Newcastle 2 Aston Villa 1: ASTON VILLA became the first league team to suffer defeat by "Double Demba". After falling behind to Demba Ba's opener, Alex McLeish's side travelled home cursing the spectacular manner in which Papiss Demba Cisse had marked his Newcastle United debut with a winner.
It left Alan Pardew’s side set fair for Europe but Aston Villa again licking their wounds. Despite a decent first-half display, not to mention an impressively inventive performance from Robbie Keane, this latest setback in an underwhelming slog of a season featured Stephen Ireland becoming embroiled in apparently unseemly backchat with McLeish.
After being censured for failing to cut out the Danny Guthrie cross which led to the first goal, Ireland answered his manager back and was withdrawn at half-time. McLeish maintained the two events were unrelated.
Home fans did not have to wait long for their first sight of Cisse. When Leon Best hobbled off with a knee injury before the quarter-hour the team’s €11 million signing from Freiburg joined his Senegal international attacking partner, Ba, up front. Presumably anxious not to be upstaged by the new boy, Ba scored his 16th league goal of the season. When Richard Dunne’s header failed to clear Guthrie’s left-wing cross, Ryan Taylor unleashed a shot which Stephen Warnock made a studs-up attempt to block. The ball rebounded off the left back into the path of Ba, who squeezed a shot beyond Shay Given’s reach.
Taylor’s right shin ended up as collateral damage after feeling the force of Warnock’s studs. Taylor was carried off with an oxygen mask clamped to his face before being taken to hospital for X-rays which revealed no fracture.
Along with Given and Ireland – a loanee here last season – Charles N’Zogbia was returning to his former club. The latter scorched past Gabriel Obertan en route to the byline, from where he hit a low cross in Keane’s direction. With Tim Krul stranded Keane dispatched his 150th English league goal into the net.
Newcastle should have regained the lead at the end of an attack sparked by David Santon and concluding with Guthrie supplying Cisse with a highly inviting cross. Unfortunately he proved unequal to it, heading over Given’s bar.
Redemption swiftly followed. As Jonas Gutierrez accelerated down the left wing Cisse eased his way between Warnock and Dunne to meet Gutierrez’s cross with a controlling touch before lashing the ball into the top corner.
Although Krul had to save bravely at the feet of Emile Heskey, Newcastle held on.
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