Newcastle United v Manchester City – December 15th, 2012 at 12:45 at St James’ Park
The weekend’s early game sees The Magpies host the current English Champions at St James’ Park. Newcastle had less of a rest period with their last game being on Monday night when they travelled to London. At this stage of last season, Newcastle has picked up 26 points whereas this season they have only picked up 17 points so far. The Geordies have a tough set of Christmas fixtures coming up playing Manchester United, Arsenal and Everton – all in one week and will need to dig deep in order to gain additional points. Manchester City on will need to recover from last week’s 3:2 defeat against local rivals Manchester United. City faces a much easier set of fixtures over Christmas, travelling to Swansea and Norwich before hosting Stoke. A great chance for City to earn valuable points and to close the gap to Manchester United. Manchester City has won the 5 past encounters against Newcastle and it’ll take something special from The Magpies to change that.
QPR v Fulham – December 15th, 2012 at 15:00 at Loftus Road
The recent form of these two teams is exactly identical, both teams losing 3 and drawing 2. This is the perfect opportunity for either team to change that and pick up 3 points. QPR are still in search for their first win of the season and they’ve looked a better team under the management of Harry Redknapp. People generally say and records have proven it, the team bottom of the table at Christmas eventually ends up being one of the relegated teams. With the money the owners have pumped into QPR in order to compete, that is the last thing they want to happen. They need to start picking up points. Luckily for QPR, the bottom of the table is fairly tight and if they can put together a string of decent results, it will vault them right up the table. Fulham is also currently going through a rough patch 13th in the table. However, the past 6 fixtures between these two teams have seen Fulham win 5 of them and a draw being the other result. The peculiar thing about those past 6 games is QPR haven’t managed to score past Fulham, something they will need to do when they meet on the 15th December.
West Brom v West Ham – December 16th, 2012 at 16:00 at The Hawthorns
One half of Super Sunday involves the battle of the ‘Wests’ at Hawthorne Road where high flyers West Brom welcome Premier League new boys West Ham. West Brom hit a slight speed bump at the minute losing two on the trot after previously winning 4 games in a row. They will want to get back on track with another 3 points to keep their place at the top end of the table. They’re certainly no strangers to the Premier League, but they’re this year’s new boys and West Ham are definitely making the most of it, battling it out in the top half of the table and even defeating European Champions Chelsea 3-1. The last 3 meetings of this pair have ended in draws and once again they are both evenly matched so it will be another tough affair.
Reading v Arsenal – December 17th, 2012 at 20:00 at The Madjeski Stadium
Monday night football the The Madjeski Stadium, when Arsenal travel to play Reading FC. Not too long ago these two teams met in the League Cup, when there was a massive 12 goals scored in one of the most dramatic games of the seasonso far. The whole Reading camp would have been livid after squandering a 4 goal lead and eventually being knocked out of the cup. If they are lucky to get anything near that kind of lead again, they will be determined not to make the same mistake again. Head to head, Arsenal have been triumphant in their past 5 meetings with Reading and if they want to be challenging for the title, they need to be winning these kind of games. Although everyone knows that there is no easy game in the Premier League and it’s still as unpredictable as ever so don’t write off Reading just yet.
