Newcastle rule Britannia

Tuesday, 01/11/2011

by Glenn Mitchell, Shoot's Newcastle United blogger

If you’d offered me a point from the game against Stoke last night I’d have probably taken it, but to come away from the Britannia stadium with three points and three goals was an excellent result.

Although he seemed to fade away a little in the second half, hat-trick hero Demba Ba was excellent up front last night and he had ten other players who did just as well behind him in the 3-1 victory.

All four players on the wings did well helping each other out going forward and defending, the two centre backs did a pretty good job of cleaning up in the middle and Danny Guthrie gave us plenty of creativity in the middle, although Cabaye was unusually quiet.

And just to prove that we could do anything Stoke could do the players seemed to enjoy winding the opposition up by insisting on towelling the ball down before every throw in, which , oddly enough, didn’t seem to go down too well...

One thing that I did hear a while ago about Newcastle was said by Neil Warnock, and he pointed out that although Newcastle were lucky to hold on at QPR a few weeks ago (true,) we don’t know when we’re beaten this season.

This is spot on, and it’s a refreshing change from the apparently defeatist attitude that some of the players have had in the past. The first improvements showed under Chris Hughton, and Alan Pardew has done well to keep this going.

After this weekend’s home game with Everton, we have games against both Manchester teams and Chelsea. Although we’ve had good results against tough opposition already this season, these games will be a huge test, and we can only look forward to seeing how the team gets on…

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