Man City Blues: A Fans Views
By Tyne-Talk
January 3 2008
Tyne-Talk regular Joe Connor puts across his views and opinion of Newcastle United's performance against Manchester City after attending the game and finding himself extremely dismayed but not suprised by the final result.
I was in such a foul mood last night that I couldn't bring myself to log on and write what I thought...I just wanted to go to bed and dream about a Newcastle who weren't so unlucky and inept.
I saw the teamsheet as I entered the ground and for once things looked good, It was a lineup I could live with and it was 4-4-2! My god maybe Sam is going for a win.
Finally Milner was playing on the right again and although N'Zogbia was left back we had a left footed winger on the left of midfield in Duff.
The midfield was manned by two battling players in Faye and Butt...looking positive here.
The game kicked off and we heaped the pressure on immediately Duff and Zog linked up extremely well and we battered them with attempt after attempt.
We just couldn't get the ball in the back of the net although we had plenty tries.
The majority of our crosses were too long or they didn't get past the first man (this particularly annoyed me as Milner has been played out of position for so long finally he gets back on the right this was his time to shine and he sadly faded away)
Two factors that we didn't have last night....or that we rarely have any night
*Clinical Finishing
*A bit of luck
I would much rather have the first as with this you don't need the second.
But a little bit of luck would have been good for all the 50/50 balls that just seemed to bobble away and land to a man city players feet...for all the clearances that swerved out of play and for all the chances that fell just out of reach.
Martins frustrates me because he has explosive power and pace but his touch has been incredibly poor of late...and he always seems like he wants to score a wondergoal.
Holding on to the ball for far too long and either losing possesion or dragging wide...he is definitely lacking confidence and it is only getting worse...he needs to start learning to tuck away the bread and butter goals and save a wondergoal for now and again....they can't all be goal of the month nominees Oba mate.
At the end of the day we should have put away a few of the good chances that we'd made. Our attacking passing lacked penetration and we seemed to dither around the midfield and never really push on.
Man City were the complete opposite of what I've just wrote..they only really had two chances but were clinical enough to convert them into two goals.
Their passing was intrusive and they often passed into an attacking position in maybe 3 or 4 passes at times they went through our midfield like a knife through butter.
Sadly after a bright start the wheels came off and we lost our momentum...and when we lose the plot we really do lose the plot. Its scary how bad we can turn after playing so well.
We need to start playing 90 minutes of consistent decent football and we really really need to start putting chances away...ok our defence was really bad before but at least we used to score goals.
I know this was a rant more than anything else but I'm sure you can relate with some of my points all we can really do now is cross our fingers and hope for a little bit of that luck.