Stoke City fought hard and earned a replay against low-edged Newcastle at the Brittania Stadium on Sunday night. In the last tie of the weekend, the Magpies travelled to Stoke on the back of a few poor performances, having collected only one point in twelve. The Stoke City side on the other hand were flying high on an unbeaten run, and that run continued with a 0-0 draw played out infront of the BBC Cameras. We got the panel’s reaction…

Rich

“I’m going to use this here pulpit at Newcastle-Online to put out a plea to my fellow supporters: has anybody got a cave for me to live in for a few years, or a massive rock for me to huddle under? When will the mediocrity end? I’m not even an old hand at this, and so my respect for our older generation of die-hard supporters continues to grow. The light at the end of the tunnel that became visible once more in the summer after all of the changes is sharply diminishing, and I can feel the apathy creeping in once more.

I said before that I hate games like this, and I hate the FA Cup, (this is a view which has been further hardened by this afternoons 4th Round Draw – Arsenal away, f****** brilliant!) Someone up there, or down there, or somewhere, does not like us – and I’m not just talking about the media (local and national now it seems). We’re probably spoiled brats these days more than anything, I mean it’s not like we’ve had to suffer lower league football for well over a decade now, but for a club of this potential it still hurts to see us being “delighted” with a draw away at Stoke – who, let’s be honest, are a f****** s**** football team.

Aye, they’re big (Bright and Pearce made us aware of that enough times), but they’ve got no pace, no discernible technical ability and they couldn’t pass the ball for toffee… oh, hang on, that sounds awfully familiar… I know that negativity like this probably isn’t what you want to be reading at the minute, but I’m not sure if I can even act positive at the minute – I mean, have you seen our next 4 away games, for starters? Man Utd, Arsenal, Aston Villa and Liverpool… dear me, without Beye and Faye too.

The latter was the best player on the park yet again and we missed the former, although I don’t think Rozehnal was as bad as some are making out. I’m not sure what to say about the game really, we just weren’t very good. Stoke tried to drag us down to their level and beat us with experience, and it nearly worked. I have to say though, I think they were taking the piss by bringing on what was obviously either a rugby or darts player near the end. The appearance of Jon “The Ringer” Parkin was the highlight for me, what a fat b******! Don’t mention that he nearly scored, like…

Man of the Match: Abdoulaye Faye (yet again)”

Tom

“The cameras were on us, with the media just itching to see Stoke send us tumbling out of the cup. Well, they haven’t got their wish yet. I felt that the draw was a fair result. It was going to be a battling game, and that’s exactly what both sides produced. Stoke will probably claim the moral victory, which is fair enough given that they held and matched a side that is a division above them, but it was by no means a poor performance from ourselves.

So, we have to do it all again, although we now have home advantage (mind you, remember what happened last year?). I’m confident that we’ll go through to the next round. If we do so, we’re away to Arsenal… oh great.”

Jonny

“Yet another poor turnout for Newcastle United.

You know there was actually a part of me that thought we could turn them over, show some Premier League class and finally get out of the mess that we seem to be in at the moment; how wrong I was.

Stoke played some decent stuff, granted they were the home side, and despite what Big Sam says, looked the more likely to score. They had two clearances from Steven Taylor and a few more saves from Shay Given to stop them from doing so; how they didn’t score, I really don’t know.

Bar the ball scraping just over Michael Owen’s head, Newcastle had little in the way of goal mouth action apart from a few N’Zogbia chances and shots from Nicky Butt which kept going over the bar - seriously the lad should play rugby.

At the end of the day, with the chances that they had, they should have won the game and a team with more class would have finished us off. But it’s a draw, a clean sheet and we’re still in the cup.

So it’s a replay next week followed by a 4th round tie at Arsenal if we overcome that; oh joy, the FA Cup’s practically in the bag.

MOTM: Steven Taylor.”