Keep The Faith

Defeat to Fulham in Newcastle on Saturday left us hanging on to our premiership survival with an away trip to Villa to come. A day of bad decisions from referee Howard Webb left us licking our wounds once again and hands the initiative to Hull and Sunderland who are the only clubs that have not secured survival outside the bottom three. The decision to send Bassong off was one you could not complain about but I thought the ref blew for the trip not the grappling, was the trip accidental? Mark Viduka's goal was a cracker, Schwarzer was well beaten not fouled as suggested by Howard webb. The goal scored by Fulham was clear offside but again the ref and his assistants seeing things differently to 50,000 Geordies. So what do we do from here? An away trip to Villa Park on Sunday is no easy task, they are now one point behind Everton who sit in the 5th spot. So they will be looking for a win against us as Everton travel to Fulham. We seriously need a win against villa a draw could be enough but it all really depends on what Hull & Sunderland can achieve. West Brom have just been defeated 0-2 to Liverpool and have been relegated. Sunderland have a home tie against Chelsea and Hull have a home tie v Manchester Utd, both Man U and Chelsea have big cup games to worry about and may rest influential players for the final games, hopefully they will do us justice and play a strong team but knowing our luck who know's what will happen. One thing is sure, the Geordie nation have got to pray we win and other results go for us. Don't give up hope, keep believing as I've said before we will not go down but its not going to be pretty.

Stoke City

So 0 points taken from Man U, Arsenal and Chelsea in our last games at st james and staring relegation in the face. We come up against Stoke City on saturday hoping again for a good performance and 3 points. If there was ever a time we needed 3 points since keegan joined as manager the first time its certainly now. Stoke have an impressive home record with only 3 defeats all season so we will have to be at our best. Shearer has come in now to save us from the drop and with a decent performance against chelsea we need to pick up a little against the smaller clubs as we looked a little tired on Saturday in the second half. Liverpool and Aston Villa now provide the most difficult fixtures on paper left this season and while West Brom and the Smoggies look to be doomed sunderland are looking increasingly likely to go down with difficult games against Chelsea, Everton and Man Utd to play and Hull who have been loosing games for a while now and only picking up draws here and there have a difficult task of Man Utd, Villa and Liverpool. So 3 point on saturday can really lift the spirits and give confidence to the players.
The doom mongers are all at us because we are a big club and they want us to go down but they have all been saying for years now we are not a big club and we dont have the best fans, well i hope to prove them all wrong by staying up first and then we will see.
so my prediction has now changed and i think we will finish above West Brom, Smoggies, Mackems and Hull yes i think the Mackems and the Smoggies are down with West Brom.
Lets hope the appointment of Alan Shearer will pay off and silence the critics again and then we can look forward to premiership football next season.

Arsenal (Home)

5:30 Saturday afternoon and the toon army will be either at st Jame's park or watching setanta sports. Newcastle will have Nolan, Guthrie and Habib Beye back in contention after injury and suspension. However Barton, viduka, xisco and nacho Gonzalez are still out. Arsenal beat hull 2-1 in the FA cup tie at the emirates stadium on tuesday without goalkeeper Alumina. The stopper for them in that game was Fabianski but is unknown if he was in due to injury. Lets hope we can get beye and nolan on the pitch as they are badly needed for this game. We have done well against Arsenal at st James' park in recent years and it would go a long way if we could at least get a point. Scuppering Arsenals plans for a top two finish and giving arsene whinger something to complain about would be very satisfying although the most important thing on sat is to go out with a positive attacking attitude. We could slip into 18, as the Smoggies face Stoke if either win and Portsmouth win at home to everton then we will. However a win would take us to 14 if Blackburn and the Mackems loose. So on Saturday were really looking at wins for Everton against Portsmouth, West Ham v Blackburn, Man U v Fulham, Chelsea v Spurs, Wigan v Hull, Man city v Mackems and west brom v Bolton and a draw for the Smoggies. Fingers crossed for tomorrow then that we end the day out the Relegation zone and sit on 30 points with 8 games to go. We can do it and i feel we will stay up but it's going to be very tight, you can see my prediction for the end of season table below. Howay the lads