Aussie Mags - Newcastle Utd v Stoke City

What looked to be a walk in the park turned out to be a lesson in incompetent tactics.

It all started so brightly. All these dangerous long throws that Stoke were infamous for where causing no real treat and our midfield owned the centre of the park. With barely 10 mins gone a beautiful low pass through the Stoke defence by Gutierrez was latched onto by Owen, who neatly slotted it into the goal.

The Toon absorbed some opposition pressure, but we where all thinking if that's the best they can come up with we've got no problems here. Our confidence of gaining all three point grew when Geremi knock a long ball toward the corner flag, Martins pounced on it, ran into the box and drilled the ball across their goal. Again Owen was there to tap it in. 25 mins gone and two nil up. Happy times. At the end of the half Given needn't have turned up and Stoke were being run ragged.

Second half started with the worst tactical decision Kinnear's made. Ever. Yes, Guthrie may have picked up a knock, but to replace him with Taylor had us scratching our heads. Taylor moved into the right back position, no probs there, but Beye was pushed forwarded to be a right winger, resulting in two players that never really moved out of our half thus killing off all offensive play down that side. Gutierrez was asked to play in central midfield and promptly vanished from the game. This left only our left side to do any attacking, but they seemed unable to get the ball across to Zogs. Alarm bells started ringing. With our midfield shot to s*** the defence was left with no other option than to try long balling it up to Owen and Martins, both of who looked at least two foot shorter than their defence.

It was like watching a slow motion train crash, with it only being a matter of time before Stoke got their first goal, only Taylor's superb tackle stopping it from occurring earlier in the game. Geremi was subbed off for Cacapa, which lead to up roar. If there was a central defensive midfielder on the bench why wasn't Cacapa brought on a half time for Guthrie? Yes, Casapa ain't the best player in the world, but our players wouldn't be playing out of position. We could have built on our 2 goal lead and stuffed Stoke. Any way that didn't happen. What did happen was Newcastle suffered from the old ex-play blues and Abdoulaye Faye popped up in the dying minutes to give the visitors a share of the points, and never has a game for the taking been thrown away like this one.