Tuesday 21 October 2008

Newcastle 2 - 2 City

  • Two points dropped, for sure. Newcastle are not a good team. A really awful bunch of players, a club collapsing piece by piece as we watch on Sky Sports News. And we were 1-0 up and one man up after only twelve minutes.
  • 10 points from 8 games is not really bad, but it is as many as West Brom have got and one point fewer than Blackburn have. Sunderland and Middlesbrough have 9, Bolton and Everton have 8. Liverpool and Chelsea have 20 each.
  • The central problem of the Sven era - winning away at bad teams - remains. This year in the league we've won at Sunderland and lost at Wigan and Newcastle. Until we get some tougher and more experienced players, I can't see this happening.
  • A serious analysis of the game based on the goals is difficult, given that the first three were all bizarre flukes (the penalty was the luckiest decision we've got for a while). Good to get the annual Richard Dunne own goal out of the way for this season. I am starting to worry though, about our defence, though. We've conceded 14 in 8: only Stoke, Newcastle and Everton have conceded more. I'd love to say the problem is simply Garrido. But what if it's Dunne, Hart or Richards? This is not an easy question to face but it is an important one.
  • We are the Premier League's top goal scorers again though, with 20 from 8 games. This is definitely a very good thing. What's more, we have four players with three league goals (Elano, Ireland, SWP and Robinho). I don't have the numbers to hand, but I don't think many other teams have that. Plus eight players with one league goal.
  • Stoke, Middlesbrough, Bolton, Spurs and Hull next to come in the league. 10 points from that?

1 comment:

charles gullung said...

you're correct in that we should have a look at the "old guard".
this would be a bad time for sentimentality.
as you've said, dunne, richards & hart. others as well.
where have a majority of goals against come from?
balls are always going to make there way into the box and undetermined play from us will lead to giving away goals.
season after season now.
these matches are starting to all feel like deja vu.