Premiership: Birmingham 0-0 Newcastle
By Paul Mosley 30 Apr 2006
Our final away game of the season saw us pick up a point and another clean sheet, and send Steve Bruce and Birmingham City down to the Championship for next season, thanks to Portsmouth's 2-1 win at Wigan Athletic. But it was a big missed opportunity in the race for Europe.
Michael Owen made his return from injury (see seperate story) for the final half hour but only had one header over the top, with United's clearest chance coming when Titus Bramble raced away to be one-on-one with Maik Taylor in the 93rd minute, only to massively over=touch the ball straight through to the keeper. Moments earlier, Shay Given had ensured we would be coming back to Tyneside with a point with a brilliant double save from Mikael Forssell and Emile Heskey.
NUFC: Given, Carr, Moore, Bramble, Babayaro, Solano, Pattison (Clark 68), Faye (Boumsong 87), N'Zogbia, Chopra (Owen 61), Ameobi.
Subs Not Used: Harper, Elliott.
Booked: Solano, Carr.
Birmingham: Maik Taylor, Melchiot, Cunningham (Clemence 87), Martin Taylor, Sadler, Pennant, Jarosik, Johnson, Gray (Campbell 72), Heskey, Forssell.
Subs Not Used: Vaesen, Bruce, Tebily. Booked: Melchiot, Johnson.
Booked: Melchiot, Johnson.
Att: 28,331
Ref: M Atkinson (W Yorkshire).
Roeder: "That incident at the end of the game tells you why his fellow professionals voted him as the top goalkeeper in the league at the PFA Awards this season."
"Titus and Craig were both outstanding. Titus is big and strong, he is no-nonsense and he cleared the ball when he had to and played the right balls.
"He was well supported by Craig Moore, who should be very happy with his performances over the last five or six weeks since he came into the team.
"Stephen Carr was excellent as well, and Babayaro has never let me down, or never let the team down, so right across the back four we were very good."
Plastic Geordie: "That was the gilt-edged chance that we needed to take and unfortunately we haven't. Shay has pulled off a couple of saves but he has been doing that for years."
"Everyone is hugely disappointed, not just the players but the staff at the club, because everyone knows what it entails dropping down a division with a great difference in finance."
The point leaves us in 7th in the table, 2 points behind Blackburn (2-0 victors at Charlton on Saturday evening), and 3 points ahead of Bolton (who were defeated 1-0 by Spurs on Sunday). Bolton however have 2 home games remaining and could well nick 7th spot from us, as well as England's only Intertoto Cup place. |
