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Barclays Premiership - Match 5 |
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Season 2007-2008 |
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DERBY COUNTY |
1 v 0 |
NEWCASTLE UNITED |
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Kenny Miller 39 |
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Date: |
Monday 18th September 2007 |
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Venue: |
Pride Park |
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Kick Off: |
8:00pm (BST) |
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Australian
Live TV:
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Foxsports 1 |
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Attendance: |
33,016 |
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Referee: |
Peter Walton (Northamptonshire) |
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Read match preview |
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Derby:
Bywater, Mears, Leacock,
Davis, Griffin, Teale, Oakley, Pearson, Lewis (McEveley 87), Howard,
Miller (Feilhaber 80)
Subs Not Used: Jones, Earnshaw, Todd
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Booked:
Mears, Oakley |
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Newcastle:
Harper, Taylor (Beye 75),
Cacapa, Rozehnal, N'Zogbia, Smith, Geremi (Faye 60), Butt, Milner, Owen
(Martins 55), Ameobi
Subs Not Used:
Given, Pattison
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Booked:
Smith, Butt, N'Zogbia |
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Newcastle manager
Sam Allardyce:
"The sad thing is that we had 14 players away on international duty and
that looked apparent. Before the break we were on a roll after the Wigan
win, but some of the players looked jaded. We had opportunities, but we
didn't take them and we were beaten by a wonder goal.
Michael felt his groin a little bit and he wanted to carry on but we've
taken him off as a precaution. He's had a busy couple of weeks and we
didn't want to take any risks and thought that with Oba on the bench it
was the best thing to do. I'm confident he will be OK for the weekend." |
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Match Report: |
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A new era, a new hope
and the relative excitement of being undefeated in mid September but we
still had to sit through the same old away shit being dished up. Any
lids that people had slightly lifted off, could you slam them shut
please!
It was a Newcastle away performance like we saw so regularly under the
management of Graeme Souness and Glenn Roeder, which has brought about a
lot more questions than answers. The team selection and tactics of Sam
Allardyce will quite naturally go under the microscope, after we looked
second best to bottom of the league Derby County.
With Mark Viduka’s hamstring deemed not fit enough to take any part in
this game, Allardyce took the decision to start Shola Amoebi (ahead of
Obafemi Martins) alongside Michael Owen. The tactics of constant long
balls up to an awful and ineffective Amoebi was disappointing in the
extreme and confirmed some of our biggest fears of what watching a Sam
Allardyce Newcastle United side could be like.
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Our midfield four of
Alan Smith, Geremi, Nicky Butt and James Milner failed to provide any
real creativity or decisive width. Once again Milner was forced to play
most of the game down his not so favoured left hand side, after new
Spanish left-back Jose Enrique failed a fitness test, meaning Charles
N’Zogbia had to continue as an emergency left-back and not in his
natural role of left midfield. Throw in the fact that we had a
centre-half playing at right back in Steven Taylor and that he was
actually providing most of our forward runs down the right hand side,
just goes to proves how crazy and disjointed our line-up was. In
Taylor’s defence, he has rarely let the side down when he’s played at
right back and defensively he looked fine but you can’t realistically
rely on him to provide quality service once in the opposition half.
Up till Derby’s goal by Kenny Miller on 39 minutes, we had looked
slightly the better side without being terribly effective. A golden
opportunity that saw David Rozenhal shoot wide of the target was our
only real chance. Kenny Miller’s goal came out of nothing. A long goal
kick wasn’t cleared and allowed to bounce and to his credit, Miller
smashed a great first time volley that swerved and dipped over Harper’s
head. To be hypercritical, the advanced position off his line of Harper
could be questioned. With no obvious break away threat imminent, there
seems little justification for him being so far off his line and if he
was one yard further back he would have stood a decent chance of getting
a hand to it.
After Derby scored it gave them the confidence they needed and the full
backing of the crowd but more importantly they were able to put men
behind the ball and contain our attacks. However, we never looked like
scoring after that, with our set pieces and corners of a woeful standard
which is very under characteristic of any Sam Allardyce team.
Our miserly was compounded in the second half, with Michael Owen going
off with what looked like a leg injury. He did receive a strong tackle
from behind in the first half and we will have to wait and see how bad
the damage is.
All in all a disappointing night that has brought us down to earth. Some
major re-thinking and re-grouping is required ahead of West Ham’s visit
to St James’ Park on Sunday night.
It’s never straight forward with us is it?
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AUSSIE MAGS |
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