[Lord Snooty]

Huddersfield Town v Newcastle United
The Sky Bet Championship
Saturday March 4th - 17:30 ko
at The John Smith's Stadium

Huddersfield Town welcome table topping Newcastle United to the John Smith's Stadium on Saturday, for another match televised live on national TV. This time we're back on Sky Sports after our rare appearance on the BBC.
It's back to the cut and thrust of the Championship now for the rest of the season and although the squad players have performed well, there will be many team changes taking place from the team narrowly beaten at the Etihad on Wednesday night.

Newcastle went top of the league on Tuesday night with a late comeback to win at Brighton. One-nil down with nine minutes to go they equalised with the freakiest of goals from Mohamed Diame and then a more well worked goal to win it in the 89th minute from sub Ayoze Perez.




A brief history of Newcastle United: formed in the 1890s when Newcastle East End and Newcastle West End merged to become Newcastle United, gained entry to the Football League in 1893. They won promotion to the 1st division in 1898.
In the years before the 1st World war, they won the league title three times (not in a row obviously) and won the FA Cup in 1910, beating Barnsley in the final.
After the war, they won the Cup again, beating Aston Villa in 1924. And in 1927, they were the team who stopped Town winning a 4th consecutive league title, beating us in the table by 5 points. Like us, they have never won it since.
They won the Cup again in 1932, beating Arsenal, but by the end of the decade, as the next war began, they had been relegated and were near the foot of the 2nd division.
After the war, they won the Cup three more times, beating Blackpool in 1951, Arsenal in 1952, and Manchester City in 1955.
The 1960s saw them relegated again, promoted again and by the end of the decade they were playing in Europe, winning the club's last major trophy to date when the won the Inter City Fairs Cup (this was what eventually transformed into the modern day Europa League) in 1969.
Since then they've had ups and downs in the league. Nothing significant won. They've had plenty of big names up there, come close to the Premier League title under Kevin Keegan, but really, for a one club city the size of Newcastle, their appalling record is second only to the failures of that other massive one club city, Leeds.

Head to Head



Newcastle lead in the overall head to head with 25 wins to Town's 21, with 15 draws.

The image of the match programme above, is from the last time we beat Newcastle at home. It was on the 28th of December 1963 and we won 3-0 in a 2nd division match with Derek Stokes, Kevin Lewis and Chris Balderstone scoring.

Earlier this season, we beat them at their place 2-1, surprisingly to a lot of people who had no idea what we were about. They know now! Goals that day back in August were from Nahki Wells and Jack Payne. Dwight Gayle got their spawny goal, a rebound from his penalty which Danny Ward had saved.

There was a classic in the League Cup at Sid James' Park in 2009. Town were 3-1 up early in the second half, with two goals from Theo Robinson and one from Jordan Rhodes. But unfortunately we couldn't hold out and ended up losing 4-3.

Back in 1984, Newcastle came to Leeds Road needing a point to win promotion back to the 1st division. A crowd of 25,101 turned up to see the game, most of them geordies, and Town stormed into an early 2-0 lead with both goals coming from Graham Cooper. However, Newcastle came back to draw the match, giving them the point they needed.

Town v Newcastle 1984

So what's new at the Sid James' Park? 

Managed nowadays by Rafael Benítez, a fat Spanish lad who once managed Liverpool.

Notable players in their squad:- the one I'm looking forward to seeing is Jonjo Shelvey and the much anticipated Battle of the Baldies between him and our Aussie ace, Aaron Mooy. He seems to have been around for ages, but is still ony 24, having made his Charlton debut as a 16 year old. Earlier he'd been with Arsenal and West Ham's youth teams, but went to the Valley in 2008, before his big money move to Liverpool in 2010. He got sent out on loan from there to Blackpool, where he scored a hattrick against Leeds at Bellend Road in a 5-0 win for the Tangerines.
Back at Liverpool, he scored his first Premier League goal, a spectacular 30 yarder in a 4-1 win over Chelsea. Transferred to Swansea in 2013, his time there was riddled with bad discipline, probably due to the manager at the time being petulant ponce, Garry Monk.
He was signed for Newcastle in January 2016 by Steve McLaren, but was once more involved in controversy. He received a 5 game ban for racially abusing an opponent.
He's been capped 6 times for England, making his debut against San Marino.

They have other notable players in their squad, most of them internationals, all of them highly paid, but I can't be arsed talking about them.




Line up for match v Brighton:

26 Darlow
22 Yedlin
6 Lascelles
2 Clark
3 Dummett
30 Atsu
12 Shelvey
4 Colback
11 Ritchie
15 Diamé
20 Gouffran

Substitutes
5 Hanley
8 Anita
17 Pérez
21 Elliot
27 Gámez
33 Murphy
45 Mitrovic



Celebrity Newcastle Supporters:

Ant n Dec, Gabby Logan, Sting, Brian Johnson of AC/DC, Tony Blair, Bryan Ferry, Robson Green will all make a good list of people to name in a Norwegian commentator style rant at the end of the game.

But my favourite geordie is Jimmy Nail (born James Michael Aloysius Bradford) his dad was a professional footballer and was on Town's books for a time but never made a first XI appearance. Here he is as Oz in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. A phrase our German boys will be saying to the Spanish waiter after the match.




Club Connections:

Malcolm Brown; a proper Town legend with a stat that will never be beaten in this modern game. He made an amazing 259 consecutive starts for Town, in all competitions, between September 1978 and May 1983. He was a key member of two Town promotion sides, a barnstorming right back, flying up the right wing at Leeds Road in conjunction with Brian Stanton, reminiscent of Tommy Smith and Elias Kachunga today.
His run of consecutive appearances came to an end when he was transferred to Newcastle United, where ironically he was injured in pre season and missed the entire first season of his Tyneside life. He did however go on to make 39 appearances for Newcastle before returning to Leeds Road for what turned out to be some of the worst times at Leeds Road after Mick Buxton got sacked.
He left for Rochdale and then Stockport before retiring. In his time at Town he also made the PFA Team of the Year 4 times.

Peter Jackson; played for Newcastle from 1986 to 1988, just as Malcolm Brown was returning to Huddersfield. This was in the 1st division (before the Premier League was invented) and the club finished in 17th and 9th during his two seasons. Earlier he had been captain of Bradford City and was skipper the day they were presented with the 3rd division champions trophy, a day which turned to disaster as the Valley Parade fire killed 56 people.
After his stint at Newcastle he returned to Bradford, but was soon transferred to the greatest club on Earth when Eoin Hand signed him for Town. He became club captain, which would've reached a pinnacle at Wembley for the Autoglass Trophy Final in 1994, only for Neil Warnock to leave him on the bench. The following season he left for Chester and then to Halifax, from where he left to become Town manager after Brian Horton got the boot.
Town had one foot in the relegation grave at the time he signed on, but by the end of the season he had pulled off what became known as The Great Escape.
Controversially sacked by Barry Rubery to make way for Steve Bruce, Jacko returned for another four seasons in charge after we went into administration. He took us up in his first season, beating Mansfield in the Play Off Final at Cardiff.

Steve Harper; was a brilliant goalkeeper, but completely wasted his talent by staying at Newcastle. He was there for twenty years but only made 157 appearances for them. He played back up keeper to much lesser talented keepers like Pavel Srníček, Shaka Hislop and Shay Given in his time there, but it was his loan spell at Huddersfield in 1997/98 that was the outstanding time of his long career. Signed by Jacko in the Great Escape season, he played a huge part in that and is now often mentioned as one of Town's best keepers of the modern era.
He went back to his home club at the end of the season and soon made his Newcastle debut. New manager Ruud Gullit made him first choice over Given and he played in the 1999 FA Cup Final (lost 0-2 to Man Utd), but after Gullit got the bullet, Harper was back on the bench.
He remained a benchwarmer until Given was transferred to Man City in 2009 and finally became first choice at the age of 33.
In 2011 he went on loan to Brighton and then in 2013 he finally ended a 20 year career at Newcastle by signing for Hull City. Then a year as goalkeeping cover at Sunderland, not making any appearances before being released last summer.
So that was the end of his playing career. Where is he now? Back at Sid James' Park working as Academy Goalkeeping coach.

I should've stayed at Huddersfield

Lee Clark; currently managing the Huddersfield Town Player's Retirement Home, situated on Gigg Lane in Bury.
He had 7 years as a player at Newcastle in the 90s, in which time they finished as Premier League runners up twice. He's best remembered in these parts though as the manager who saw us to a record unbeaten run of league matches, but couldn't quite get us promoted. Despite critics quoting the number of drawn matches in that run, his overall win percentage as Town manager was a reasonable 48.9%.

Recent Form: Town are 3rd in the league with 65 points and Newcastle are 1st with 73.

Last 6 matches:

Man City 5-1 Town (FA Cup)
Barnsley 1-1 Town
Town 1-0 Reading
Town 0-0 Man City (FA Cup)
Rotherham 2-3 Town
QPR 1-2 Town

Brighton 1-2 Newcastle
Newcastle 2-2 Bristol C
Newcastle 2-0 Villa
Norwich 2-2 Newcastle
Wolves 0-1 Newcastle
Newcastle 1-0 Derby

Glum looking bar codes

[EastLondonTerrier]

Great thread as always Snoots. Massive massive game this Saturday. Win and we are right back in the automatic promotion race. Lose, and I think most fans would probably concede our place in the play-offs. With our first team rested, they should be pumped and right up for this. We have the capacity to hurt them. Darlow is far from secure in goal and we've already seen their calamatious tendency for mistakes at the back. Hopefully hoggy is fit to play with Mooy to boss Shelvey and Nakhi is fully fit too although Quaner has been a great deputy, just needs more time to bed in and get his shooting range. No idea about a prediction.

[jjamez]

should be back to full strength on saturday with the only question marks on schindler and wells and how long they are able to play.

newcastles defence has looked shakey at times when it has been attacked and when it has had to deal with a bigger man up top. there could be scope to start collin again and bring wells on for the last 30 but it could go vice versa with wells tiring them and then big col

[WakeyTerrier]

No doubt that Hogg will be fit, I think that's why thy fetched him on last night just get some minutes under the belt I reckon Nahki will be back as well with a 60/70minute appearance.
Strangely and rather a worry, when I came out of the Emptyhad last night one of the first things I said to Mitzi was...we'll win on Saturday

You have been warned!

[SHEP_HTAFC]

Fantastic thread again Snoots
Well apart from Wakey, most of us find this game really hard to predict. Me too.
I just worry when you see some of the players in that Newcastle team. Some are Prem quality.
I think I would take a draw right now...which would probably scupper our chances of auto promotion.

I'd rather go up via the play offs anyway!!!

[Lord Snooty]

Shove them rotten play offs. I want automatic. Especially if it's Leeds or Wendy at Wembley.
The play offs are great to watch, if you're neutral. They're absolute hell if you're involved. I hated every minute of the last Wembley match, even when we won it was more a sense of relief than celebration.

[Lord Snooty]

Dwight Gayle passed fit for the Mags.

[theo_luddite]

Why the heck aye man, a bonny thread that m'lud Looking forward to a cracking game and hopefully 3 points but I'll settle for 1. We've plenty more chances to get 3 points in games after this one.

[Lord Snooty]

Scanz and Schinz back in the squad. Only Kasey Palmer missing now.

[theo_luddite]

Couple of Wolves fans turned up in the local. Reckon our defeat at Citeh was embarrassing. Reminded them that spending the money they have to be just above the relegation places is what is really embarrassing. Scuttled off to a quiet corner.