Sam Allardyce has gathered all his available Newcastle United players to a special meeting yesterday partly to explain Joey Barton’s absence and the most important thing it was also intended to remind the squad of their manager’s priorities.
The Guardian reporting today’s match have been said as the one that some of United squad especially looking forward to, but Allardyce has told them about his concerned that too many of them raise their games for glamour fixtures only to underachieve against more ordinary opposition.
“The biggest games for us, the ones we should concentrate the most for, are the Derbys, the Wigans. It’s about making sure we have a peak perfomance for the winnable matches. We could play out of our skins at Stamford Bridge but if Chelsea hit top form as well, we still might not get anything.” Said Allardyce.
Honestly, I can not believe myself on how the lads performance have been dropped since the Arsenal’s draw at home. Yesterday, Big Sam said that the lads must also focus on the winnable games rather than playing all out to get a performance against the big boys.
“We did against Arsenal and I think we’ll do the same against Chelsea,” Allardyce explained. “But we only drew against Arsenal and a performance like that against just about everyone else would have won us three points.”
Some opinions from the press accused that Newcastle is one game removed from a crisis but Allardyce insisted: “There is no crisis. People outside try to make it a crisis but we have to stay strong and not let those influences affect us.”
If talking about the crisis, our opponent today is also having a crisis if we can say like that. They will be without their skipper John Terry because of foot injury, Frank Lampard who is limped off from their last game for a thigh injury, striker Didier Drogba (knee) and French midfielder Claude Makelele (ear).
They will also missing their defensive duo, Ashley Cole and Ricardo Carvalho both red-carded against Aston Villa. And when the two team who are on crisis meet each other, I predicted a draw for today’s fixture.