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NUFC Strengths & Weaknesses – Arsenal Fan View

12 years ago
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It is often enlightening to hear what the opposition fans think about Newcastle United and in advance of tonight’s match at The Emirates we learn what the Arsenal view is of our chances.

Mark Brus at arsenalinsider.com 

Bogey team

Our opponents tomorrow looked for a while like they’d have a place in this fight, but have slipped up recently. Still, they are certainly a side capable of derailing our Champions League prospects, with some good recent results against us, and a manager with a history of upsetting us.

We drew a really dire game 0-0 at St James’ Park there at the start of this season, but it was last year that they really did the damage, with a 1-0 win at the Emirates and an incredible comeback to draw 4-4 from 4-0 down at St James’. Joey Barton has been our torementor-in-chief in these games, but thankfully he is no longer there. Andy Carroll, who got the winner at the Emirates last season, has also gone. As a tall, strong target man he seems more like the kind of player to give us problems than his replacement Demba Ba, but Ba has been an absolute revelation for Alan Pardew’s side this season.

Only Rooney and van Persie have more league goals than Ba, so it will be interesting to see how those two do in their head-to-head tomorrow night. Both are players who can score from anywhere – right foot, left foot or header. And with our particular weakness on set-pieces we will have to look out for Ryan Taylor, the full-back who plays a great dead-ball.

With a strong backline and talented goalkeeper, Newcastle have been a good defensive unit for most of this season, but of course recently conceded five goals on their last two visits to London, losing 5-2 at Fulham and 5-0 at Spurs.

Key Men

The important thing for Arsenal is that there aren’t too may tired legs after Tuesday night. The return from injury of key players such as Arteta and Ramsey should be helpful, and I hope Oxlade-Chamberlain has recovered sufficiently to start the game. As good as Tomas Rosicky has been recently, his fitness records aren’t the best and I find it hard to believe he can maintain his good form and dominate another match. If he does, of course, that would be a real boost, as he has been the driving force behind the wins over Spurs and Milan, with the kind of work-rate and penetration that we don’t really get from Arteta and Ramsey, who are more keep-ball specialists.

Newcastle’s weakness would arguably be the full-back positions. Taylor provides assists and scores some good goals, but he’s not the quickest and, if played at left-back, could be a good target for Theo Walcott. Danny Simpsons on the other side is nothing special either and you’d fancy Chamberlain to get some joy on the left.

Unpredictable

With two of the league’s best strikers and some error-prone defences you’d have to say, on paper at least, that another high-scoring draw looks likely, but it rarely works out like that. Both sides are about as inconsistent as each other, and that makes this game incredibly hard to predict. I’ll be boring and say 2-1 to Arsenal

Interesting stuff and funny how much they saw Barton as a thorn in their side and the fear of Carroll’s physical presence, though that is almost exclusively based on the towering match-winning performance the ponytailed one gave on our last visit here.

Even though they talk about our last couple of draws knocking our chances of fourth spot there still seems to be a healthy respect and wariness of our team.

They obviously see Ba as the main goal threat and value Taylor’s set-piece balls, whilst at the same time bigging up Tim Krul and the early season defensive record.

Can’t argue though with them highlighting Taylor and Simpson’s defending as full-backs, though I can’t imagine Pardew keeping Taylor at full-back ahead of Santon, especially if Walcott lines up – though the Arsenal winger is a fitness doubt.

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