A positive display and comfortable 3-0 victory against West Ham seemed to light the fuse. Narrow and hard-fought wins against Swansea City and Stoke City followed. All of a sudden Newcastle were parked in the top four with three straight league wins by mid-September, the new signings slotting in nicely, planting the seeds of hope that the 2017/18 campaign may be one to enjoy, rather than suffer. (more…)
Perhaps the most important news of the day is that Liverpool’s win over Chelsea last night means the Newcastle are assured of at least a 5th place finish this season. So that means that Arsenal, Spurs and Newcastle will fight it out next Sunday for 3rd, 4th and 5th and any of those three teams could end up in any of those spots.
We currently have 65 points, Spurs have 66 and Arsenal have 67, and on Sunday Arsenal are away to West Brom, Spurs are at home to Fulham and we’re away to Everton. I’d say that we have the toughest fixture of those three and I suspect 5th is where we’ll finish this season as I reckon Arsenal and Spurs are probably good for 3 points from their fixtures, but I’ll be keeping my hopes alive until the final whistle.
Back in March I wrote an Idiots Guide To Toon Europa Qualification, which thoroughly confused me and everyone who read it. I’m please to say the scenario is now much simpler and looks like this: (more…)
There are those who would tell you that there’s no such thing as luck and that its all down to averages and subjective determination. I can however reveal exclusively to NUFCBlog.org readers that this is not the case.
With the aid of a particle accelerator in my kitchen – some would call it a blender – I have discovered a couple of subatomic particles. One is called the ‘chancion’ and, as every particle has its antiparticle, the other is called the ‘antichancion’. These particles stream towards Earth from the centre of black holes – and indeed vast astro-blenders – and it’s the antichancions at work when you stub your toe, when the day your car breaks down is the only day in the last year you forgot your mobile phone, and when the clear sky that was there when you started your walk turns apocalyptic at exactly the furthest point from home and you have to hitch a ride back on Noah’s Ark. And so on and so forth.
Thus I fear that St James’ Park is under siege from antichancions at the moment, possibly because Stamford Bridge has all the chancions. I am of course talking about Chelsea’s progress in this season’s Champions League. (more…)
The squad we currently have is most certainly unable to cope with so many games in such little time if we were to get to the Europa League. Maybe we would follow the same route as Spurs, play almost a reserve team and ‘concentrate on the league,’ but that would be a waste of a flight, wouldn’t it? But is the Europa League good for us? Because after all, its second best, like the League Cup. Would we get any money from it? Not a great deal probably. We would have to somehow get the money to buy in a lot of good players (not just satisfactory) to strengthen the team during the Summer, because put simply, Perch, Williamson and Guthrie aren’t good enough. (more…)