Carling Cup Round 3
It’s partly forced on Hughton as Ameobi, Gutierrez and Simpson are injured and Khizanishvili is cup-tied, but I think Hughton will also see this as an opportunity to rest a few players anyway. We’ll certainly want to win of course but in the grand scheme of things promotion is far more important to Newcastle than Carling Cup progress.
On paper we’re 16 places and 12 points better than recently-promoted Peterborough in the Championship, although Peterborough are unbeaten in their last 5 games.
We’ve never managed to beat Peterborough in the two previous League Cup meetings between the clubs and the last time Newcastle met Peterborough in the League Cup was in 1991 when Ossie Ardiles was manager and Justin Fashanu made an appearance for the Toon.
In this year’s competition Peterborough won 4-0 away to Wycombe in the first round and beat Ipswich 2-1 at home in the second.
Peterborough can score goals and Peter Boyd, Craig Mackail-Smith and Aaron Mclean have accumulated 12 goals between them in all competitions this season and 133 goals since the start of the 2007/08 season. They’ve only failed to score in one game so far this season and I think they’ll test our defence.
I suspect Krul will be keeping goal tonight and we could see Kadar and maybe even Tozer in defence. LuaLua will probably get a start in the midfield and Vuckic might feature up front or in an attacking midfield position. I’m sure Hughton will bring on some of the more experienced players if things start to go wrong, like he did at Huddersfield, but he’ll probably hope he can avoid risking them and keep them fresh for the league.
Match kicks off at 7:45PM.
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Promotion must be the priority. And given our paper thin squad (thanks Ashley) we just don’t need games like this.
It’s a competition we’re not going to win, and the longer we’re in it the greater the risk of injury to key players.
I wouldn’t be too upset if we got out tonight!!
UTD111 says:
September 22, 2009 at 9:34 am
Promotion must be the priority. And given our paper thin squad (thanks Ashley) we just don’t need games like this.
It’s a competition we’re not going to win, and the longer we’re in it the greater the risk of injury to key players.
I wouldn’t be too upset if we got out tonight!!
<<<aye agree but having sed all that watch us go and win it lol
The dilemma being: put out the strongest team, risk injuries to a thin squad, in order to maintain winning momentum and cup progress or play the kids, maybe lose the game, defeat hangs over into league form.
I suspect the pragmatic approach will win the day. “Stars” on the bench (if needed) kids on the pitch playing their hearts out. Would a cup run really be such a disaster? I can see UTD111’s point about the havoc it could wreak on our squad….but a good cup run…after all these years. It would get the blood pumping!
Think the team should be
——–Krul————-
R.Taylor-Colo-Tozer-Kadar
Lualua-Geremi-Butt-Vuckic
—–Ranger-Lovens——
btw guys if you want a link on http://www.nufcblackandwhite.com let me know
Play the young guns. Not fussed about the carling cup but a run to the final would be good craic although unlikely.
Just read on a earlier thread about Workys dirty secret. My god man im stunned!!