quote)
Is there another thread?
Dubai Toon(Quote)