Match Preview/Stats/Thread: Newcastle Utd v Manchester City
By Tyne-Talk
December 25 2010
Newcastle United host Manchester City in tomorrow afternoon’s Boxing Day fixture, with their last result being a 3-1 win over Liverpool. The club have won just one of their last six games, having drawn twice and lost three. Manchester City have won three of their last six, drawn two and lost one.
Newcastle should be refreshed having had a week off after last week’s game was postponed due to snow, but will continue to be without Hatem Ben Arfa (broken leg), Dan Gosling (knee) and Ryan Taylor (ankle). Shola Ameobi (hamstring) is also unavailable, whilst Sol Campbell has recovered from illness and will be hoping to play.
Fabricio Coloccini and Mike Williamson are both available after completing 3 match suspensions as is Steve Harper who is pushing for a start after recovering from a broken collarbone.
Manchester City will be without Kolo Toure who begins a suspension after being sent off against Everton, whilst Nigel De Jong returns from suspension and will meet a hostile crowd should he make his first appearance in-front of the Newcastle United fans since breaking Ben Arfa’s leg in October’s corresponding fixture.
Mario Balotelli (knee) is available and is likely to start alongside Tevez despite a lot of negative press this week.
Fact: Newcastle United and Manchester City have both picked up 40 yellow cards so far this season – a Premier League high.
Fact: Newcastle United have only won 2 of their 16 post Christmas fixtures in the Premier League
Krul gave ball away for first and we gave the ball away again for the second but from a positive note, we have looked lively since but this game will not last with 11 on each side. Too many tackles flying in....
Funnily enough apart from the two defensive mistakes we have looked clearly the better side. Carroll is giving them all sorts of problems and if the ball would just fall kindly we could be in with a chance.
Far from over at the moment. As long as City don't score again we can get level.
Hard to be critical of the performance to be fair. We were the better side for large periods and were very unlucky at times.
Being where we are in the table I think we can take alot of heart from that sort of performance because those sort of performances will only have us heading in one direction and thats upwards.
The clear test of the attitude displayed today will come when we have to travel to Blackpool or some other lowly team, Liverpool etc. :-)
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