Only three goals conceded in four outings since the opening day of the season, with six goals scored kicking us provisionally up to fifth with a game in hand over one of the teams ahead of us. The statistics and the results look good thus far, and ostensibly it’s been a rip-roaring start to this season’s campaign, but it hasn’t quite been plain sailing. (more…)

So Newcastle score three goals in the opening 30 minutes away from home against a side which we’ve had trouble with since Sir Bobby Robson left, and ease to the top of the table with relative ease. All this, with key players out. Who could complain, eh…

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Newcastle tied with Reading in finishing the season 9th defensively, with the ball hitting the onion bag 47 times a piece. The Chelseas, Arsenals and Manchester Utds justifiably decimated our tally, but Manchester City, Aston Villa and Portsmouth beating us proved far less digestable.

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Something of a hangover match that seemed to relive the horrors of the AZ Alkmaar tie saw us sink to a lowly Charlton side at the nadir of our season. Depression has been immersed by apathy in some quarters and innumerable displays are beginning to coalesce into something that has no real beginning or end, just the same toothless, mediocre monotony. The road ahead is long it seems, and there is much to be done before the club is at where many feel it should be.

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Saturday’s goalless draw with the Smogmonsters saw Newcastle muster their first Premiership clean sheet in a ridiculously long stretch. What perhaps should have been a break from these articles, however, has instead become the mammoth of all catch-up articles - owing to the correction of long-standing technical difficulties behind our wafer-thin scenes, here at N-O. Alas, everyone can, once more, find out… how to score past Newcastle.

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Few who cared to think about it would imagine that there would be an eighteenth part to this series. Newcastle were at home. Newcastle were facing the bottom side in the Premiership. Newcastle were facing a side that had not scored in nearly a month. Newcastle were facing Watford. (more…)

Every time I get out, Stephen Carr keeps pulling me back in. [That wasn’t a fat joke - his size doesn’t literally afford him a gravitational pull or anything - he just doesn’t justify a place at the club.] (more…)

What can be said that has not been said already about Newcastle? We’ve become the most grotesque parody of ourselves imaginable. Every match proffers only a new opportunity to jump to lower nadirs, a chance for even the most laughable of performances to be exacerbated, a platform for the stock of the club to be that much more hilarious.

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This is becoming ridiculous. The way we played football was nigh on blasphemous to Newcastle’s supposedly steadfast attacking football.

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An unlikely but much appreciated clean sheet at Upton Park sent the fourth instalment of this series on its way to an endless abyss beyond our reach. It seemed a very professional and efficient away performance, if not sparkling.

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Just how foolish to assume that this dainty chain of compositions could be afforded an extended vacation with an insignificant ten minutes remaining in a home game against one of the worst travellers in the league.

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‘Quickly!’ on today’s showing. One couldn’t help feel that despite Martins presence up front, our defence looked all the worse for our ineptitude in the final third. When was the last time we looked genuinely convincing going forward? I’d surmise it was the same time that our defence looked confident.

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The prevalent stereotype that Newcastle’s defence will always be the undoing of our side, irrespective of circumstance, is one that is inexorably fading, albeit painfully slowly.

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