Newcastle Team News: Armstrong Leads THIRD String Against City

That's not even the second best line-up Pardew could have picked!

By Simon Gallagher /

Just when you think those accusations that the club don't want to win any cup games, Newcastle have just announced their team to play Man City in the League Cup, with a quarter final at stake. This could have been a publicity win for the club, with City likely to take it easy ahead of this weekend's Manchester derby, so a statement of intent would have been nice. And that's precisely what we got, but not in the way anyone could have expected. Instead of playing the strongest possible team, or even the second strongest team, Newcastle have effectively picked the third strongest team, calling up reserves Mehdi Abeid and Adam Armstrong. They're in the first team along with Ryan Taylor, who hasn't played for two years, Rolando Aarons who can't be anywhere near match fit after his own injury, and Paul Dummett. That last one wouldn't have been so bad if he wasn't playing centre-back. Considering his shocking positional sense, this could be a disaster, but then stranger things have happened, haven't they? HAVEN'T THEY?! Here's the starting eleven: Elliot; Janmaat, Coloccini (c), Dummett, Haïdara; R.Taylor, Abeid, Colback; Obertan, Armstrong, Aarons. So, that's Man City - who surprisingly fielded a strong first eleven (they're billionaires, they could field four teams capable of beating this Newcastle side) - through to the quarter finals then. Let's just leave it to Paddy Power shall we: https://twitter.com/paddypower/status/527534028304711680