PL - Newcastle 0 - 0 United

Taking a tiny tweak in direction of the blog with a title & links to match-reports. 

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Frustrating night leaves us 7 points clear with 5 games to go

What the papers said

 Telegraph   Dailymail   The Independant   SkySports

Team

No surprises in the starting 11. Valencia rightly rested for Giggs to come back in. No Rio? We won't read too much into it and assume he was rested as Smalling is more than an adequate replacement. In fact, according to Opta (@OptaJoe) Chris Smalling has won 78% of his aerial duels this season, a higher % than Ferdinand & Vidic. Not bad for a 20 year old playing non-league 2 years ago!

Interesting shout regarding Berbatov not being on the bench? Rumour had it he complained of feeling unwell on Tuesday so was not included. Speculation though and no conclusive evidence to support it.

General Overview

Despite starting well for the first 10 we were average in the first-half after that and looked to be always rushing when we had the ball. Newcastle definitely looked the more threatening in terms of possessional play, BUT we did create the two most clear-cut chances. Defence looked solid enough. Evra concentrated more on his defensive duties than the previous post highlighted, which helped. In the second half I never felt they were ever going to score. Saying that, I didn't feel we were either. Apart from Giggsy' chance and the penalty claim (both mentioned below) there wasn't even much going on in the game. Quite a disappointing game to review to be honest!

Goals

Or lack of. 

Thats now two full games we have played, with 4 different strikers (Rooney, Owen, Berbatov, Hernandez) without a goal. Very disappointing. 3 clear chances stuck out last night:

Hernandez early-on - GREAT keeping, spread himself well. Should be scoring those though

Rooney mid-way through first half - Would have bet my entire student overdraft and risked bankruptcy on him scoring here. 9 goals in 11 against Newcaslte previously and in-form! Gutted (and we didn't even get a corner!)

Giggs 2nd half - this SKIMMED the post. Absolutely devo'ed when it didn't go in.  Kind of summed up our night really.

We can't complain in the goals department this season - we've scored 70 PL goals - but as we enter the business end we need to be more clinical!

Strikers

I really felt Hernandez looked very isolated last night. He's much better now than he was in terms of physical strength in the Premiership but apart from the link up with Rooney in the first half for our two clear chances he struggled. A couple of wayward shots and no support. Not helped by Nani's reluctance to cross a ball last night & not use O'Shea on the overlap.

Rooney was consistently dropping deep which is great for creativity, but if he's not supporting Hernandez we can sometimes look lost when Rooney pings a 50 yard ball to Nani and only one person to aim at in the box. Not a criticism in anyway, merely an observation. Would a 4-4-2 with Rooney part of the 4 work (similar to Scholes)? Or does it work with the current way and the opposite winger comes into the box to the support striker in place of Rooney when he''s deep? It's easy to point fingers like this when we don't score.

Owen didn't have a lot of time to make a huge impact. Interesting to see Newcastle fans booing him. As a side-note I recommend reading this Twitter conversation between Owen & Oliver Holt about footballer/journalist relationships in Football. Interesting!

Penalty(s)?

So this is what's dominating all the papers & reports today! Were they/weren't they? Let's start with:

Newcastle

Penalty?

From my point of view... It was a penalty. There was contact and it was a stupid tackle from Anderson - he was running away from goal. What I don't get is how the ref missed it? He was THAT close the to it. Question is United being United would that have spring-boarded us into life? Possibly.

United

Difficult to judge and not as easy to say as Newcastle's. 
Having said that there was contact but what Hernandez down was the tiny little "jump" with it. I was gutted not to be given it, but maybe that was because it was the 90+ minute and we were heading towards a goalless draw? Either way contact was there, albeit small, and based on that it should have been a penalty - but more so should Newcastles. His booking was outrageous - he should have booked Nani in the first-half for his girly attempt.


Would we have taken 1-1 over 0-0? Makes no odds but saved a lot of swearing at the TV throughout the second-half had, we conceded the penalty and scored one at the end!!! Also saved United haters saying the usual "your so lucky" "they're so jammy!" Cheers ref ;)

Final Thoughts

Last night proved a really frustrating night - and a boring spectacle to see. I watched it in a bar in Leeds which isn't ideal... Nevertheless Arsenal and Chelsea both drew here. We concentrate on ourselves I know but respect has to be given to Newcastle this season for having such a decent home record against the top 3.

I've read a few United fans being negative about last night saying that was our chance to cement the league, we could have had it wrapped up and we have a tough run-in with Chelsea at home and Arsenal away. 

Yes it was and yes we do. 

But, we're good enough to beat any teams around us - we have done Chelsea twice in the last month, were unlucky not to beat them in the league and beat Arsenal with 7 defenders when they were on for the Quadruple!!!

Arsenal face Spurs at White Hart Lane tonight and the worst case scenario is an Arsenal win.

Lets conclude by heeding the wise words of Sir Alex Ferguson and remember

“At this stage of the season, we are in a better position than we were on Saturday. It’s one less game and in the same position [ahead of] Arsenal and five games left"