[andy villa]

we were poor in the first half because they had us pegged on the one side.. petrov was as usual, absolute gash, therefore everything had to go down our left hand side and they doubled up on young and stifled our attack... at the same time, petrov kept cutting into the centre and barry and reo coker then had to sit deep so not to compress the play, and also had to cover everytime petrov lost the ball..... he is an absolute liability and he was pretty much newcastles best player...

newcastle on the other hand, while not amazing, had the width that we lacked, and as we were compressed and playing virtually with 10 men, they used this to their advantage... we should have had a pen in the first half though, and our defence coped very well with them to keep them at bay, which served us very well in the second half...

the comments by keegan had me slightly baffled and tbh, if i was a newcastle fan, i would be very concerned that your manager couldnt see why you got so pummelled after the break...

when we changed our system and removed the useless petrov, and the quite frankly, disinterested mellberg, we were a completely different outfit and for me, a tactically astute manager would have looked at his own side to counter our changes...

we kept the same formation, but the personnel changes gave us the width we needed... young switched flanks and maloney went wide left, and this took the attention away from the one side, which also freed up space in the centre to allow reo coker and barry to get forward more...

harewood coming on also helped as he is really pumped and aggressive with his quite simply superb workrate... his chasing down and harrying the defence was pivotal to us getting into newcastle and they simply couldnt handle our pace, power and movement... we were superb in the second half and that is why newcastle were beaten so comprehensively...

for newcastles alleged messiah not to have seen this to the point of commenting about his confusion, would have me very concerned if i was a newcastle fan...

as for our manager, he dropped the bollock with his team selection, but he sorted it at half time, and kudos to him for that... excellent changes, albeit ones that some of us would have liked to have seen from the start... the routledge signing makes a lot of sense when looking at the game yesterday...


carson - 6 - one great save, and not much else to do...
mellberg - 4 - has one foot on the plane to turin in my opinion...
laursen - 7 - won every header and was very solid...
davies - 8 - is intelligent enough to allow laursen to dominate in the air, and then cleans up after... superb pace...
bouma - 8 - booooooouuummmmaaaaa... great to see him score.. solid defensively, and at last a goal... was delighted for him...
petrov - 1 - absolute gash... cant pass, cant tackle, cant shoot, piss poor movement, poor positional discipline... someone shoot him and put him out of my misery...
reo-coker - 8 - good tracking back, decent passing... sometimes holds onto the ball too long, but most of the time, has very little option for a pass... beautiful pass to maloney for the second goal...
barry - 7 - better in the second half once he had a little space to work with..
young - 7 - crowded out in the first half, but had more joy in the second half thanks to the changes...
maloney - 8 - no joy first half, but his move to the wing made a difference.. gave us width, and his movement was excellent... one of his better performances for us...
carew - 9 - mainly for his second half hat trick... they simply couldnt handle him and when partnered with harewood and we kept the ball on the deck, really came into his own... lost me an embarrassing bet too.. but it was well worth it...

subs -
gardner - 7 - worked hard, gave us an attacking outlet from the back...
harewood - 8 - didnt score, but he made a huge difference... worked as hard as anyone, chased things down, won every header, and generally looked and played like a man possessed.. i dont rate him as most know, but for me, his attitude and application of late means that he deserves a start...
osbourne - n/a - not on long enough to rate...

as for the bet mentioned above, carews hat trick meant that i had to go out into the stairs of the upper holte and dance a little jig... was a good laugh tbh, so if anyone saw me in k5, it wasnt a crazy man, i was paying out... i always pay out on my bets and in this case, it was well worth it...