Newcastle United suffered an embarrassing defeat on their US tour as they lost 1-0 to Orlando City, a team who play in the third tier of the US pyramid in a country where football isn’t the preferred sport.
Newcastle lacked any creative edge with the absences of Hatem Ben Arfa, Yohan Cabaye and Joey Barton, with Sylvain Marveaux missing from the bench. With such creative players missing, even Tiote’s non-stop ethic wasn’t enough to get the ball beyond the Orlando back-line, and even in the rare occurrence in which the ball was threaded through, Best and Lovenkrands squandered the ball haplessly.
The goal came in the 75th minute from Trinidad international midfielder Kevin Molino who tapped in from close range. Molino was due to meet up with his u-23 international team-mates for an Olympic games qualifying match, but due to a mis-understanding, he missed his flight and was subsequently stayed in Orlando.
The score-line could have been more favourable towards Orlando were it no for Fraser Forster in the Newcastle goal who pulled off a string of success saves despite the constant bombardment of streamers which were hurtled his away by the US fans.
Newcastle also added to their growing injury list as Ryan Taylor was withdrawn midway through the first half and was replaced by Jose Enrique. Alan Pardew, who named only 6 substitutes, 4 of which were outfield players as Taylor joins Hatem Ben Arfa, Danny Guthrie and Shane Ferguson on the Newcastle injury table.
The game was a good fitness building exercise, but with Newcastle yet to have a striker score in any of the pre-season fixtures, the need for a new striker at St. James’ Park before the visit of Arsenal is apparent.
howaythetoonarmy 
nice one Josh, great report