Peter Crouch has been talking about Newcastle United.
The former Liverpool and England striker discussing Eddie Howe and his team now seven months into the season.
Newcastle United set to play Manchester City, an 8pm kick-off this Saturday night.
Ahead of this FA Cup match, Peter Crouch declaring: “It’s been a strange season for Newcastle. You’d have thought they’d really kick on after last season, but some of the transfers from the summer haven’t really worked out. The Man U result on Wednesday felt like the kind of thing they needed though. Scoring in the last minute to win like that is always great too. It’ll have everyone on a high going into this game.”
Wednesday night was class.
Not just the fact that Newcastle United won, it was how they won.
United playing the majority of the match with 10 men against Man U and having to overcome an appalling set of match officials, then despite a man down, Eddie Howe’s team still the better side in the second half.
Then nothing better than a last minute winner!
Peter Crouch adding: “And with the possible squad rotation a factor, it could give Newcastle some hope under the bright lights at St James’ Park of making the quarter finals. Still, Man City have such a strong squad I have to lean to them in 90 minutes if I’m picking a winner. They won there in the league recently and won both legs of the Carabao Cup semi-final too, so they’ve shown they can handle the atmosphere and everything Newcastle have thrown at them so far this season. Newcastle have scored in their last 11 games, two of which were against City, so they can definitely make a game of it , but I’d fancy a 2-1 win for the visitors in the end.”
Peter Crouch with Paul Merson levels of research there, as he strays from the reality.
Newcastle United didn’t lose to Man City in November in the Premier League, United actually won 2-1 and it should have been a bigger winning margin.
The fine margins and luck went Manchester City’s way in January on Tyneside when winning in the Carabao Cup.
However, before that, the previous five games between the two teams at St James’ Park had seen Eddie Howe and his team win two and draw two, only losing one (and that was only deep in added time).
Peter Crouch going on to say: “Both of these sides have huge Champions League games in midweek coming up, and they both played on Wednesday night last week too. That’s going to have an impact on this fifth round FA Cup tie, but they still have to go strong for this game even if they’re taking on Barcelona and Real Madrid a few days later.”
Some massive games these next couple of weeks and hopefully Peter Crouch proved wrong about tonight, as wrong as he was with his claim of what the result was here in November when the two teams met at SJP.