The Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew has said that he is extremely happy with the performance of his players following the 1-1 draw with the Greek club Atromitos in the Europa league. Newcastle United were back in the European competition after a gap of more than five years. However, the manager Alan Pardew decided to leave out a number of the high profile players like Fabricio Coloccini and Demba Ba for this match. Newcastle United were playing in the league once again in less than 48 hours after the match, which made a crucial difference to his selection.
As a result, the Newcastle United team featured a number of new players. Despite this, they were able to hold on to a 1-1 draw away from home, which was extremely good according to the manager Alan Pardew. Only the likes of James Perch and Papiss Cisse were the stars included in the squad. This was a much changed Newcastle United team from the one that defeated Tottenham 2-1 during the weekend. Newcastle will be making the difficult trip to the European champions Chelsea in this weekend. Newcastle managed a stunning 2-0 victory in this fixture last season, but they will be facing a different Chelsea this time around.
“We go home with some new experience, and certainly for some of our players because they won’t get that time on the ball they had tonight in a Premier League game. Sometimes you can be uncomfortable with time, trust me. I have been there as a player, so I know. You pick out the wrong pass and you can lose confidence. But tonight, everybody used the ball well. We could have had a little bit more devil in our game, but otherwise I was really happy,” said Alan Pardew after the match.