One year ago!I’ve was just picking through some of the older articles on this site, and very good they were too, so credit where it is due. Then something struck me as I heard an advert on the TV in the background.
The new Championship season starts tonight. Remember that? You know, that thing we were in last season?
I remember the feeling back then, I think most if us do. Nobody knew what on earth was going to happen in a league which we hadn’t frequented for 16-years. It was a worrying time. I was there in our first game away at West Bromwich Albion, facing the unknown, well the relative unknown anyway as West Brom had been relegated with us. (more…)
Gary Hooper - Toon target?There seems to be a lot of speculation regarding Scunthorpe United’s 22-year old striker, Gary Hooper, and an apparent interest from Newcastle to want to buy the player for a fee of around £2.5 million.
Hooper scored 30 goals last season, which has obviously alerted clubs to the lads ability and prompted all this speculation as Scunthorpe look to cash in on their biggest asset. Can Hooper make the step up to the Premier League though? Or are there any other players in The Championship who could cut the mustard at the next level?
My main worry about signing Championship players is that we will end up with a Championship team. I understand some players will make the step up and we have this new policy of “building for the future” by signing younger players, but on the other hand, a lot of the players in The Championship just aren’t good enough.
For every Kieron Dyer and Jermaine Jenas there are one or two Des Hamilton’s and Carl Serrant’s, which is why it is important to choose wisely when delving into the lower leagues. Here are a few faces who I believe can make the step up. (more…)
Scenes like this have been familiar this year.Those are of course opening words to a ditty that started being sung by the Toon Army in the stands at grounds up and down the country soon after Newcastle United secured their promotion back to the promised land of the Premier League.
We can look forward to playing the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal, and probably getting played off the park again, but it doesn’t matter. The fact is we have earned the right to pit our wits against the eilte again. This season has been fantastic on so many levels, even if the opposition has disappointed at times, and for many reasons this is a season I will look back on fondly. There isn’t much that will beat that winning feeling, and it’s a feeling we have experienced 30 times this season. We haven’t always played like Champions, but the feat of scoring the most goals and conceding the least throughout the season should tell it’s own story – we have been a cut above the opposition for the majority of the season. Sure we have been outplayed at times, we have also been awful at times, but it didn’t matter in the end. All that matters is getting points on the board and, by hook or crook, it is something we have done remarkably well this season. (more…)
Will there be scenes like this at the weekend?It’s funny how things turn out in the end, especially with regards to football. Who would have thought that after last season, and the mess of pre-season at the beginning of this one, that we would be on the verge of promotion back to the Premier League at easter?
In fact it could well all be over by the time we roll back into work on Tuesday, bleary-eyed, hungover but feeling a happiness inside that as fans we haven’t felt for so long now. Two games is all it could take to bring that happiness back, happiness formed on proving so called ‘experts’ wrong, winning games and seeing the team pull together despite the odds that were monumentally stacked against us at the start of the season. I have loved life in the Championship and in a way it has reignited my love affair with football. It was never dying out, don’t get me wrong, but perhaps over the years I had become fed up with the false dawns, the constant turmoil, the seeing us performing as eleven individuals and not a team, the mediocrity of what we had become in the Premier League. This season has given us all a goal, all a reason to ultimately pull in same direction, something we have all done. (more…)
