Fulham Away 11/12 Preview
Newcastle Head To Capital Looking To Make it 4 Wins On The Bounce
Newcastle travel to the capital this weekend to take on Martin Jol and his Fulham side looking to make it 4 wins in a row and keep our unbeaten start to 2012 going. After a couple of easy-ish home games this I think will be the first real test of us without the services of Tiote and Ba.
Fulham are a bit of a funny team. They have results like last week where they lost at struggling Blackburn who had 10 men for a large part of the game yet only a few weeks ago they came from behind with 2 late goals to beat Arsenal.
I think tomorrow will be a tough game, they will be smarting a bit after their result last week and they do have some very good effective players and are generally always well organised and tough to break down. I think the likes of Hangeland and Dempsey could cause us quite a few problems from set pieces unless we are really organised and defend them better than we have sometimes this season like at Norwich for example where admittedly we did have key defenders missing.
Thankfully since Williamson and Santon have come into that back four we have looked much more like the solid unit we were at the start of the season so I expect the defence to be unchanged. There is a slight doubt over Cabaye after the ankle injury that forced him off early against QPR and he would be a big big loss with Tiote obviously already missing. I would go as far to say as us getting any kind of result here is dependent on him being fit.
If he isn't then you are probably looking at the likes of Gosling or Abeid coming in to play with Guthrie in the centre or we could see a more radical change in formation like we saw against QPR after Cabaye went off where Ben Arfa came on and we went to more of a 4-3-3 / 4-2-3-1.
I definitely would like to see Ben Arfa get a start in this one, I think he has shown over the last few games that he is fit and willing to do a bit of graft and in a potentially tight away game like this he could just be the key to grabbing us a vital goal.
Irrespective of Cabaye being fit I would go 4-4-2 for this one, I think Shola and Best put in good shifts against QPR and it would be good to have 2 big lads up top against Hangeland and Co to keep them occupied and maybe see the likes of Jonas, Ben Arfa or whoever drift in and take advantage of that.
The 11 I would go with would be: Krul, Simpson, Coloccini, Williamson, Santon, Ben Arfa, Cabaye(Gosling if he's injured), Guthrie, Jonas, Best, Shola Ameobi.
Think this one could go either way. I think if we can keep it tight and frustrate them we could end up nicking this one. As ever I would take a point out of this but 3 certainly isn't out of the question but the performances will need to pick up a bit from the last 2 games.
A lot depends on which Fulham turns up and I suppose to a degree which Newcastle turns up. With a chance to really push and consolidate our top 6 place I hope the boys are up for this one.
What are people's thoughts on how this will go and what team the manager should play?
