Newcastle v PSV Eindhoven – Pre-season match preview.
Posted on July 30th, 2010 | 41 Comments |
Game number three of our pre-season preparation takes place tomorrow as Newcastle welcome PSV Eindhoven to St James’ Park for what should be a tough test.
Tomorrow is also a special day for both sets of fans, for England fans, Barcelona fans, Sporting Lisbon, Porto, Fulham, West Brom, Ipswich and football in general as it will be one year since the legend that is Sir Bobby Robson passed on.
I won’t go into that too much in this article as I would prefer to write a whole article in tribute to the man, but the date, occasion and opposition should ensure that the match tomorrow is a memorable occasion for all concerned. It’s just a shame that I won’t be able to be there.
Newcastle head in to the match on the back of a 2-1 defeat at the hands of Norwich in their last pre-season outing, and although the result isn’t that important, nobody likes to lose games. Amazingly there was even murmurs of “Hughton out” last week from a small minority of fans, which really pissed me off, if you’ll pardon my French.
Although Norwich did beat us, it would take the most staunch die-hard Norwich fan to take offence when I say that PSV represent another step up in quality of opposition from last week. In fact it is set to be a tough week all round as we have three tough games, starting with PSV tomorrow; Deportivo la Coruna on Tuesday evening; and Rangers at Ibrox next Saturday, which is on TV aswell. Bonus!
Steve Harper and Fraser Forster are carrying slight knocks so it is questionable whether or not they will be risked for the game tomorrow. Tim Krul will step in again if they both miss out and will be looking to impress against a team from his home nation.
Danny Simpson is still out long term and has now been joined by Steven Taylor who will be out until some time in October. It’s doubtful whether or not Sol Campbell will feature, and judging by the pictures he could do with laying of the stotties and getting some extra training sessions in!
James Perch is back after recovering from a knock that kept him out of last weeks game at Norwich whilst Jonas Gutierrez could be given a first run out of pre-season. Nile Ranger, Haris Vuckic and Ryan Donaldson will all be playing for the reserves against Gatesheeeed tonight so I am unsure whether or not they will feature tomorrow.
I would expect that most of the players that can play will be given a run out at some point tomorrow, much like what has happened in our previous two matches. Fitness first is the case at the moment, and making sure we are in fine fettle come the start of the Premier League season.
Howay the lads!
Time – 3:00pm
Date – Saturday, 31st July, 2010.
Venue – St James’ Park, Newcastle.
Yes