Stoke City v Newcastle United - Postmortem

After 10mins tooing and froing, we had a decent 20 minutes spell where we kept the ball and probed for openings. We created only one, which Owen bottled with the keeper closing on him. Stoke seemed to realise they had little to fear, and gradually took control.

From our perspective, the 2nd half was an abomination: we were truly appalling. While I’m not really feeling charitable, it looked to me as though fatigue may have contributed to our latest horror show.

Viduka, Enrique, Rozehnal, and Smith were a disgrace to their shirts. I’ll excuse Owen from that s**t list as he is obviously nowhere near being match fit.

Taylor and Faye were outstanding, and almost single-handedly kept us in the FA Cup, at least until the replay. Nicky Butt’s distribution was generally poor, but he put in helluva shift, and I’d excuse him from the heavy criticism. I have no idea wtf was wrong with Alan Smith today, but he had an absolute nightmare.

Zog was our most creative influence - indeed our only creative influence. Duff flattered to deceive, althought to be fair to him when he did manage get the ball in it was generally into an empty penalty area. Viduka may be capable of holding up the ball, but his lack of mobility is a serious problem. He and Owen have no understanding at all.

We basically had nothing in midfield, and up front. We lost any semblance of control in midfield on the half hour, and never got it back. For large parts of the 2nd half we were under siege, and simply clinging on, conceding corner after corner.

Watching that cr@p, it’s difficult to know what the Manager can do to bring about an improvement, especially looking at the upcoming fixtures - and we are about to lose two (Beye and Faye) of our best three defenders to the ACoN.

Rozehnal, Geremi, Smith, Barton and Enrique, and possibly Viduka, look like busted flushes to me, and the harsh reality is that this reputedly “good playing squad” we have is illusory. The truth is we have too much overpaid cr@p in the squad, and I doubt any Manager could produce a decent team from it.

We’re still in the hat, just. However, inmy honest opinion we’re lucky to be so. It was sheer bloody agony to watch yet another shambolic performance.

PS: Once again, the Toon Army were fantastic.

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