QPR vs Toon - My thoughts on the game

Agree with this.

 

This is more like it! I'd up Best to 7, I actually thought he put in a great shift despite ****e service and no help from Shola but other than that I agree. I was shaking my head reading the other posters ratings and trying to work out how our players could be averaging ratings of 7 having just been played off the park by QPR and barely getting a shot on target!

 

Because a couple of players gave performances that merited a 7 I think. QPR were all over us because they kept attacking the areas where we had players buggering up all the time. You already said yourself about midfield where we had Tiote having a bad game, Raylor had a **** game and they kept firing it to SWP, and quite a few times Ameobi just foolishly gave it away when we were pressing in their half which gave them a few chances too. Cabaye didn't play as well as he has done for us but I'd say he deserves a 7 because he made some quality challenges today and his passing was magical as usual.

 

I'm already fed up of the excuses for Tiote this season. He doesn't look 'unfit', just looks ****e. Not playing anywhere near the standard he was last season.

Seven Taylor was ****ing awesome today.

 

I think only Best, Colo, Saylor and Simmo played well today. Everybody else was average or poor. Admittedly Krul didn't have much to do so his average performance is understandable but the others just weren't up to scratch. Whether it was our poor tactics or their good performances, a mixture of both to me, the point is we scraped a draw despite being second best throughout. I just think alot of the performance point allocations on the whole did not reflect this and were far too generous to our players.

 

Tiote was shockingly bad...Gunna write an article about it tomorrow.

Stevie Taylor was great and when he did slip up, Colo was there (great partnership between those 2, seem to have a really good understanding of who's putting a foot in and whose covering!)

Simpson had a decent enough game, put a good foot in when Staylor lost his balance, cleared off the line and made one very nice run in particular. Having said that, almost all of QPR's attacking threat came down our weaker left hand side, so he had less to do!

Cabaye was our best midfielder, wasn't as out and out special as he has been, but was everywhere in our half and when anything came into Best, it was from Cabaye's starting pass!

Gutierrez looked disinterested and Obertan looked a little lost for me.

Best had a good game, did all the work for Ameobi and could've scored a pearler with that lovely turn and shot (good save by Kenny).

Ameobi, shocking as usual!

 

Tiote is off the pace. Not fitness although his levels are not at last season, but lack of game time. Still looks in pre season which makes sense given him missing the final few weeks and some games. Throw in his fasting and there are plausible reasons. But like any other player he needs to get with it, you can't carry players. It's hurting Cabaye too who couldn't get enough quality of ball to get our passing going. He lost an enormous amount of possession and was led a merry dance at times. But he is world class for me and will come good. Class is permanent and all that.

 

I have been saying for a couple of weeks now that I don't think Taylor is good defensively so I'll keep on saying that

Taylor
Tiote
Obertan
Ameobi

Were our worst players tonight imo.

 

Krul 7
Simpson 5
Taylor 8
Colo 8
Raylor 5
Obertan 6
Cabaye 6
Tiote 4
Jonas 6
Best 7
Shola 5

 

Well I'm pleased with the away point but the way we played was really ,really aweful. Raylor who has coped well till now was getting torched by SWP. Gutierrez looked dull and too defensive ,and for the first time this year, I'm missing his partnership with Enrique. Hopefully Pardew will stop playing with fire and field a true LB.
Ameobi was **** as usual and the only reason I think he's playing is that Ba can't play 90 mins. Also the Tiote- Cabaye partnership was a real failure against a newly promoted team. Think that Pardew should play a 5man midfield, with maybe Ben Arfa if he's fit or Guthrie cos at the moment we're really lacking a link between the midfield and our strikers. Defensively, barring Raylor, it was a good performance and I'm happy that Simpson finally upped his game.

 

Forgot about my fantasy team - 12 points from Krul and Simmo

 

Long time lurker, had to sign up to the site and give my comments after being at the game last night!

Most people here seem to be spot on, we were bad for the majority of the game last night!

Going to have to start from the back and say that Ryan Taylor is absolute ****e but I suppose we all knew this anyway. Only reason he's in the team is because he's scored a few important goals this season (RYAN TAYLOR, OVER THE WALL!!). Not really enough to stay in the starting 11 for me though, offers nothing going forward or defensively. Can't wait to see Santoon running up and down the left!

Moving onto midfield! This is where we lost the game last night. Totally outplayed, outpassed, outrun all over midfield last night. When we got the ball in the middle (Cabaye or Tiote) there were never any options. Obertan never really had any movement, and the few times he did attempt to run in behind the right back he was never spotted. For the majority of the game he looked unfit and never really looked like he wanted the ball. Jonas was similar aswell although at least he tried running at the left back when he got him 1v1.

Now onto the forwards. Feel a little sorry for Best because he was practically on his own last night. At least he put a decent session in which is more than can be said for the lazy ****e Ameobi!! Why oh why is he in our starting 11, already means that before kick-off we're pretty much down to 10 men. I really don't understand why he is picked in the starting 11?!?! CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN!

Not really many positives to come out of last night apart from the fact we managed to espace with a undeserved point. Listened to the Pardew interview on Sky and he admitted that he got it wrong which is fair enough. Should have switched it to 5 in the midfield a lot earlier.

Was my first NUFC game this season and loved being in amongst all the fans again, forgot what that feeling was like. Hopefully get to a few more games this year!

HTL!

 

Krul- 6- Nowt to do
Simpson- 6- Put in a few crosses and played better than his normal poor self
Taylor- 6.5- Did a few good tackles but let Boothroyd run in goalside of him for what should have been an easy goal
Col- 7- Another solid performance
Raylor- 4- Did nothing with the free kicks, SWP had him in his pocket.... Thank god Warnock switched him to the other flank....
Tiote- 3- Worse player on the pitch, tried playing his way out of trouble and lost the ball countless times, any pass he tried to make ended up at the oppositions feet, awful game from one of our supposed better players. Has looked average at best so far this season
Cabaye- 6- Put himself about a bit
Jonas- 5- Poor, didnt seem up for it and was blowing out his arse after 60 minutes
Obertan- 6- Few good breaks but no support to amount to anything, closed down well and put in some effort
Ameobi- 3- Absolute pony, lazy, easily nudged off the ball, why the hell we gave him a new deal is beyond me.....
Best- 6- only decent shot on goal for us and the only one who looked like making anything happen

Ba- Did nowt
Marveux- Did nowt
Sameobi- Did nowt

 

Sometimes I read the forum and wonder what people actually see when they're watching a game of football.

Simpson was all over the place last night. As was Taylor at left-back. The amount of times we were opened up down the flanks was frightening, and a more accomplished finisher than Jay Bothroyd would have had the game wrapped up at half time.

To be fair to Simpson, a few times he was out of position because of the ridiculous tactical decision to have our left back (Ryan Taylor) crossing the ball in from the right hand side, whilst Simpson covered at left back.

Do we only have one player capable of pumping a ball into the box?

Raylor - he's done well filling in at left back, but now enough's enough aye? SWP ripped him a new arsehole in the first 45 last night. I'm glad Pardew didn't haul him off, but it just proved that against a proper winger, he can't cope. Santon from now on thanks.

Coloccini and Steven Taylor were both outstanding.

Tim Krul had very little to do (did he even have a save to make other than SWP's shot that was going wide - despite being beaten by his chip and saved by Taylor on the line). What he did do, he did well.

Whilst defensively, Cabaye and Tiote were both solid, both of them gave possession away far too easily, far too often.

Tiote simply has to stop dithering in possession in front of his own box, because it's just a matter of time before it leads to a goal.

Cabaye? His passing was neat, but thanks to there being absolutely zero movement up front or wide, he had no passing options other than safe balls. When he tried to do anything incisive he gave it away.

Plus he was completely wasted and far too deep in the formation.

I thought Obertan looked bright early on, but needs to take players on more and use his pace. Jonas had an off-day.


Up front?

Shola was atrocious. A yard off the pace, indecisive, fouling on every aerial challenge.

Best did reasonably well considering the service he was getting.



I don't want to sound TOO negative, because it was a decent point against a team with their tails up, but despite the league table showing us 4th place, I am pretty concerned about the coming weeks.

We're pinning our entire attacking hopes on a player (HBA) who's been injured a year. We've created about 7 or 8 scoring chances in our first 4 league games. Our lack of conceding is becoming heavily reliant on luck rather than good defending.


The team needs time to gel as an attacking unit, and I think we'll improve, but anyone kidding themselves that we're better than we are will be in for a rude awakening.


Good points tally so far. Must do better with the ball.

 

Agree - first time I've noticed how lazy Obertan is too - he rarely closed the ball down after losing it, or got tight to his man

 

were some of you actually watching the same game as me? i thought Obertan was awful. the guy has pace to burn and when theres grass in front of him to take on the full back he's just not interested. i thought marveaux did more than obertan did in his short cameo. obertan simply refuses to try and win back the ball after he loses possesion. he just sort of shrugs and lets the player canter off with it. i agree with pards trying to give him pitch tiem to build up his confidence but we need more than that away from home. Ba has to start instead of shola next game and for the love of god drop Raylor. don't let the fact that we kept another clean sheet mask over the fact that we were extremely lucky as he was getting mullered. zog will tear him open worse than SWP if we don't change it up.

 

Totally agree with this, not sure how he's managed to get a decent rating from people? Maybe he looked good on Sky but seriously his movement was bad for most of the game and when he did get the ball in good positions (1v1 against his defender) then he never looked to attack him which is a shame! Suppose that might be down to confidence so hope to see him improve.

Would be interested to see how many headers and second balls we won last night. Bothroyd won everything for them and Shola/Best must have won 2 headers between them throughout the whole game!

 

He was a bit ineffective for me but both him and Jonas were suffering from a lack of quality ball in the right areas. This was mainly down to how we were set up. Obertan showed glimpses again but sooner or later the lad is gonna need to start actually impacting on the game. I also think his work rate when he loses possession is poor, even if he does give his right back plenty of cover. He could do with a goal quite badly to get his tail up. We dodged a bullet last night as another team might have scored 4 or more for me. Fortunately Bothroyd wasn't much of a threat.

 

Arsenal 0-0
Sunderland 1-0 (Ryan Taylor Set Play)
Scunthorpe 2-1 (Ryan Taylor Set Play / Sammy)
Fulham 2-0 (Best)
QPR 0-0

Out of 5 games we haved scored 3 goals from open play this season by...2 Best, 1 Sammy....(not including pre season here)...

Shola Ameobi has never featured in a game we have scored in open play....

Mortal of the story....Shola Ameobi is everything wrong with Newcastle...the bloke is terrible...for years he has been dragging us down...How does the management not see we play better without him....look so far this season we cannot score from open play when he is on the pitch and the game he doesnt play we score both times???.....

The jury is still out on him but Ba did a lot more in the time he was on the pitch than Shola did the whole match....won more headers, less fouls and passed better....Until we drop him we will never have anything upfront....i would rather play Ba with Obertain / Marveux behind until Ben Arfa comes back....

 

Wonder if Simmo gave a better performance last night because of all the talk of his position being under threat from Santon (or Raylor with Santon taking LB) .. the power of competition for places? ..

Lot of folk mentioning Cabaye sitting too deep, covering for Tiote's current poor performances in my opinion ..

Think from Pards post match interview last night we can expect a 4-5-1 next match ...

well played QPR also, was thoroughly impressed with their efforts and thought Taarabt was immense ..