I would not normally be sufficiently enthusiastic to put pen to paper - or should that be finger to keyboard - for the UEFA games, but in all fairness to the team, Thursday’s match merits a mention. Though a very brief one.

My September quota of allocated sports watching was more or less wiped out with golf’s Ryder Cup last week.

In what they have to admit was a bit of a wardrobe Faux Pas, both England and America started the first day of competition wearing grey shirts. Admittedly there were slight differences between the shirt material, but when you’ve had a few jars you don’t want to have to start looking at the labels on the shirts to find out if you’re watching an American golfer you never heard of, or a European golfer you never heard of.

While I realise that they’re not running around the course passing golfballs to each other at high speed, soits not such a big thing as far as they are concerned, is it too much to ask that the teams wear different colours so the punters can tell them apart?

In obvious disregard to the most basic of sportswear etiquette Newcastle continue to take the field in their UEFA games wearing the shirts with the dodgy lettering.

Maybe Kevin Bond was responsible, and that’s why he had to go, I don’t know, but you don’t have to be Stephen Hawking to figure out that you can’t read white letters on a white background.

This is why, last night, we had players with names such as AR (Carr), BME (Bramble) UT (Butt), Q (Luque), LN (Milner) MR (Emre) and UF (Duff). If it wasn’t for injury we could have had WE, YE and EO out there on the pitch.

While I always thought that the gold lettering that is so fashionable on shirts these days was a bit, well, tacky to say the least, at least you can read it. We haven’t arrived at tacky with this particular shirt, we’re still struggling with legible.

On to the review.

Harper - 6
Slow getting down to the goal, but gravity can only suck so fast. Otherwise “Good game, Good game”

Carr - 6
Showing signs that he’s a half decent player after all, but can still be a bit “Bramble” at times.

Taylor - 5
Looks a bit rusty. A bit of WD40 should soon get him back to his old self. A couple of mistakes, but put it down to that old chestnut “Match Fitness”

Bramble - 5
A bit like my old Saab from a few years back, there are times when he looks good, but then I wouldn’t want to rely on him to get me to Dubai. I thought he’d done us in the first 5 minutes with a pass straight to one of their forwards, but poor guy didn’t realise he was dealing with Titus. If this was the school yard who do you think would be the kid picked last?

Ramage - 6
Mr Utility fills in again. Playing out of position is what our team seem to do best. It’s just a shame they don’t do so well in their proper positions.

Butt - 5
Was invisible most of the time. I suppose that’s a good thing. Means he didn’t mess it up.

Emre - 7
With Parker rested Emre showed us what he’s capable of. Brilliant. It would appear that with Parker on the pitch Emre is not being allowed to play “his” game. But in position he’s “Hit Shot”.

N’Zogbia - 7
Continues to improve and impress. Not bad considering he’s so young, and he’s still French!. Zut Alors!

Milner - 8
Without a doubt my Man Of The Match. Continues to add to his armoury, and gives us balls. Balls into the box. Such pace, such energy. On the down side he gets excited and jumps in when he loses the ball, plus, he seems to have more elbows than most people.

Sibierski - 6
Not bad for a “squad” player. Very similar to Shola in many ways, but Sibierski seems to be able to stand up longer. Sibierski or Shola? I wouldn’t want to choose between them. Well I would, but Glen won’t let me. And Shola wouldn’t be happy.

Martins - 8
Looking good and trying so hard, but has to cut out the Lua Lua impression when he scores. If you watch the flip for the second goal he very nearly comes a cropper, with his hands sliding on the turf. It’s difficult to applaud the crowd with a broken arm.

Duff, Luque and Parker came on as subs for a while but didn’t light any fires, though Luque was putting it about a bit more. On the subject of Parker - England is calling, but I hope he doesn’t pick up the phone. You know what he’s like with this “give it 100%” lark of his. The last thing we need at this stage of the season is another international injury.

Roeder - 6
I would have given him more but he let the side down when he was seen smiling in public following Martins’ second goal. Also don’t think they pay him enough. Al Jazeera coverage clearly showed him stealing the bulbs out of the 4th Officials electronic sign board.

Summary
We seem to be getting a lot more chances in front of goal, but our defence is still seriously shaky. We’re still at the point where, if we put our minds to it, we can let in more than we score. And that’s not usually a good thing. The defenders are getting up into the other box, but that’s going to happen when the average height of your back line is 6 inches taller than your front. And while the likes of Taylor and Bramble are having a go up front, who’s minding the shop?

Lets not get carried away - these lot are not exactly Man U or Chelsea. But credit where its due, it looks much better than some of the dire crap we saw during some of the games last season - and even this. Still not good for the blood pressure though.

Archie Brand
Still taking the tablets in Bahrain