The hoarseness of my voice is testament to the fact that yesterday was a pretty good one for the Toon Army. As the teleprinter would have it: Newcastle United 6 (SIX) Aston Villa 0. A proper thrashing doled out to hapless Villa, in a manner reminiscent of heady days under Keegan and Robson. A hat-trick for Andy Carroll in his first home game as NUFC’s new number nine. Toon fans sent home happy and optimistic, and, in many cases, filled to the brim with beer. Oh, and the sun shone too…

Having been beaten at Old Trafford in the opening game of the season, one match preview rather prematurely declared that NUFC were sitting ‘precariously’ above the drop zone. Give us a chance! Although comfortably outclassed by Manchester United, the proper United never gave up, never capitulated, and there were signs that performances like that against weaker opposition would produce better results.

And Villa were as weak as they come – probably as poor as any side Newcastle faced in the Championship last term. After John Carew skied his early penalty, he and his teammates looked resigned to defeat.

Newcastle started sloppily, but improved to put together some good passing moves that Villa were too lacklustre to get on top of. The Toon’s lack of pace in the middle was never exposed, with Joey Barton in particular offering great energy. Carroll looked formidable, although he’ll face much stiffer tests as the season progresses.

Mike Williamson had another assured performance at centre half (and got forward to set up two of his team’s goals). At one point early in the second half he stood up to a swiftly advancing Ashley Young and dispossessed him with a solid block tackle. Simple stuff, but so refreshing after watching countless NUFC defenders over the years dive in and end up floundering on their backsides. Here’s hoping Williamson won’t be shunted out of the side when Sol ‘Bunter’ Campbell claims match fitness.

A few other first home game observations: There seemed to be a much lower take up of new home shirts than is usual at the start of a season, with the new Puma effort far outnumbered in the stands by older versions. This despite Sports Direct’s shirt ads being plastered all over the Eldon Square redevelopment…

The new SJP ‘meal deals’, including two bottles of beer and two pies for the best part of 12 English pounds, understandably failed to entice the stay-away majority back to the catering counters.

This season’s half-time ‘entertainment’ slot is even less entertaining than last season’s. Even the kids involved seemed underwhelmed and confused.

And whoever at Bid England came up with the idea of handing out promotional red and white scarves at a Newcastle match was sadly ill-informed.

Also, ‘Today’s man of the match, as voted for by the coaching staff and directors…’? We all know that NUFC have lost sponsors, but should the club be singling out their own man of the match? Handing yesterday’s award to Carroll was hardly controversial, but there could be ructions in the future.

Anyway, 6-0 eh? For those sports reporters frustrated by Chris Hughton’s lack of quotability, the emphatic result provided plenty to write about. If Hughton’s team continue to make headline, the journos will forgive him for his blandness in pressers.

Louise Taylor in the Guardian, of course, managed to find a negative angle. She decided that the 6-0 stunner was ‘overshadowed by Joey Barton’s questionable goal celebration’, which basically involved him pointing to his comedy moustache and deserves no further examination than that. The Guardian is a decent paper, but with so many good sports reporters in the North East it’s unfathomable why they can’t get someone with a bit of common sense to cover the NUFC beat.

I wrote last week that there were ten mediocre sides in the Premier League that Newcastle could beat to avoid relegation. Villa weren’t one of the ten. So this victory represented something of a bonus.

But let’s not get carried away. There will be much tougher opposition to face, and inevitable slip-ups against weaker sides. This was just one win and three points. We’ll need a lot more performances like this before the season is over, but this is certainly a time for optimism.

More NUFC stuff

Football Newcastle United, NUFC

Seventeeth place. Fourth from bottom. That’ll do nicely. If Newcastle United avoid relegation from the Premier League this season, it’ll be a big achievement, and a vital step towards putting the club back on solid footing in the top flight. It won’t be easy, and many bookies and media pundits have tipped the club to go down. But the Magpies are no strangers to proving people wrong.

The club surprised many and most last season by winning the Championship at a canter. Having been tipped to ‘do a Leeds United’, it was a remarkable turnaround after the pitiful Premier League relegation season. Chris Hughton and the players deserve lots of credit for the way they regrouped, knuckled down, and ground out results. It wasn’t pretty, but it was effective. A similar approach will be vital if Premier League survival is to be achieved. But even that might not be enough.

Perhaps even more surprising than the success found on the pitch has been the stability found off it. There have been remarkably few media circuses or PR disasters at St James’ Park of late, and the name of Newcastle United has been pretty much absent from the Sky Sports breaking news ticker. Chris Hughton has been accepted as a decent, hardworking bloke who deserves to be given a chance, and his lack of interest in generating soundbites has actually been refreshing.

There has even been a truce of sorts declared between the fans and Mike Ashley. There have been grumbles about the lack of investment in players, and Ashley and pals haven’t been spotted wearing black and white stripes in the Bigg Market for a while, but the general opinion seems to have settled down to one of ‘better the devil you know’.

Expectation among the fans remain realistic. Survival is the aim. Let’s not kid ourselves – the Championship that Newcastle bossed last season was a poor league. The lack of quality was evident in every game. Saturday’s Premier League opening day fixture in which top flight champions Chelsea thrashed second flight runners up West Brom 6-0 clearly highlighted the gulf in class between the two leagues.

The main worry is that Newcastle return to the Premier League with a squad that is, on paper, just as weak as the one that was relegated last time around. There have been few additions, and several players who thrived in the Championship might well have done so because they had ‘found their level’.

Dan Gosling looks like a good prospect, but he’s injured for the long term. James Perch rarely stood out in an average Nottingham Forest team, and Sol Campbell hardly fits NUFC’s stated transfer policy of recruiting promising youngsters.

Of the signings made last term, Leon Best failed to score in 13 appearances. (Hardly a prolific striker, Best only scored 19 times in 92 appearances for Coventry City.) Mike Williamson is untried at the top level, and Wayne Routledge has flattered to deceive at numerous other clubs.

Among the players that remain from the relegation season, the deficiencies are well known. Last season, Kevin Nolan was one of the best players in the Championship. In the previous season, he was one of the worst in the Premier League. Two years older and certainly no quicker, can the influential club captain make the grade on a return to the top flight?

Can Andy Carroll continue to provide the goals that helped propel the club into the Premier League? Which Fabricio Coloccini will turn up – the commanding powerhouse from the promotion season, or the error-prone softie from the relegation season? Can Jose Enrique avoid injury? Can Joey Barton avoid trouble? Will Jonas Gutierrez learn to cross a ball? Whither the lesser-spotted Xisco? These, and, many more questions will be answered over the next few months.

Last season, West Ham finished fourth from bottom with 34 points. In the previous season, Newcastle were relegated with the same total. So let’s take 35 points as a bare minimum for survival. That’s 9 wins and 8 draws, or a similar combination.

There are at least ten mediocre teams in the ‘best league in the world’ (West Brom, Blackpool, Wigan, Wolves, Bolton, West Ham, Stoke, Birmingham, Blackburn, Sunderland…), and they’re all likely to be beating each other on a weekly basis. The trick for Newcastle United will be to beat all of them at home and at least draw with all of them away. That’ll generate 40 points, and pretty much guarantee staying up.

In some ways, tonight’s opening fixture against Manchester United at Old Trafford represents the best possible start to the season. Whatever the result, it will leave the players, the manager, and the owner, in no doubt about the challenges that lie ahead.

As always with Newcastle United, what follows will be entirely unpredictable. Who wouldn’t be looking forward to that?

More Newcastle United posts
Follow me on Twitter

Football Newcastle United, NUFC

With the sound of vuvuzelas ringing in our ears it’s time to wave goodbye to South Africa, albeit from our comfy sofas several thousand miles away, and reflect upon World Cup 2010. It seemed well organised, and it’s easy to offer a patronising tap on the head to the host nation, but was it actually any good?

Let’s face it, few would call the tournament a classic. It started slowly and only rarely moved into high gear. The group stages were littered with draws and one-nils, and star players like Ronaldo, Messi and Rooney struggled to reproduce their club form on the world stage.

Rooney – now sporting a long beard and living in a caravan if that Nike advert is to be believed – was largely anonymous, only waking up long enough to hurl abuse at his own fans. England as a whole were poor, wanting in tactics and lacking in ability. Not good enough. Of course, England weren’t the biggest failures of the tournament – France and Italy filled those roles with aplomb.

Once England were out, the enjoyment levels were raised. But World Cup 2010 was only a feast of football in the sense that there was a lot of it.

Genuine excitement was rare, and mostly linked to controversy. The climax of the Uruguay vs Ghana match – handballs and penalty misses – was particularly thrilling. But much of the fun was linked to poor refereeing decisions, with Frank Lampard’s phantom goal a relatively minor error compared to others that changed the outcome of games.

Spain, the Netherlands and Germany were the best teams to watch throughout the tournament, and deserved their one-two-three placings. But overall there was a real lack of quality. Some may blame the much-maligned Jabulani ball, but the best goal of the tournament, Van Bronckhurst’s 30-yard rocket, proved it could be controlled.

On TV, the BBC expectedly trumped ITV, largely due to ITV’s persistence with the incessant verbal borefest that is Clive Tyldesley. In the studios, ITV’s big signing Adrian Chiles did his jokey bloke thing but was mostly outplayed and out-gagged by the boy Lineker.

The BBC thankfully ditched the incomprehensible Emmanuel Adebayor, and they produced several really good documentary pieces about South Africa, some of which didn’t include footage of an ex-pro gazing wistfully from a Robben Island window. Garth Crooks interviewing Kofi Annan about Paul the psychic octopus was, however, a lowlight.

ITV sacked Robbie Earle after match ticket ‘misappropriation’, although the real scandal was that a TV pundit had been allocated 36 tickets that could have gone to fans. But ITV’s biggest fail was cutting to an ad break on ITV HD and missing Steven Gerrard’s goal against the USA. England fans had so little to cheer that depriving them of that moment was unforgivable.

And Spain went and won it. Deserved to, overall. But it was hardly a vintage performance, in a final where fouls outnumbered chances, closing a tournament that promised much more than it delivered.

Like the vuvuzela, we’ll remember World Cup 2010, but not particularly fondly.

More World Cup stuff:
England: The World Cup Pie Chart of Blame
Football not soccer: Watching the World Cup in the USA
UFWC vs the World Cup: unofficial football heaven
How World In Motion changed English football forever

Football World Cup