Matchday 19 – Quick Round Up

Match Day 19 Round Up

Thursday 30th December

Burnley 1-3 Newcastle United

Newcastle got off to a flyer, which completely destroyed Scott Parker’s ‘defend, defend, defend’ tactical plan with just over a minute gone. When Burnley were two down, they did get into the game, but they were still poor and were not helped by losing their best defender, Esteve. This is not a good Newcastle side right now, they have physicality and kick anything they feel they can get away with, but the quality in their play is very lacking, but they were head and shoulders better than the Clarets. Burnley were beaten physically and technically, which just tells you how bad they are.

Starmen:
Laurent – scored a cracker and came close to getting a second.
Joelinton – scored the opener with a lovely finish.
Guimaraes – is the beating heart of the Toon right now, worked hard and added the third goal to kill the game off in injury time.

Flops:
Walker – got turned inside out by Gordon for the first goal.
Dubravka – flapped at things and looked unsettled against his former club.
Tchaouna – offered little but lots of running around aimlessly.

Chelsea 2-2 Bournemouth

A game that will probably be better remembered for being the final match for the Blues under Maresca, who failed to even turn up for the post-match press conference, claiming to be ill. Chelsea looked flat and struggled to deal with Bournemouth’s attacking play, in fact it could be said that both of their goals came against the run of play. Though a lot of the problems were created by themselves with poor defending, the first Sanchez parried straight back to Brooks, rather than pushing it to the side, the second was flicked on by a Chelsea head to Kluivert. With Caicedo picking up an early booking, and putting himself in danger of a second not long afterwards, the Chelsea midfield lost its bite. Fernandez, despite scoring a good goal, offered little help to Caicedo in breaking up play. The Cherries have been on a poor run and were missing their midfield battlers, but looked to have no lack of confidence and gave a really good account of themselves.

Starmen:
Estevao – looks a real future star and you have to wonder why he has not been given more time on the pitch this season.
Truffert – looks to be growing into the left-back role.

Flops:
Acheampong – found himself overrun at times but he is not really a full-back.
Fofana – no positional sense.
Garnacho – always the same, no intelligence to his play.
Scott/Tavernier – needed a…