Alan Pardew after the game said what most Newcastle fans were aware of – that Newcastle ran out of stream – and that’s not for the first time this season the Newcastle defense has collapsed late in a game, when we had a chance of getting a point or more.
Alan Pardew – we ran out of steam
This is what the Newcastle manager said after the game:
“I thought when we got back to 3-3 we should have shut up shop.” “The last 15-20 minutes was a fresh team against a tired team and perhaps a bit of inexperience on our bench resulted in the scoreline.”
“We’re just so disappointed that we didn’t get something out of it before then.” “The goals we conceded before then were not, not good and that’s been our problem.”
“For 70 minutes it was pretty tight, I thought we were giving a good account of ourselves, but their freshness and the brightness towards the end of the game was just too much for us, and we couldn’t cope.”
These comments after the game are getting repetitive – and it’s all about not lasting the course and conceding poor goals – and if we keep doing this we’ll sink even further down the league table.
And we were concerned before the game, that when it got late Newcastle may leak some goals, which today they did dramatically with three goals conceded in the last six minutes of the 90 minutes, and Giroud hit the cross-bar too in added time, otherwise he would have had a hat trick in a 10 minute spell.
But then again he will not be playing against a very tired Newcastle defense every week.
So what happens now against Everton at home?
Are we going to collapse again late in the game – and of course Everton are the experts at coming on late in games – and they always have a never say die attitude.
It seems to us that some of the Newcastle players may not even be for fit enough – and we’ve made too many excuses for our defense these last couple of months when we’ve lost seven of the last nine league games – and we have to remember we’ve only got Steven Taylor missing – although Mike Williamson was suspended today.
It’s not as if we have four new players playing at the back.
We need at least two new defenders brought in during the January transfer window, and our attacking play in the last two games has been good – very good in fact – and although we didn’t expect any points from the last two games – we didn’t expect to score three goals in each of the game either.
Fix the defense and we could still come away this season and climb the league table, but we need to see a committed effort from our players on Wednesday night against Everton – and a much better performance from our defense – and that goes for the whole match – right through to the end of added time.
What do you think?
Follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook and +1 us on Google+:
You can also reach Ed at admin@nufcblog.com
=============================================
121 comments so far
go toon go
Dec 30, 2012 at 10:10 AM
Comment #121Forget injured players.We always cry about injured players.Look what we have now.If we are not strong enough in the moment then we need to play with different tactics.More defensively.When Cabaye returns we cry for Ben Arfa.When Ben Arfa returns we cry for Steven Taylor etc.Our players must to understand that they are not STARS.THEY NEED TO REMEMBER ABOUT CHAMPIONSHIP COCA COLA SEASON.Every team has couple of injured players.If Cabaye and Ben Arfa are not here?Now what.We need to lose every game?No.We need to fight.Our current team doesn’t prove that.