Kick Off: 1:30pm NUFC: No Gosling, Harper, R.Taylor, Ben Arfa as they are injured. Barton, Coco and Williamson all banned. Should be Taylor and Campbell in the middle for us, at the start of the season some would argue this was our strongest pairing. Chelsea: Essien, Lampard, Terry, Zhirkov and Benayoun all out injured. There is a pitch inspection at the moment but I can't see it being called off apart from if the police get all fussy and call it off for "health and saftey" It's on TV so judging by our last few performances on TV we should win this.
Pitch inspection passed: GAME ON! Chelsea fans are encountering problems getting from London to the Northeast. Any chance they delay kickoff? Thx, Jay!
And boom goes the dynamite. Alex with a shitty backpass, Carroll pounces to put it by Czech. 1-0 7th minute.
Routledge very involved in the buildup to Carroll's goal. Lovely. A totally different sort of play than we get from Nolan. Not that I hate Nolan... but I do like the activity Routledge brings.
Gotta possess that ball longer. Chelsea have proven that they are fragile (especially without Terry) in defense, almost at times like they don't like to defend, so Newcastle must have an ounce of sound thought with.............. and lack of possession leads to depression bad guys just scored.
Steven Taylor is sucked out of position and we concede immediately after. I, for one, am shocked because that simply never happens to Taylor.
Well, Campbell was just exposed as not being very agile on the Chelsea goal (after putting in a good half) when he wasn't able to slow or changed directions. If we just had Andy Carroll to chase down the balls Andy Carroll flicks on we'd be much more dangerous. Ameobi seems to really be up for about one ball in 4 or 5. As always, I'd rather see Ranger.
Fron SKy: The teams news is in, and Newcastle are without skipper Kevin Nolan because of an ankle injury.
I was just about to write how we were going to concede. Hopefully that was the one I envisioned.... Ranger on for Ameobi.