Newcastle United v Bolton Wanderers match report.
Posted on February 26th, 2011 | 11 Comments |
He was due to take his usual role in the starting line up, however he had to be replaced due to some kind of malady. His replacement, Ryan Taylor, was to have a big influence on the game later on, though perhaps not in the way that the fans would have preferred. More on that later though.
Back to the beginning, it was Bolton who kicked off towards the the Gallowgate. They made a lively start to a game which started at a fairly frantic pace with action at both ends. Within the first minute or two, Bolton were winning a corner and forcing a slightly fumbled save from Steve Harper. It was Newcastle who had the first real chance in the game though, with Best doing some nice work to cut in past Bolton’s Marcos Alonso and get in a left foot shot which wasn’t very wide of the goal at all.
On the other side, Bolton hotshot, Johan Elmander, was proving to be something of a handful for the Magpies, with some decent raids into the box during this period of the game. However the likes of Tiote, Enrique and Coloccini proved to be a match for him, with some good defensive work to close him down on more than one occaision. This was something that Newcastle certainly failed to do in the last fixture between these sides!
Back in the Bolton end though, it was Newcastle who won a corner after Trotter’s keeper, Jussi Jaaskelainen made a very good save to tip a Peter Lovenkrands effort ’round the post. The resulting (overhit) corner was retrieved by Tiote from the other side of the pitch. His cross was met by the glancing head of Newcastle United captain, Kevin Nolan, finding the net. It’s a case of “cue the Chicken dance” as the Magpies find themselves 1-0 up with only twelve minutes of the game gone. HWTL!
Bolton continued to cause the Magpies some problems though, and the game was still a fairly even affair overall. Bolton’s Kevin Davies was proving to be quite effective in the air, however Newcastle seemingly started to turn the tide of the game as things progressed, much to the chagrin of Bolton’s manager, Owen Coyle, who didn’t seem to be very pleased at all by his teams efforts at this stage of the game.
After around twenty minutes, there was a penalty claim from Leon Best, who had an excellent, hardworking game for the lads today. He was brought down by a questionable challenge by Bolton’s Gary Cahill in the area. However Newcastle’s claims are turned away for an apparent offside infringement in the build up picked up by the linesman.
Best really seemed to come into his own during the next ten minutes or so with a brace of chances. The first, from an Enrique cross is fended off by the bodies of Bolton’s David Wheater and Gary Cahill. In the second, he won the ball in the air from a free kick, nodding just wide of the goal. Then however, it was Bolton’s turn to give the Magpies a scare at the other end as an effort from Elmander also ends up just wide of the post.
The tide was still with Newcastle generally though. Despite some good Bolton passing while in possession, Newcastle were countering quite fiercely with some pacey, counterattacking play which threatened. Despite this however, the next goal belonged to Bolton’s (well, Chelsea’s) Daniel Sturridge. In what was a poor piece of collective defending from the Magpies’, Sturridge strolled through what seemed like a yawning chasm between the figures of centre backs, Fabricio Coloccini and Mike Williamson to smash the ball into the right hand corner of Steve Harper’s goal, gifting the visitors an equaliser.
Moving on tho the second half, it started quite tentatively after the end to end nature of the first. However the complexion of the game changed considerably when a rash, and fairly pointless two footed lunge on the ankles of Bolton’s Johan Elmander by Ryan Taylor results in Taylor being shown a straight red card by match referee, Chris Foy. From a position of strength, Newcastle suddenly found themselves down to ten men and on the back foot.
After a quick think, Magpies manager, Alan Pardew, reacted by pulling Lovenkrands back to the right flank, leaving Best alone upfront. A few minutes later, he then substitutes Lovenkrands and Gutierrez on the flanks with centre back, Steven Taylor, also bringing on young wild card striker, Nile Ranger, for yet another appearence from the bench.
These events obviously calmed Newcastle’s attacking threat somewhat, however Bolton were not quite giving the best of themselves, and generally failed to make the most of their one man advantage after the sending off. Thus, the match became something of a dogged stalemate for while. However there were some incidents of note. Best continued with some more very good work on his own, most notably he showed his skilful side with two excellent stepovers which enabled him to put in a cross. The resulting ball hit Bolton left back, Paul Robison on the chest and almost rolled past Jaaskelainen in the Bolton goal.
Another highlight was when super sub, Nile Ranger, actually did get the ball in the net. A cross from Enrique found him and he headed the ball into the Bolton net from close range, only to have the effort ruled out for what looked like a very tight offside decision.
Finally, in the last knockings of the game, Sheffki Kuqi was given a brief runabout for the last few minutes and that about wraps it up!
Despite being a man down for a significant portion of the second half, some Magpies will no doubt feel that Newcastle United could still have nicked this one in the end. In the grand scheme of things though, a draw didn’t seem to be an unfair result.
Referee: C Foy.
Teams
Newcastle United: Steve Harper; Danny Simpson, Mike Williamson, Fabricio Coloccini, Jose Enrique; Joey Barton, Cheick Tiote, Kevin Nolan, Jonas Gutierrez; Leon Best, Peter Lovenkrands.
Subs: Tim Krul, James Perch, Sol Campbell, Steven Taylor, Ryan Taylor, Nile Ranger, Shefki Kuqi.
Bolton Wanderers: Jaaskelainen, Robinson, Cahill, Wheater, Alonso, Elmander, Holden, Muamba, Petrov, Sturridge, K Davies.
Subs: Bogdan, Steinsson, M Davies, Taylor, Klasnic, Rodrigo, Chung-Yong.
NUFCBlog Author: workyticket
workyticket has written 1086 articles on this blog.
I’ll take a point, given that we were down to 10 men for a lot of the 2nd half.
Stupid tackle by Raylor though.