Souness Happy As Newcastle Through To Round Five
(c) Inter.it
By Kev Luff
January 29 2006
Newcastle United progressed to the next round of the FA Cup with a 2-0 win over Cheltenham but were given a tough going over by the League two team.
Newcastle United progressed to the next round of the FA Cup with a
2-0 win over Cheltenham but were given a tough going over by the League two
team. Both of the goals for the North East side were scored minutes before the
halt time break. Newcastle started brightly but the home side worked hard and
made life very difficult. However the turning point came after forty-one minutes
when Celestine Babayaro broke into the penalty area. Cheltenham goalkeeper Shane
Higgs rushed out to dive at his feet and the ball spun up into the air and
Michael Chopra jumped ahead of a Cheltenham defender to head into the
net.
A couple of minutes later the lead was extended when Peter Ramage
delivered a cross from the right and an attempted clearance from the home side
struck Scott Parker and the ball bounced over the line. Parker, making his first
appearance since late December, did not know much about it. Cheltenham continued
to battle but were unable to get back into it and Alan Shearer missed a great
chance to clinch his goal for the all time scorers record but was inches away
from making contact from a cross by Shola Ameobi in the second half. Speaking
after the game Souness was satisfied with the result.
“We have to be
happy at going through into the next round. We knew before the game that this
was a potential banana skin for us. They were fired up, the crowd was right on
top of us, and it was all set up for an upset,” admitted
the Newcastle United boss.
“We didn’t want to be one of those statistics though, we didn’t want to have our names dragged up every time there was talk of FA cup upsets. We did a professional job, and we have to be happy with that. We kept patient, and as we all know, goals change games. I’m delighted that Chops got his goal, and then Scott Parker got his first for us with a goal that he didn’t know much about. I bet he’d take one of those every week, though!”
SOURCE: www.northeastfootball.co.uk
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