Premier League Half Time Report: Newcastle vs. Liverpool (Part 2)
A minute later, Fernando Torres was caught in possession and a brilliant through ball was played into the path of Andy Carroll. However the towering striker just couldn't keep the ball at his feet and the ball ran past him.
With the Newcastle fans chanting "Get out of our club" to their new manager, the home side managed to sneak in a goal.
Joey Barton, the local bad boy at the club, floated in a ball toward Caroll after winning free-kick. The tall striker then nodded the ball into the path of the rushing Kevin Nolan and he managed to poke the ball beyond Pepe Reina to give
Newcastle the lead.
That goal was the eighth goal that Nolan had scored and it was just one shy of his previous all time best, which stands at nine goals in the 2003-2004 and the 2005-2006 season.
After the goal, Liverpool seemed to be all over the place and as a result Johnson managed to go into the book for a silly tackle on Gutierriez in the nineteenth minute.
Liverpool seemed to be showing signs of the fact that the team was missing their captain, Steven Gerrard to a great extent as there was very little or no creativity in the middle for the Red's. They seemed to be going along with the game
and were trying to attack Newcastle on the counter however were failing at creating any real chances for themselves.
On the twenty sixth minute, Torres managed to win a rather bizarre free-kick. The player turned to smash the ball on the volley, but somehow managed to tumble over. As a result the referee managed to give the away team the free-kick and
left everyone baffled by his decision. Torres took the resulting kick but managed to blast his effort straight into the wall and as a result another great opportunity was wasted by the team in the absence of Gerrard.
For Newcastle however Gutierrez and Jose Enrique seemed to be combining brilliantly down the left flank and were causing the Red's a whole heap of troubles. After some more brilliant play from the home side, a ball was laid off to Carroll
some twenty yards from the goal. The striker didn't think twice before unleashing a cannon ball towards Reina's goal. However the keeper somehow magically held onto that effort and another beautiful chance for Newcastle resulted in nothing.
Soon after that effort from Carroll, it seemed like Joe Cole would be brought on to try and mix things up for the away team. Cole was asked to take a jog to try and stay warm and it almost seemed like a new player was a part of the Liverpool
team, since Cole had been out of action since almost the very day that he joined the team.
Continued in Part 3
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