Preview: Newcastle v. Chelsea

Fantastic match for this weekend. This match would be much more interesting than you had originally thought. Alan Shearer returns to Newcastle—and we’re playing at St.James Park.

Newcastle are fighting against relegation. The barcodes must be really charged up because Shearer is there. It could be a sell out crowd. It could be a very noisy one too. So this may not quite be a regular Newcastle v. Chelsea that you would expect to see.

This Newcastle team has good potential. They have very good individual players who don’t click as a team. They just needs a decent manager to be a top half team.

Chelsea are fresh from a defeat at White Hart Lane. After a fantastic start to Guus Hiddink’s short Chelsea career, a defeat in the last match has kind of brought us back down to earth. When Hiddink talks he does use the word "title" every now and then.

He thinks we can still talk about the title. I think so too. There are just eight matches to go and we are four points down and played a match more. The goal difference is not much of a concern and it can go anyway in the next eight matches.

I too talk about this thing called "title". All we need a string of three bad matches for Man Utd and Liverpool and a string of three good matches for Chelsea. I don’t want to put the probability of this happening in terms of odds. That would put me down.

If Guus learnt anything from the last match, he must not play Ballack. I know Ballack is a great player, and I love him too. I’ve got a Ballack home jersey myself. But if he is playing as poor as he did in the last few matches, it’s very appropriate to bench him.

He has been our weakest link in the midfield like Deco was a few weeks back (and then he got injured). The midfield must have Lampard, Essien, Mikel and Quaresma as a wide man.

Didier Drogba won’t play. That’s fine. If the only matches he’s going to play this season are the two legs against Liverpool, I’ll be fine. We’ll save him to annihilate Liverpool. Nicolas Anelka is reported as an unsure starter for today but Hiddink claims that he is fit to play. Bosingwa is not available. Mancienne gets another chance to prove that he can start ahead of Bosingwa by form and merit and I’m sure he’ll prove it again.

Meanwhile, Chelsea are rumoured to be after Maicon, Van Der Vaart and Yuri Zhirkov. I hope all this is true. We need someone like Maicon, someone like Van Der Vaart and someone like Zhirkov. So if these three are available and if we’re making a bid, that’d be lovely.

Hiddink has said that he has nothing to do with summer transfers because he is not staying beyond summer and that the new transfers are the responsibility of his successor. When TSO was sacked, someone had to be appointed immediately in the middle of a season.

There was no time. Grant was appointed. Then Grant was sacked in mid-May and Scolari was appointed in early June. And then, Scolari was sacked in February and the new manager needs to be appointed only in May or June. That’s a lot of time to take a good decision. For once, Roman has the luxury of time. I hope he uses that well enough.

Coming back to the match, I think we’re in for 1-2 win for Chelsea. It’s been some time since Lampard scored, right?