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Season 2009/20010 - Match 17

PRESTON NORTH END

0 v 1

NEWCASTLE UNITED

Post Match Comments:
Newcastle manager Chris Hughton said:
"We’ve lost Ryan Taylor in the warm-up with a calf problem and Andy (Carroll) was ill all day and had no right to start the game, but he’s a tough individual and wanted to play his part.

Danny (Simpson) going off at the time he did wasn’t ideal, but looking at the performance, I’m happy. It’s based on a clean sheet and Steve Harper, when called upon, showed a safe pair of hands.

Preston will probably feel a little hard done by, but we showed enough about us to get the clean sheet and nick the goal.

We’ve got nine clean sheets now. If you look at what we’ve got here, so far we have been able to come to tough places like Preston and do this.

You know you will be under pressure and you know will have to dig deep. That’s what we did. We didn’t show enough quality on the ball on a very good surface, but we showed enough in the end.

We’ve been fortunate enough to sustain the challenge at the top, but there’s a big group of teams who are below us. On the back of a couple of wins they can climb a couple of places. 

We just have to make sure we maintain the level that we have so far. We know that if we dropped that there are enough teams to put pressure on us.

This is our fourth win on the spin, and any back-to-back wins are massive. The more you can do it, the more you can pull away in the table. We’re very happy with the way it’s going but we know there is plenty of hard work ahead of us."

Newcastle goalscorer Kevin Nolan said:
"It makes your day when you see the fans celebrating like that. The fans are delighted to see us digging in and having a good proper go. I think they're enjoying seeing us win ugly because they haven't seen that for a while away from home. I hope they go back up the road now singing and cheering and have a few drinks on us."

Newcastle defender Danny Simpson added:
"It would have been easy for the fans to sit at home in the warm and watch on TV, But they are mad passionate about their team.

It's on telly, but to come here and support us like they did was great. It's even more satisfying, we've gave them the three points they were looking for.

It's feeling tight, but it was just a precaution that I came off. I hopefully stopped myself from doing any more damage to it. I'm a quick healer, so hopefully I will get in today and see how it is. I just felt it get tighter as we went on.

There was nothing that I felt go and hopefully I will be OK for Saturday."

Preston boss Alan Irvine commented:
"I don't think we should have lost the game, certainly. I thought that we matched Newcastle for many parts of the game. I felt as if we had some good chances to score ourselves.

But we didn't take our chances and Kevin Nolan finished his chance, which was maybe not even that much of a chance, very well. We have seen him do that many times before, he has got that kind of quality and it was something we were aware about before the game, and he has popped up again.

It can become a problem (not scoring goals). We have got some good finishers at the club and I expect them to score goals in the future without any question.

We didn't get them tonight and we will keep on working at it. We do a lot of work on our finishing and we will keep on doing that.

Michael (Tonge, newly signed on loan from Sheffield United) was very good and I was amazed that he could play 90 minutes when you see how little football he had played."

AUSSIE MAGS By Row 'S' Army