This weekend we face the prospect of those three players having fun with our defence. My question is how do we deal with them and do we need to change our starting eleven to help keep them at bay. Newcastle haven't started as well this season which will give us hope and then we have AP returning. Hopefully he will receive a reasonable round of applause from us as it was him that brought Rickie here.
Won't clap him but won't boo him, he is a manager of another Prem club now so why clap him?. If I was Adkins i'd keep the same team, but I think Boruc may come back in.
Cisse and Ba aren't quick and Cisse isn't very good in the air, so a good manager should be able to deal with them. Ben Arfa is too good to be able to plan for.
I thought Ben Arfa and Cisse have had quite a poor start to the season, a big reason for Newcastle's bad start, that's why I took Ben out of my fantasy team. Ba is unfortunately firing on all pistons, when ever Newcastle get a goal i expect it to be Ba's and more often than not it is. I would be happy with a draw in that game but it is definitely winnable.
Ben Arfa has had some fantastic games this season, he hasn't set the world alight statistically but has played some top stuff. But some games he can have no effect at all... Hopefully he has one of those games against us! Cisse though is not having a good time of it, Ba is in good goalscoring form but he's not a Suarez or Tevez who is going to kill a defence on his own, he needs service. If we can clamp down on Ben Arfa, and cut the service to Ba that will take us a long way to getting something from the game. The problem with them is they have that ability that you can't plan for at times. At any time Ben Arfa could produce something magical, Cisse and Ba can crack in a ridiculously audacious goal. We have to do our best to limit their opportunities and clamp down on them, and hope they don't do something incredible. As a straight-up footballing team, without Cabaye and Coloccini, I think we can match-up with them well, especially at home.
