Stoke vs Newcastle Review

Well my prediction was way off. The result: Stoke 1 - 3 Newcastle. With Demba Ba annoyingly getting himself a hat-trick.

His first, a well worked goal after a fantastic cross from Obertan - awful marking from Wilson and Woodgate practically giving them the goal, shame the move begun with Leon Best being yards offside. The second, a miss-hit shot from Best luckily found it's way to Ba to simply tap in, once again poor defending from Stoke who were now without Shawcross who had gone off injured - replaced by Matthew Upson. Our goal was a penalty, Ba ironically barging Crouch who fell to the ground, Jon Walters leathered the ball as hard as he possibly could straight down the middle, maybe using his anger created by the frustration of playing with Glenn Whelan. Minutes later Huth was rightly accused of a push on Leon Best and Demba Ba calmly slotted the penalty away to put the game to bed.

Excuses

What an awful midfield. Whelan tried, and failed. Delap tried, and failed - although he did try an alternative throwing method that almost worked. This duo have about as much creativity as Andy Murray's interviews, at the weekend it was revealed Wilson Palacios was 75% fit. So why didn't he play some part tonight? Each time he got the ball against Maccabi Tel Aviv he did something, something that Whelan and Delap haven't seen or tried before - Wilson Palacios played a creative pass. Crouch did his best tonight, as did Walters but neither were allowed into the game at all by an excellent defensive display from Newcastle and a poor attacking display from Stoke's non-existent midfield.

Now onto the defense, weeks back Gary Neville went as far to compare our defense to a small team in Spain called Barcelona. Didn't see one iota of similarity between Stoke against Newcastle and Barcelona against Mallorca. The Catalans are organised and always have one eye on the attacker, Stoke were constantly out of position allowing Newcastle to walk it in.

To conclude it was poor from Stoke, we may have had the ball for 96% of the match (spot the exaggeration) but nothing was done with it. 1-3 flattered Newcastle, we didn't deserve to win but we didn't deserve to lose by two. Newcastle got lucky.