Tuesday 1 January 2013

Match Preview; Newcastle v Everton

In the Blues' first game of the new year, Everton travel up north to face, "that wee club in the North East", Newcastle United. St James Park has proved to be a difficult place to go for the Blues. It seems that the Geordies just love scoring absolute stunners against us specifically. Last season saw Ryan Taylor score a 25 yard stunning volley which proved to be the winning goal. And we cant forget Alan Shearers similar volley a few years ago against us.

Our last trip to Newcastle ended in a 2-1 defeat for the Blues with Rodwell grabbing a goal back after we went 2-0 down. When the two sides met earlier this season, a game filled with controversy resulted in a 2-2 draw. After having a goal ruled out for offside in the first half which was blatantly onside, the Blues went on to score another goal which wasn't given despite the ball appearing to cross the line.


Regarding injuries, it seems that no players that missed the 2-1 defeat to Chelsea at the weekend will be back in time for tomorrow. Moyes also stated that the Blues could be without Darron Gibson for a month following an injury he picked up against Wigan. 

The Opposition

When it comes to the news of our opposition, Newcastle, I'm not expert. Therefore, I'll let Ed Harrison from Newcastle fan site NUFCBlog take over.

Newcastle have been hit with a long list of injuries this season and those currently out are Ryan Taylor, Dan Gosling, Haris Vuckic, Yohan Cabaye, Steven Taylor, Danny Simpson, Ben Arfa and Jonas Gutierrez, and they will not play against Everton.

With the injuries and European competition we have been unable to handle the extra games and our squad is simply too small, along with some of our players, who have been fit, have not shown the form of last season.
And of course we have been without Steven Taylor, Yohan Cabaye and Ben Arfa for a while now - and they are due back later this month.

And since early November we have lost eight of our last ten league games and have just 7 points from the last 11 league games and we are not in good shape in the league - it's our worst run ever in the Premier League. Couple that with the antics of Demba Ba's advisers in the last few days, and things are not too good at the club at the moment. But we are still hoping for our sixth home win of the season tomorrow, although we have yet to win on the toad.

Our starting eleven for tomorrow will probably be the following:
Krul
Perch     Coloccini (captain)     Williamson     Santon 
Tiote     Anita     Marveaux 
Cisse     Ba     Obertan 

In recent games Dutch International Anita has been one of our best players, even though he's just 5'6" tall and Frenchmen Gabby Obertan and Sylvain Marveaux have also started to show up well.
Demba Ba has scored half of our goals in the league this season with 13 - and he scored a brace in our 7-3 walloping at Arsenal last Sunday. As we said we still are hoping for all 3 points to help us away from the relegation zone.