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nutty nigel

Highlights Here. If You Have The Stomach..

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From 3-1, their goals are not pretty viewing, that''s for sure.  Wreteched defending.Defender wrong side of the player for the second goal, simple ball over the top.Ball watching and absolutely zero marking for no. 3Ball watching for number 4. I get that the tension may have got to them at 3-2, but at 3-1 the way the ball got over the top of the defence was awful. They switched off. simple as that.

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Bassong is done for me, I don''t want that liability anywhere near our defence, get shot in January.
If Bennett had started we may have had a chance of getting something.

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[quote user="Ginja"]Bassong is done for me, I don''t want that liability anywhere near our defence, get shot in January.
If Bennett had started we may have had a chance of getting something.
[/quote]
Dunno, he was brought on to sure things up and not sure he did at all.

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Shelvey is an England international. We all know he can pick out a pass. So why did pretty much every attack start with him in 10-15 yards of space?

Is this where a Naismith/Hoolahan would have been in his face constantly not giving him that space?

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Just watched the extended highlights, it could have been all over before half time, at the end of the day we lost by one goal when it could have been far more.

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The only defender I didn''t see playing like total crap was Pinto (and that may only be due to the limitation of watching highlights).Bassong was absolutely pi$$ poor and at fault for 3 of their 4 goals IMHO, and had it not been for McGovern, we could easily have conceded 7-8 instead of 4.We''ve been awful at defending for ages now, but that is easily some of the worst I''ve seen from us in the past couple of seasons.I really do think we need to focus on a more attacking approach, because it''s blindingly obvious that we can''t defend for toffee at the best of times, and even less so when someone like Klose is missing...

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[quote user="CANARYKING"]Just watched the extended highlights, it could have been all over before half time, at the end of the day we lost by one goal when it could have been far more.[/quote]Despite peoples hysteria, thats the long and skinny of it.Newcastle could have been out of sight in the first 20 minutes.

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The problem for yet another game seems to be not reacting to the second ball first. Newcastle''s 3rd and 4th goals were both long balls into the box where a City player got a block and then a Newcastle player reacted first to the rebound resulting in a goal. It is something that desperately needs to be addressed on the training ground.Still, we are not defending too well and yet find ourselves 2nd in the table after 10 games. If we can keep getting the same points return as we have from our first 10 games over the course of the rest of the season I have no doubt we will find ourselves in the top 2 come May. I think the only thing that will stop us is if we all of a sudden stop scoring goals, otherwise we should be fine.

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I think the thing to takeaway is last night we played a team that are a Premier League team in all but name. I''m fairly sure that our defence can do enough to deal with most of the opposition in this division but will struggle against the top teams. We need to work on upgrading here in January and definitely in the summer no matter what happens.

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[quote user="Rogue Baboon"]Shelvey is an England international. We all know he can pick out a pass. So why did pretty much every attack start with him in 10-15 yards of space?

Is this where a Naismith/Hoolahan would have been in his face constantly not giving him that space?[/quote]

wasnt that why howson started ahead of wes, to beef up that area of the pitch defensively?

Poor team effort; ryan muddied the waters when on and a certain level of back bone implosion leadership across teh squad.

As for Bennett or Bassong, I remain in the want them both out camp, but still prefer Bassong to the observer bennett.

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A very minor point, but has anyone else seen Shelvey''s reactions on, (I think) Dorrans and then Olsson, after the third goal went in.

He really is a class act......................

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Who was supposed to be marking shelvey anyway? He had all the space and time in the world, everyone knows he can pick a pass, should''ve been man marked out of the game.

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One thing I did notice was that young Jacob looked totally knackered after scoring did he even celebrate? I think a lot of our players ran themselves into the ground.

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[quote user="ron obvious"]One thing I did notice was that young Jacob looked totally knackered after scoring did he even celebrate? I think a lot of our players ran themselves into the ground.[/quote]So he needed to come off?Hmmmmmm......

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I''m drawing no conclusions about whether he needed to come off or not. Just saying how he looked to me at that point. And a lot of other players looked creamed by the end.

And I still maintain nothing would have disturbed NUFC''s game plan no matter who we''d brought on. Josh might''ve come on & scored, but equally we might have been overwhelmed with Mitrovitch coming on & conceded another 3. We''ll never know. But nothing would have stopped Newcastle attacking.

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Its not clear on the highlights but can anyone who was here shed any light on how Shelvey came to have the ball so soon after our kick off? We only had a minute to see out. Surely we should have been playing keep ball not losing the ball within 10 seconds of the kick off.

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Ultimately we have to concede that we have definitely got a soft underbelly - no question about it - we struggle to hold a lead.

But you also have to give Benitez and his team credit - they simply attacked and attacked and never gave up. He has a plan and is sticking with it - trusting his players and their skills and that 9/10 it will work. We seem to still be trying the canny game we used in the Prem where we absorb and contain more. Alex N has been far more cautious than I ever expected in the Champs so far - that Newcastle game (6-2) seems to really have affected him judging by many of the games ever since. Maybe he needs some counselling and get back to the Champs season before when he rarely put a foot wrong tactically and the Wembley appearance etc.

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Indy Bones wrote: "We''ve been awful at defending for ages now, but that is easily some of

the worst I''ve seen from us in the past couple of seasons.I

really do think we need to focus on a more attacking approach, because

it''s blindingly obvious that we can''t defend for toffee at the best of

times, and even less so when someone like Klose is missing..."What is the point of focusing on a more attacking approach if doing so simply perpetuates the "inability to defend for toffee"? A team that can''t defend for toffee might be good enough to gain promotion from the Championship, but it sure as hell will soon be back playing Championship football. And if anyone thinks that sorting out our defending can be done once we''re back in the EPL, they have the evidence of the last five season against them (not to mention the fate of other clubs who couldn''t defend for toffee either (you only need to look at the GD of the three clubs relegated in any year). Do the math. A rough rule of thumb is that an EPL teams needs a GD of -12 or better to virtually guarantee survival. You have far more chance of achieving that if you prioritise keeping your goals against as low as possible over scoring as many goals as possible. Clean sheets matter.

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