It was Newcastle who came closest to scoring in the closing stages, however, with Coloccini heading over the bar after Wijnaldum flicked on Florian Thauvin’s free-kick. “I’m always consistent in saying we can get better and be better and we’re making progress but the turnaround is slow”.
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Newcastle are without as many as twelve senior players, with Curtis Good, Emanuelle Riviere, Tim Krul, Steven Taylor, Karl Darlow, Gabriel Obertan, Jack Colback, Rolando Aarons, Rob Elliot, Daryl Janmaat, Kevin Mbabu and Massadio Haidara all definitely out of the match with injury.
McClaren continues to use makeshift lineups as he deals with injuries throughout the squad, but he may be able to call on Siem De Jong after the Swiss midfielder was able to play a full 90 minutes for Newcastle’s U-21 squad in their 2-0 victory over their counterparts from Aston Villa. He’s the man in goal at the moment, and we want to wrap him in cotton wool and try to get him out for the next game. Fergie’s great strength was building a core of great players, surrounding them with more disposable star turns and ruthlessly disposing of nearly everyone before they declined. He’s been good around the place, experienced and a good talker.
A seasoned Newcastle United-watcher knows that the only real competition that we’re in every year is the perennial battle for 40 points and safety.
For his part, Elliot felt the Bournemouth game was one of the “toughest” of his career.
There was no change to the direction of traffic in the second half, with Matt Ritchie seeing a header tipped over by Elliot within seconds of the restart before Stanislas blazed over from Ritchie’s cross.
Bournemouth lacked for ideas and could not conjure an equaliser during the closing stages, meaning Howe’s men have now taken a solitary point from their past six Premier League outings.
“The amount of crosses, shots, blocks, that were coming into our box – (it was) a bit like the Alamo”.
“We have strong characters in this team”.
“We have to take that from it, there are ways to lose and there have been disappointments this season when we have not performed”, said Howe. They are winless in their last five league games, which include heavy defeats to Manchester City and Tottenham, as they conceded five goals in both matches. Elliot, who has three caps for Ireland, gave a young Newcastle fan his gloves.
“If you ask the doctor, then I probably wasn’t playing last week either”.
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“If it was easy as that, I would call up Messi and Ronaldo tomorrow, go up front and score 50 goals this season”. It wasn’t too bad.
