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Newcastle United 3 - 0 Stoke - 21/04/12 - post-match reaction from page 34


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http://chiefdelilah.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/the-top-5-conclusions-from-newcastle-3-0-stoke-city-210412/

 

5)  Has any team this season had us so comprehensively sussed as Newcastle? They have put six goals past us this term, more than any other team we’ve played, in completing the simplest of doubles. While it’s true that Stoke were dreadful on Saturday, Alan Pardew seemed to know which areas of our team to target – namely the full backs – while keeping our dangermen neutralised, in particular ensuring that the supply line to Crouch was starved and that we wasn’t given any time on the ball. Moreover, I can’t recall any team dealing as easily with our set piece threat than the Magpies over the two games, with Pardew evidently spending a lot of time watching us and then more on the training ground drilling his team in the art of defending them.

 

Alan Carr’s dad gets a lot of the credit for scouting and bringing in the foreign talent that has transformed Newcastle into Champions League contenders, but Pardew is the one who has successfully moulded them into such a competitive unit, no mean feat given the rebuilding job he was tasked with in the summer after losing the likes of Enrique, Nolan and Barton. Not only has he utilised the gifted likes of Cabaye, Tiote, Cisse, Ba, Ben Arfa and Krul, but he’s also got important contributions of out of jobbing pros like Leon Best, Shola Ameobi, Ryan Taylor and Danny Guthrie. His Newcastle team is deceptively tough – yes they have plenty of pace and guile but in every department there’s at least one pretty robust bruiser and that – and the spirit that Pardew has engendered – has been an underrated factor in their ascent. It’s quite the reinvention for the man who came across as Charlton boss as a pitiful pipsqueak who squandered a fortune and cried warm, salty tears about long balls and playing surfaces and how the nasty bigger boys kicked sand in his face.

 

Of course, we shouldn’t go overboard. Newcastle are a big club and it would be naïve to suggest that their name and history played no part in attracting the players they’ve been able to attract, while Pardew himself has endured as many misses as hits in his managerial career to date. He’s still a pretty darn unlikeable character too, as his antics in the Tyne-Wear derby showed. But it will be a travesty if anyone else is named manager of the season, and in marrying brawn with craft and finding a place for not one but two ruthless finishers, we could do a lot worse than stealing a few pages from Pardew’s Newcastle playbook.

Very balanced view that.

 

:thup:

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Guest taps01

By any chance does someone know where I can find highlights for this game? I've been away in Malaga for a week and ended up missing the match.

 

www.nufc.com have them

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