Three Points: 2-1 Win Over West Brom

Three quick takes on Newcastle's fourth win in a row:

Lift from the wings: It's that man again! My personal hero Yoan Gouffran put in yet another superb performance. Gouffran always works exceptionally hard on both ends of the field. But with three goals in his last four matches, he's rapidly dispelling the idea that he's not a scorer. It's the first time Newcastle has had two players scoring fairly regularly since Andy Carroll and Kevin Nolan.

And on the other side of the field, Moussa Sissoko's swerving blast gave Newcastle the lead for good, a quick response to Chris Brunt's equalizer. Outside of the goal, Sissoko finally put his physical gifts to good use, tormenting Liam Ridgewell and the rest of the West Brom defense. Much more of that from Sissoko would be a welcome sight. The other interesting note about Gouffran and Sissoko was how they sometimes slid around to turn a 4-4-2 into a 4-3-3, with Gouffran moving into the center forward role and Sissoko tucking in to form a midfield trio. Any bit of variety and unpredictability in the attack is useful given a starting formation that can often become a bit static.

Silencing their critics: Prior to the season, Mike Williamson and Shola Ameobi were thought of as dead weight in the squad. In recent weeks, they have been vital contributors, and that run continued yesterday. Against a West Brom attack that didn't appear to suit his strengths, Williamson was again immense, with 9 successful clearances, 4 tackles, and 2 blocked shots. Ameobi defied my pre-match comments that he doesn't play well two matches in a row by popping up just about everywhere and bringing his teammates into the attack. At some point, performances like these stop being a fluke.

Second-half control: No, it wasn't perfect. Newcastle still gave up its 1-0 lead, and still had some West Brom pressure to contend with. But it was a pleasant surprise to see the 10 minutes or so after Sissoko's goal, when Alan Pardew's side uncharacteristically controlled the ball for an extended period of time to help kill off the match. And even when West Brom had the ball, it wasn't having much luck getting into dangerous positions late in the match - a vast improvement from something like the Spurs performance, where Newcastle had to thrash around desperately to stay afloat. While the result is the same either way, it's nice to see the club sparing its fans' nerves with a more comfortable and uneventful conclusion to the match.

Comments

[rob]

I don't know I remember a few set pieces outside the box that made the end of the game very nerve-wracking for me!

[Charles]

A fine win for the first ever Highbury Darby in Milwaukee (at the Highbury Pub)! Just planning for when Sunderland are relegated. And teaching my fellow Americans how to pronounce 'derby' ;-P

Go Toon!

[Jaeger]

looking ahead to swansea and Man U.... id be ok with putting some of the fringe players in for swansea... they're in bad form and have 3 games in 6 days... and then that way we'd save energy for ManU which is a big match.

Swansea
krul
debuchy--saylor-colo--santon/dummett
cabaye---anita---jonas/sissoko
HBA----cisse----gouffran/jonas

Man U
krul
debuchy--willo---MYM---santon
sissoko---cabaye---tiote---gouffy
-----shola---remy----