November-December
This wasn't our best spell but still good enough and with vital wins over Arsenal, Chelsea and Scumderland, we look good for the title. What I desperately need is a goals as my top Premier League goalscorer is Marco Verratti who has 5 goals. Keirrison has 5 too, but is inconsistent. Also, we really lack in the central midfielder department so that will be a key aspect in January. So far I have been looking at:
- Mats Rits- A great prospect but I need a good Centre Midfielder now!
- Rodwell- An almost definite now as I'll need a defensive minded player.
- Aaron Ramsey- Another player that should come in January.
- Moutinho- Maybe but it is unlikely as I have preferred targets.
- Soldado- We will hopefully sign him now but we face fierce competition.
- Rossi- Very likely that we'll snap him up.
Premier League
We are top by 3 points though we have a game in hand over a considerably stronger Man City side. How are we here? With no centre midfielder that should be at a Premier League winning side and poor strikers I base my success on my superb defence of Taylor, Shawcross, Gaillard/Walker. Verratti has excelled too so I can only think that it has been a great team performance. We will need to spend big in January to have any hopes of winning the league for the second time.7
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Hughton is basing his success on his defence and Marco Verratti who have all been in superb form this season!
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These three have been the pick of the players so far for Newcastle with Shawcross in contention for Player of the Year.
As for results our few key results have been:
Newcastle United 3-1 Arsenal
Newcastle United 2-1 Chelsea
Sunderland 0-3 Newcastle United (6)
Newcastle United 3-0 Wigan
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3 wins and 2 draws mean Newcastle stay unbeaten in the league. Wolves are always a tough fixture along with Villa so a good month in the Premier League!
Overall, a pretty good few games for us. Maybe slightly disappointed with the draws as we could and should have won both games but to get such comprehensive wins over the likes of Arsenal and Chelsea is enough to bring hope to any manager's heart.
Champions League, Carling Cup
We didn't do too well in our remaining fixtures in both competitions. I'll start with the Champions League where we kicked off our first of three games against bottom club Shakhtar. We just about scraped a 2-1 victory with Nile Ranger and Ryan Shawcross the heroes on the night. This meant qualification! Then we held PSG 0-0 in an incredibly dull game. The youngsters played well but I won't be watching any highlights! Our final fixture was against Juventus, top of the group. We rolled over in what was our worst performance for a while. 3-0 the final score and a game to forget:
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Despite just one win out of the final three, Hughton is delighted with the efforts of his younger players!
In the Carling Cup, we lost out again to Chelsea on Penalties in the Quarter Final. I had my heart on winning this year but it wasn't to be our luck and after extra time the score was 2-2. It was Keirrison who missed the only penalty that sent us out.
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Newcastle were unfortunate and will have to wait until next year to have another go at the Trophy.
Summary
I think you'd agree that we had a decent couple of months. December isn't over yet so we still have games against Burnley, Man City, Bolton and West Ham to look forward to. We know how vital these games are. An unlikely victory against Man City would give us much needed breathing space but we desperately want January to come around and the transfers will start to roll in! Thanks for following, Chris. (K)
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The Squad.
Thanks mate. ^^)
Just one of my homely touches.![]()