Antoine Sibierski’s goal 11 minutes from time gave us a vital 1-0 victory over Turkish side Fenerbahce in our opening UEFA Cup group stage match. Nobby Solano’s corner was hooked goalwards by Steven Taylor, and Fener keeper Rustu Recber could only parry it to the French striker who made no mistake from close range, celebrating by jumping into the crowd.

Despite a few minor scares Steve Harper was relatively untroubled, thanks in part to an excellent display from Peter Ramage at centre-half, contributing to a rare and welcome clean sheet, and a vital confidence boosting win as we head into the “derby” at Middlesbrough on Sunday.

Elsewhere in the group, our next opponents Palermo showed their credentials with a 2-1 win in Frankfurt to top the group at this stage. We travel to Sicily on November 2.

NUFC: Harper, Carr, Taylor, Ramage, Duff, Milner, Parker, Emre (Butt 53), N’Zogbia (Solano 64), Sibierski, Martins (Ameobi 75). Subs (not used): Krul, Moore, Bramble, Luque.

Goal: Sibierski 79

Attendance: 30,035

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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A Palermo restaurant has created a special menu for Toon fans attending the match over in Italy. Given the talk of trouble and what not we thought this was a canny gesture so would like to reciprocate this by plugging their menu for them. If you’re going over there and fancy some local scran, give these fellas a try.

And no we aren’t being paid to plug them, cheeky gits.

When I read a lot of the comments that appear on websites I generally tend to dismiss 90% of it immediately as being either totally uninteresting or just rampant drivel.

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