Your Weekly Football Round-Up - GW 26
Here is your Weekly Football Round-up.
FA Cup Fourth-Round Replays
Last week saw the return of the FA Cup for all of the fourth round replays - one of which was League One club Oxford United vs Newcastle United of the Premier League.
On paper, this probably didn’t sound like the most exciting of fixtures considering the first leg finished 0-0, but in reality, little did we know that it would be full of goals and late drama.
At half time, Newcastle seemed to be running away with the game, at the Kassam Stadium, as they were comfortably leading 2-0 thanks to goals from Sean Longstaff and Joelinton.
Under-fire Newcastle Striker Joelinton scored his third goal for the Tyneside club.
However, just as the Magpies were on their way to victory, Oxford midfielder Liam Kelly tucked away a free kick from 20 yards out to give The U’s, if any, the slightest bit of hope that they could salvage something from the game.
With the support of their home fans, Oxford achieved just that as the young 21 year old midfielder Nathan Holland, currently on loan from West Ham, scored the equaliser in the 94th minute with a volley that went beyond goalkeeper Karl Darlow.
After 90 minutes, the score at full time was 2-2 meaning that there would be another 30 minutes of extra time to play to see who could go on all the way and win it.
There seemed to be nothing to separate the two sides with the match looking highly likely to go to penalties; that was until the Newcastle winger Allan Saint-Maximin found a late winner for the Magpies just four minutes from the end with a beautifully worked individual goal that found itself fired into the top corner.
Manager Steve Bruce described this victory as a very ‘’significant’’ moment for the club as they booked their place in the fifth round for the first time in 14 years.
Allan Saint-Maximin scored a sensational solo goal to book Newcastle’s place in the fifth round of the FA Cup.
Liverpool vs Shrewsbury Town
Another game that made the headlines was the second leg between Liverpool and Shrewsbury.
The replay of this match was at Anfield and with all of the usual senior first team being on a Winter break, Jurgen Klopp told the media that it would be the youth side being put out for this fixture, with under 23’s coach Neil Critchley taking full charge.
Whilst the game was still deadlocked at 0-0, Shrews midfielder Shaun Whalley thought that he had given his team the lead away from home with his header; however this was shortly taken away as VAR ruled the goal out for offside play in the build up to the goal.
Liverpool were definitely the more dominant side in the second half and even though there was many chances missed, they finally managed to convert after a cross from the Reds right back Neco Williams took a huge deflection off Shrewsbury defender Williams, who headed it back past his own keeper to allow Liverpool to go 1 up with 15 minutes remaining.
The Premier League leaders were able to hang on and seal their victory, setting up a fifth round clash away at Stamford Bridge to play Chelsea.
This was Liverpool’s youngest ever starting line-up, with the teenagers receiving a standing ovation from The Kop after their hard fought win.
Due to first team players needing rest over the Winter Break, Liverpool deployed their youngest ever team against Shrewsbury.
Championship
The stand out result from the Championship action during the weekend was undeniably the clash between Nottingham Forest and Leeds.
As it stood going into the game, Forest were still firmly in the mix of the play off places, but this was their real opportunity to damage second place Leeds’ hopes of gaining automatic promotion to the Premier League this season.
This proved to be a highly entertaining and end to end match at the City Ground, with Sammy Ameobi opening the scoring for the hosts just past the half hour mark.
Even though it was United who saw 70% of the ball throughout the game, it was the Reds who always seemed to look the more lively and threatening on the counter attack.
Leeds were constantly knocking on the door for that equaliser, but it was Forest striker Tyler Walker who got the second of the game with a tap in deep into stoppage time, to ensure that it was the home team taking away all three points.
There is now just one point that separates the two teams… but who will achieve promotion?
Scorer of Forest’s second goal, Tyler Walker, was recalled from his loan at Lincoln City earlier this year - after scoring an impressive 14 goals in 29 appearances for The Imps.
Fixture Change
The Premier League match between Manchester City and West Ham that was due to take place on Sunday, February 9th, had to be postponed because of the adverse weather conditions thanks to Storm Ciara.
This fixture has now been officially re-arranged and will take place at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday, February 19th with a 7.30pm GMT kick off.
This means that the game will now take place on the same night as some of the opening Champions League last 16 fixtures.
Storm Ciara caused Manchester City vs West Ham United to be postponed, due to dangerous weather conditions.
Article by: Chloe Chadwick
Edited by: Samuel Slaney
Thumbnail by: Unsplash/Nathan Rogers
Images from: Getty Images & Footy Renders