Maggies face Baggies in top of the table clash.
Posted on January 17th, 2010 | 69 Comments |
We will be looking to extend our unbeaten home run of nine wins and three draws at SJP but Albion will be a real test for the lads. Recently knocked off second spot after a defeat at home to in form Nottingham Forest, Roberto Di Matteo will be looking to his team to win the two games they have in hand
over Forest to position themselves back in second place.
Di Matteo was a great midfield player, who, you will remember, enjoyed a very successful playing career with Chelsea and Italy before being forced to retire following a horrific injury. His first steps into management in 2008 with Milton Keynes Dons proved successful, as he led the League One club to within two points of their second successive automatic promotion while they played attacking, attractive football.
He took over WBA in July 2009 and has the Baggies playing well. Their away form is good with an unbeaten run in the last six, including 4 wins. Those away games have seen the Baggies score 13 goals, while conceeding 4. We need to make sure we don’t fall asleep later in the game as Albion have scored 11 goals in the last 10 minutes. Top scorer for the Baggies is Graham Dorrans who has netted 8. However our own home form cannot be sneezed at, winning five of our last six games and drawing the other one. During these games, Newcastle have scored 13 goals and conceded only 1. We still hold the only unbeaten home record in the Championship and let’s hope that continues tomorrow evening.
Di Matteo is still a very close friend of ex Newcastle United’s ex Director of Football, Dennis Wise, and speaking in an interview, he said on Wise’s somewhat controversial Toon spell:
“Yes, we spoke about it but I don’t really want to go into any details.”
Moving on to Chris Hughton and the club in general, he then commented:
“It’s not an easy managerial job but Chris Hughton is doing a fine job,” then adding:
“It’s a big club, every week it gets 40,000 to 50,000 people so the sheer size of the club shows you the importance of the football club in the region up there.
“They are a bigger sized club (than Albion) in that sense.
‘‘They’ve obviously been in the Premier League for many years so I guess they (the fans) probably expect them to be in the Premier.”
With 6 points seperating Newcastle and West Brom both having played 24 games this will be a vital match with both teams going for the “six pointer”. I was looking forward to watching Peter Lovenkrands starting on Monday night following his hat trick against Plymouth Argyle in the cup on Wednesday night, but sadly, we now know his father died late last week and the player has returned to Denmark to be with his family.
So who does Chris Hughton go for up front? It looks like Shola and Carroll with young Ranger on the bench again. Let’s hope Shola is up for this one as he seems to have slipped into some of his lazy ways since coming back from injury. It will be Danny Simpson’s last match for the Toon unless a deal can be agreed with the player and Manure. It will be a real shame if we don’t sign him as I think he is a solid player with good potential. With no new signings yet it looks like Chris Hughton will pick a variation on the team who played against the Pilgrims last week with Harper to replace Krul, and Enrique and Smith to start.
Albion Team who faced forest last week and played 4-4-2: Carson, Zuiverloon, Tamas, Olsson, Mattock (Koren 65), Brunt, Jara, Dorrans, Thomas, Cox (Miller 77), Moore (Bednar HT)
I’m going for a close 1-0 victory to the Toon.
Howay the Lads.
NUFCBlog Author: geordie deb
geordie deb has written 38 articles on this blog.
This result depends on if we let them play. Like Arsenal, if you get in at them they can’t handle it, and we’re good at that this season.