View From The Enemy – How Newcastle preview the visit from Arsenal

St James Park has proved to have been a happy hunting ground for Arsenal in recent years and we can only hope that our current team can carry on that impressive record against Newcastle today. So for our latest instalment of our usual View from The Enemy series we have visited the Official Magpies website to see how they have described the build up to their own fans. So here is what they had to say….

Premier League: Arsenal (h)

Sunday sees Newcastle host the Gunners at a sold-out St. James’ Park in a Premier League fixture kicking off at 1.30pm, live on Sky Sports.

Rafa Benitez has seen his side win their last three home games without conceding a single goal – their best run of form at SJP since a trio of 1-0 wins in October and November 2014.

Arsenal have won the most recent ten meetings between the two sides, with United not taking any points since a 0-0 draw at Gallowgate in 2011.

And it’s 13 games since the Magpies last won this fixture – a 1-0 success at the Emirates in 2010.

You need to have a long memory to remember the last time we beat them here: Nolberto Solano’s goal in 2005 giving us a 1-0 success. Since then, we’ve drawn four and lost six league & cup games.

A home win is rated @ 12/5 with a draw @ 5/2. There have been a number of scoreless draws in this fixture and another 0-0 stalemate is priced @ 12/1.

Ayoze Perez has scored in his last two appearances but never managed three in a row for Newcastle: he’s 17/2 first scorer and 11/4 anytime scorer.

NUFC: Islam Slimani will be eligible to play after sitting out the visit to his parent club, Leicester City.

AFC: Arsene Wenger’s were in Europa League action away to CSKA Moscow on Thursday, drawing 2-2 to advance to the last four on a 6-3 aggregate.

Midfielder Granit Xhaka didn’t travel due to illness, while striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang wasn’t eligible to play in the competition.

Sunday saw the Gunners win a third successive PL game (all at home), beating Southampton 3-2 at the Emirates. However they are without a PL win on the road in 2018, having drawn at West Brom and lost at Bournemouth, Swansea, Tottenham and Brighton.

Midfielder Mohamed Elneny was red-carded against Southampton but following a successful appeal will now be available for the trip to Tyneside. However the game will come too soon for Henrikh Mkhitaryan.

Referee: Anthony Taylor – just the one outing for this whistler from the Manchester area in 2017/18: the scoreless home draw with Brighton. Previous to that, Taylor took charge of our 5-1 thumping of Spurs at Gallowgate back in May 2016.

2 Comments

  1. Newcastle would most likely set up a defensive counter-attack tactic

    This game is only important to make our new and young players more accustomed to Premier League’s physicality, unless there is a significant difference between finishing as the 6th and the 7th

  2. Can’t wait to see Auba…and hope we see that front flip ? gutted he can’t play in Europe, but at least he’ll be fresh for today ? COYG

Comments are closed

Top Blog Sponsors