So a win at last. Vital for the confidence of all concerned with the club. Great for the confidence of a striker like Welbeck. But let's not kid ourselves Newcastle have been playing well. Whether the prospect of being taken over by a bunch of reprobates from another of their kind has encouraged some players to think on their futures or whether local lad Steve Bruce is not given enough credit they have been playing with fluidity and menace. Scoring goals has not been a problem. And they have been relatively solid defensively buoyed by the improvement in form of Fernandez. The danger man is of course former Watford target Saint Maximin. Powerful, with a lowish centre of gravity, two good feet and a bag of tricks he has been instrumental to powering their rise up the table. Once again all our players will need to work extra hard, concentrate and remember to move with and without the ball. Make the set pieces work which looked a little more improved today. It is absolutely vital we do not lose but we must not go into the game with a negative mindset. Despite winning lard bucket failed to impress again. Please get Welbeck into the middle and into the channels where his brain can come into use to bring the wings and midfielders into play. Get Pussetto out wide. And we certainly will need to see Sarr and Femenia combine to force Maximin inside into Hughes. Or lets just win the ball and work situations into which we can feed Sarr and that way keep his impact minimized. They have struggled against Aston Villa and West Ham so let's not get too despondent but we need a massive performance on the lunchtime. Another three points might be enough to knock the stuffing finally out of Villa as Bournemouth are all but gone. The end of August saw us denied what might have been a crucial win where VAR failed to see a handball in the equalizer scored by Schar. Hold onto your hats and scarves.
We all know the front 3 should be Welbeck, Sarr and Pedro, and we all know the front 3 will be Deeney plus 2 others. Away win.
Will be same line-up as before and we will play as painfully dull as before. Newcastle will out-play and out-run us whilst we’ll show glimmers of attacking runs down the wings where either Sarr or Welbeck will whip in an aimless cross to nobody because Deeney won’t be anywhere to be seen. We could get a point here but after today’s rather poor display against a team that are already down and are somehow more hopeless than us, I can’t see anything other than a loss. Ahhhh well, it is what it is....
Not quite so confident of a win, but we have to win it, so I'm going for another Watford win. The elusive back-to-back victories that should ensure we stay in this league. I agree, we need to be better than today in order to win, but we're decent at home under Pearson. Only Everton and Southampton have beaten us. We've beaten Liverpool, Man Utd, Wolves, Norwich, Villa and drawn with Spurs and Leicester. It's a good record. Just away we're absolute pants.
A little more confident about this game now than I was about 3 hours ago to be fair. Newcastle have improved since the break, although in fairness, they've beaten Sheff Utd who looked extremely rusty, and Bournemouth, who have been diabolical for a long time, and drawn to the two teams either side of us. 1-1, we get an earlyish goal, only for them to equalise and have us under a bit of pressure
Crikey! I can't even digest today's events let alone contemplate Saturday yet. Let me peg the washing up first.
Deeney was utterly awful again v Norwich. Surely Pearson can see it. Is it in his contract that captain marvel has to start? He’s utterly dreadful and has ruined his legacy here in my view. I’ll cheer when he retires or is sold.
Supposedly ASM and Almiron are doubts for their game tomorrow. Hopefully they risk them and they end up being out of our game!!? This game will be just as crucial as tonight's. Hopefully we can take some confidence into the game but Newcastle are far more dangerous than Norwich. Again, couldn't care less about how we play, as long as we win! I'm going for a positive narrow 1-0 win. Welbeck again.
Surely they will be rested tomorrow if they have knocks. Hopefully they're unavailable for Saturday to. Two very unpredictable players who have both hit some form. But agreed couldn't care less how they play it's about results. A win could and should see us seven points ahead of the chasers and that would and will be soul destroying for them.
Hopefully this result releases a little of the sphincter-pucker problem we've been suffering from. I'm also holding out a small hope (10%?) that now that we've had a victory, NP will leave out Deeney. He might have been reluctant to sit the captain as it might appear he was blaming him - which would not have been accurate, although Deeney hasn't helped much. Would like to see Deeney and Capoue off, with Chalobah and someone threatening on the left side. The scary part is that I don't think that NP has the confidence that anyone that he puts out wide there who is fast enough and dangerous enough to be threatening in attack, will help out enough in defence.
Best chance of some points from what's left, don't fancy us against West Ham. Might come down to squad depth and fitness, to enable some player rotation. What do we need from this game in order to stay up? No idea. I'd take a win though.
Well, that would be a milestone in their history given they've only beaten us four times and failed to beat us by more than one goal at VR in 23 attempts, no matter how much better they've been than us. https://www.soccerbase.com/teams/head_to_head.sd?team_id=2741&team2_id=1823
Sold him to River Plate mate. At least that’s what some geezer has posted on Twitter. So Pereyra won’t start or play again for us.
I'd love for us to get a point, and will be cheering us on to get it, but the defense has been all over the place.
Dump the lump - and after yesterday either drop Kiko too - he was god awful especially first half, or have him as a wing back. He seems to like running the channels and actually does have a bit of pace to him. If that means a slight change in personal or formation then do it for the good of the side. This could be our final chance to get a win this season, and if we can couple it with last nights win, and Muff and Villa continue to be dog sh!te, we might just have enough going into the final two matches to be safe even if we lose both of them (which is very likely). Our GD will not matter if we are at least 7pts clear going into Citee, but again it all depends on how our rivals do. I am confident we can get something from this game, and I was correct in my assumption about the Norwich one. It's going to be a very hard and draining game, but we have to on it to stand a chance. 1-0
Kilo isn’t great at RB but the options are worse Drop Deeney Drop the hoof Play keep ball and aim for a 0-0
Craig Poorref will be officiating this match. Another bad referee. Remember the excuse of a penalty he gave Leicester in the away match. The soft penalty he gave Real Sociedad in our pre-season game, missing the Glenn Murray handball against Brighton at home. Missing the handball and push on Cathcart by Yerry Mina in the Everton home match. Yes, he's appalling, but hopefully, just like yesterday with the equally inept Anthony Taylor, there will be no major incidents for him to f&ck up. It's so important to get a good official in these key games. Luckily we do have Martin Atkinson for the West Ham game. At least he's competent and honest. That's all I ask for.
