Back in Business

By: Daryl | July 10th, 2009

First of all, big thanks for all the input on the last post. Hearing from all the Newcastle co-managers makes me motivated to keep going.

After reading the comments it seemed the majority favoured:

Sticking with 4-1-2-1-2 for the game against Chelsea despite the poor result against Portsmouth.

Starting Pog and Laurito up front, Diego behind, with Marquinhos and Arshavin out wide.

Here’s what that looked like:

Luckily Chelsea played a 4-4-2 with Frank Lampard and João Moutinho in the middle, Goran Pandev and Mario Gomez up top, Edgar Barreto and Nani (!!!) outside. So no need to worry about being outnumbered in midfield.

The St James’ Park crowd got their money’s worth in the first half with some good end to end football, but no goals.

Only disappointments were Marquinhos and The Pog, who both got a talking to at halftime. Marquinhos tried to pretend he couldn’t speak English but I wasn’t buying it. The telling off had exactly zero effect on either player in the second half. I miss Oba Martins. He knew how to respond to a telling off.

All the action came in the last 25 minutes. I subbed out Rusol (injured) and The Pog (rubbish) for Taylor and Lewandowski, and Pandev immediately put Chelsea 1-0 up. Time to panic. So, off came Marquinhos (even more rubbish than Pog) and on came an out of form Jonas. Diego dropped a little deeper, Jonas and Arshavin pushed up a bit, and everyone was told to play very fast and very direct (almost long ball but not quite, we’re not animals).

Jonas very quickly got on the end of a direct ball and poked it past Cech to equalize. I decided to gamble, cross my fingers and stick with the attacking formation. The reward came in the 93rd minute when Lewandowski headed home a winner. Get. In.

No goals or assists for Laurito, but he was a constant menace with his dribbling and took home a bottle of champagne. Here are the stats:

(click to enlarge)