Newcastle United vs Fulham Match Review

Despite the enormous comfort of an early goal, which in the context of the game was massive, a tense and nervous 90 mins made for agonising watching, but ultimately proved satisfying. The players were nervous, the crowd anxious, and the lack of the 2nd goal made things ever more nail-biting.

We played some canny football a times, but us usual made things difficult by endlessly giving the ball way. We created a good few chances, but poor finishing and a couple of good saves by Keller kept the score at 1-0 for what seemed an eternity.

Fulham had a full share of possession, and at times it was like the bliddy Alamo in front of our goal. However, I thought we defended superbly today, and it’s a long time since we could say that. Taylor had a his best game for a long time, and Faye improved substantially on his dodgy showing at Brum.

Viduka scored a good early goal, creating it for himself out of nothing - a goal that was pivotal in the game. After that, his performance was disappointing - frequently failing to hold up the ball, and bring in his colleagues, which is of course his designated role.

In contrast, I thought Michael Owen was superb - for me, his best game for the Toon since his hat trick at West Ham a long time ago. His free role in this 4-3-3 formation gets him more involved in the game, and he seems to be enjoying it a lot more. He missed a sitter with his head in the 1st half, but put away a Geremi free kick with his head to kill off the game late in the 2nd.

Martins worked hard, and as ever was a combination of the good, the bad, and the ugly. However, he tried to help out Enrique down the left, and buzzed around to reasonable effect. The crowd roundly booed his substitution by N’Zogbia again. Once again this was clearly tactical but, at the time he was subbed, Martins was looking lively while Viduka was treading water.

A midfield three of Butt, Geremi and Barton is seriously pedestrian, and they struggled to get control of this game - with the deep-lying Bullard spraying the ball around to good effect. Having said that all three worked extremely hard, and kept going right to the end. Barton had probably his best game for the Toon, but still gave the ball away too often.

Despite Fulham having a lot of possession, I felt we were good value for the 3 points, becuase despite their possession they actually created very little, whereas we carved out 4 or 5 very good chances.

A simply MASSIVE 3 points, that should set us up to move away from the bottom three. However, the job isn’t done yet.

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