Newcastle United: Chemnitzer Friendly Video Highlights

If you were unable to watch Newcastle's first pre-season friendly match against German third division side Chemnitzer FC yesterday evening, you're in luck, as a professionally put-together highlights video has appeared on youtube showing the best moments of the match which ended 1-0 to the home side thanks to a 9th minute goal from Anton Fink. Newcastle manager Alan Pardew took the opportunity of the early pre-season friendly to give some on-pitch time to a number of younger and fringe squad members including new signings Romain Amalfitano who made his first start and Gael Bigirimana, who came off the bench after just over an hour to make his own non-competitive debut. The game was little more than a training exercise for the Magpies, with the starting team looking very little like that which will no doubt line up against Tottenham Hotspur for the opening game of the season in August. Still, every opportunity to give some of the back-up squad players a chance to play ahead of a possibly very long new season, with four competitions to compete in is always going to be a positive experience. Alan Pardew certainly saw the positives to be taken from the game:

The opposition start their season next week €“ and that showed. I know they are a couple of levels below us. But they looked sharper.€ And Pardew preferred to reflect on the positives. I was still happy with some of the performances. Sammy did well up top and scored a perfectly good goal. We showed some neat touches and our technical stuff was fine. Offensively we€™re a little bit at sea. As you would expect the pitch was slow. We could not get the ball out of our feet and get it to our pace men. But it was a good work-out.

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