Sunday 4th March 2012. St Jamses park will be full of passionate Geordies who want to see their team beat the Mackems once again, I will be one of them, shouting at the top of my voice and and signing my heart out for the lads. In recent years it has been clear that Newcastle are the dominant force in this particular derby and this has been the case for a number of reasons. Sorry if you read my last blog and this one is following the same format, of start a topic and list points about that topic, but I promise that my next one will be different and hopefully you will be interested enough to read it.
Firstly I'll say it now before I write this, I'm one of the biggest Newcastle fans and yes I'm going to be biased when I write the next 5 or so paragraphs. But I will also be slightly fair to the Mackems at some points because they used to be a good team that gave us a good derby match, but the result from the Halloween destruction of them in October 2010 when we won 5 - 1 just shows that we (I love how I say we as though I play for Newcastle) are definitely the dominant force in the greatest and most intriguing matches in football.
The power of Newcastle's strike force of Shola Ameobi, even though I don't like him and In my opinion he's a lazy player, I have to admit he played a blinder on that day and Andy Carroll, don't want to say much more about him. They both played well and ensured that the Sunderland back four had a nightmare of a day and the one factor that made sure that Newcastle had the advantage was the height of the two front men, Carroll flicking it on to Shola throughout the game and Shola trying to convert the chances that came his way. I also thought Shola was being a bit of a numpty when he took the ball of Kevin Nolan and told him that he was the regular penalty taker and that he was taking it even though Kevin was on for his first half hat trick, but credit to Shola he converted the penalty in style to give us a 3-0 half time lead.
Another factor that ensured that we had the lion share of possession was the fact that the midfield was solid all afternoon, they made sure that the Sunderland midfielders couldn't pass the ball without getting frustrated, although they probably couldn't pass the ball anyway. The Newcastle midfield played as though they had a connection between each other so that they knew where each other were throughout the entire game. The central midfileld duo on that day of Joey Barton and Kevin Nolan were unstoppable and Kevin's hat trick was sublime, for a midfielder who has not scored a great number of goals in his career he certainly put on his scoring boots at the right time.
The Newcastle defence on this particular day were surprisingly solid, it was definitely a surprise for me and I'm sure many other Newcastle fans that the defence was solid for 88 minutes of the 90 because for a number of years the one aspect of Newcastle's game that always got singled out by the media and journalists was the defence. It was fair criticism because Newcastle's defence was s***e for a long time, but since the reign of Chris Hughton the defence has improved considerably, maybe new defending coaches were brought in to sort out the problem so that all aspects of Newcastle's game were upto premier league standard. But in this game, as I was saying, Steven Taylor and Fabricio Collocini played magnificently to ensure that we got one over on the Mackems in the derby. They both commanded the back four superbly and put their bodies on the line throughout the game to ensure that we got the result we deserved.
The final piece of the puzzle that made this particular perfect was the long serving Newcastle United goalkeeper Steve Harper, at the age of 35 to be pulling off saves that most keepers would dream of doing was a joy to watch. Sunderland didn't really have many chances to test him throughout the game, this was obviously down to the rest of the team on the pitch doing their job superbly, but when they did get the rare chance on goal Steve was there to ensure that he kept a clean sheet. He did this to the highest standard up until the 88th minute when Darren Bent, now an Aston Villa player, broke through the defence and slotted home their only goal of the game. If I was Steve at that moment I would have been fuming to have lost a clean sheet, but I don't blame him or any of the players, they were probably too busy smiling about the fact that they were, once again going to be winners in this world famous derby match.
Now onto Sunderland's faults and there's a lot but I would be here for months if I was to talk about them all, so I'll talk about 2. Firstly Titus Bramble, now any player who plays for either Newcastle or Sunderland knows that you never leave one to join the other and that's exactly what Mr Bramble did. Titus was one of the worst defenders ever to grace the sacred turf of St Jamses park (I'm still not going to call it the sports direct arena!) apart from Jean Alain Boumsong, but Titus was never really liked by the Geordie faithful because he was seen as a lazy player that never looked liked he wanted to help Newcastle to do well in the premier league, but when he was voted the worst player in the premier league in the 2003 - 2004 season, you could see why the fans didn't take to or appreciate his work rate. To be fair to him during the 2004 - 2005 season he had some spectacular displays for us, but a few good performances won't get you respect from the fans and especially when you play for the club for 5 years you want more solid performances from a first team central defender. In 2007 when he was thankfully frozen out of the team by Glenn Roder, there were rumours that he may be joining the Mackems, but relief for Bramble he joined Wigan on a free. (What a waste of £6 million that was for Newcastle), but Bramble became public enemy number 1 in Newcastle when he joined Sunderland for £1 million in 2010, as I said before you never play for Newcastle then in your career join Sunderland, it wouldn't have been too bad if he had played well for us in his time and that's why the other people who have joined Sunderland after Newcastle haven't been disliked as much.
The second fault of Sunderland, is their ex manager Steve Bruce. Everyone knows that if you support Newcastle, the greatest team on earth (I just had to mention that again!) you should never, I repeat never, be manager of Sunderland because you will not be able to walk through the streets of Tyneside again without being abused or even worse beaten, but then again it would be your own fault. I understand that it was the job that he got offered and when your someone like him your not going to get many job offers and you will take anything you get but personally if it was me and I was a premier league manager I would never in my entire life manage the Mackems, I just couldn't bring myself to do it, no matter how much money they offered me. Anyway back to Mr Bruce, he told the press a few years back that he used to sneak into St Jamses Park to watch his beloved Newcastle Unied when he was a kid. That's commitment to watch the team that you love, so maybe I'm being a bit harsh on him because like I say I understand that when your a manager you take a job that gives you the best benefits and possibly the best pay. Maybe Steve wanted to just be back in the North East closer to Newcastle and he couldn't get a job at Newcastle at the time when he didn't have a job, so he settled for the closest place to us. So all in all maybe I shouldn't have included Steve Bruce in the Sunderland faults, but in my personal opinion you should never manage or play for your rivals.
Finally I have to talk about the up and coming derby game and I'm sure it will be as eventful as ever, with red cards and amazing goals, (just like Ryan Taylor's free kick in the one nil win earlier this season! Also Sunderland have a new manager in Martin O'neil and under him at the minute the Mackems are looking good! I can't believe I just said that?! He has been a revelation since he became their manager and if we aren't careful they may catch us but that will never happen because they don't have the belief that they can do it and they certainly don't have the loyal fans to give them the support that they need to succeed and that is simply why they will fail like they always do when they play us! The power of the Demba's and the brute force of Mr Tiote will be too much for the Mackems to handle. Yohan Cabaye I hope will come out with his fighting spririt that we have seen many time this season and one final thing I am hoping for is that the defence is solid and of course Tim Krul will be on form as he always is, there has never been a bad game for him this season. Also the up and coming game I hope will show the huge gap that there is between us and them and I also hope that Newcastle turn up with the belief that they can once again destroy the Mackems and make them understand that they can never be the dominant force in this derby game.
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