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Match Reports

Blackburn 4 – 3 Newcastle United (AET)

12 years ago
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Wednesday 22 October 8pm Carling Cup 4th Round

Blackburn 4
Newcastle United 3 (AET) (Guthrie 90+2, Cabaye 90+5, Lovenkrands 105)

“If we were going to go out of the cup, that’s how to go out of it. We gave absolutely everything, but sometimes you can’t win every game. I don’t like the idea of being a gallant loser to be honest, and we haven’t really had that too often this season thankfully”. Alan Pardew

The Carling Cup has thrown up some cracking cup-ties, a shame that the crowds haven’t matched the action.

Our cup adventure came to an eventual halt tonight but for those present they certainly got their money’s worth tonight.

The bare facts of the ninety minutes are that Rovers took a comfortable two goal advantage with Newcastle not really at the races, although a poor referee helped things along for the home team, especially with a number of penalty shouts that looked more than valid for United.

A couple of absolute belters from Guthrie and Cabaye in injury time had seemingly laid a platform for an unexpected happy ending to tonight’s fixture but it wasn’t to be.

Extra time simply agonisingly prolonged our departure from the competition, a deflected goal being equalled by United at last getting their chance from the penalty spot for Lovenkrands to equal things up.

With penalties looming, a hoof up the pitch resulted in a scrambled finish which possibly should have seen the ref blow for offside but a night of bad luck continued. Maybe it suits our current league placing/circumstances to get all the bad luck out of the way in one match.

I think if this had been a league match it would have hit home a lot harder because it has been fun sticking up there in the table, whereas at the moment most of us probably see the league as providing our more intriguing story this season.

Both injuries  and decisions to rest a couple of players had taken away some of the team framework that has contributed so much this season.

Players like Perch are clearly not up to the standard and I’d suggest throwing in the likes of Santon and Ben Arfa into a match like this isn’t ideal.

Maybe the telling factor tonight was a hangover from the failure in the summer to bring in the two or three extra players that were clearly needed, resulting in having to dig deeper in the barrel fro tonight’s team than was ideal.

Out of the cup but in the league, if you know what I mean.

Blackburn Rovers: Mark Bunn, Jason Lowe, Chris Samba (c), Gael Givet, Martin Olsson, Ruben Rochina (Simon Vukcevic 77), Radosav Petrovic, Morten Gamst Pederson, Junior Hoilett (Grant Hanley 88), Yakubu (Mauro Formica 66), David Goodwillie.
Subs not used: Paul Robinson, Jason Roberts, Myles Anderson, Robbie Cotton.

Newcastle United: Tim Krul, Danny Simpson (Sammy Ameobi 69), Davide Santon, James Perch, Fabricio Coloccini (c); Sylvain Marveaux (Gabriel Obertan 76), Danny Guthrie, Yohan Cabaye, Jonas Gutierrez; Hatem Ben Arfa (Peter Lovenkrands 79), Demba Ba.
Subs not used: Rob Elliott, Mehdi Abeid, Dan Gosling, Nile Ranger.

Referee: Robert Madley

Attendance: 10,682

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