With some surprising results this season in the Premier League, Newcastle manager Chris Hughton may be rethinking Newcastle’s method of avoiding relegation this season.
Chris Hughton – rethinking survival strategy
Th general consensus is that our survival in the league will depend of how we do against other relegation teams this season, both home and away, but especially at home.
But there have been some surprise results this season, with Newcastle winning at Everton but being beaten at home by Blackpool and Stoke.
And some low level teams have had good wins on the road with Blackpool wining at Wigan, Newcastle and Liverpool and WBA winning at Arsenal 3-2, after being an amazing three goals up.
Those results have had Newcastle boss Hughton wondering if his initial assessment of what it would take to stay in the league was correct, and he talked to the Daily Mail about that today:
“That’s what I thought, but there would be other teams saying the same.” ‘When you see Blackpool getting a result at Liverpool and West Brom getting a result at Arsenal, they are picking up points that perhaps they didn’t think they were going to.”
“Over a season, it’s fair to say that it is about the points you will pick up against a group of teams, but probably at the moment, that’s not fact.”
Newcastle don’t seem to have had much luck so far this season.
They had eight good chances to score against Blackpool and didn’t take one of their chances, and Blackpool probably had two chances to score, one a penalty just before half time, and scored from both of them.
At Manchester City the lads were very unlucky and deserved at least a draw on the balance of play.
However we cannot say we were unlucky in the wins against Aston Villa and Everton, because most things went for the Magpies in both thsoe games, to give us 6 points.
Generally things tend to even themselves out, as far as luck goes, at least over the full season. Hughton talked about luck and how it tends to level out:
“There is a general feeling that they even themselves out. Well, we are hoping they even themselves out reasonably quickly.” ‘Yes, we have been on the wrong end of some really poor decisions in recent games.”
“But the most important thing is that we don’t focus on that.” “All we can do is play our game and hopefully get some good results.”
It’s an important game against Wigan this afternoon, but as our readers often point out, every Premier League game this season is important to Newcastle.
But it is against a side today who are second favorites to be relegated, and we think the lads can win the game today, with just a little bit of luck.
Comments welcome.
6 comments so far
munch27
Oct 16, 2010 at 10:53 AM
Comment #1Stategy hoots is we must play 4-4-2 @ home.
Indian Magpie
Oct 16, 2010 at 10:56 AM
Comment #2all the time i think
Sav
Oct 16, 2010 at 11:07 AM
Comment #3Thats the answer. The strategy can’t remain playing 4-5-1 with Kevin Nolan expected to make up ground from midfield to support Carroll.
This is not the Coca Cola Championship.
dave 1961
Oct 16, 2010 at 11:16 AM
Comment #4playing 4-5-1 gives a boost to the opponents and empty’s the stadium its awful to watch that’s why we are having 10,000 empty seats.
stk85
Oct 16, 2010 at 11:16 AM
Comment #5gotta be far more attacking full stop. especially with tiote the enforcer backing the defence up. we should be able to keep on attacking throughout games and none of this shutting-up-shop business. negative tactics will ultimately lead to negative results
Geordiedoonsooth
Oct 16, 2010 at 12:36 PM
Comment #6You make your own luck with hard work & application & good tactics