Newcastle 1 - Fenerbache 0, 19/10/06

Rejoice! Rejoice Newcastle fans for Shambles is not in the starting line-up!! Ramage and Taylor were both given the chance in the absence of Bramble and Moore while Duff was made leftback for tonite's match! Carr remains on the rightback slot.. The game was shown live here at 3am in the morning, thanks Astro! It would have been painful watching had Bramble made the start but thankfully Roeder came to his senses and benched the awful centreback wannabe..

Emre tussling for the ball

The game was played at an entertaining pace but the end product of both teams were duly missing.. Few clear cut chances were created and the best of the first half fell to Taylor in injury time! Sibierksi tried to linkup play between Martins and the midfielders but honestly he did JUST ok.. The defence played as a unit, thankfully Ramage came to the rescue on several occasions when Taylor was left for dead or made an awful lunge at Kezman or Alex.. Butt came in the 50th+ minute for Emre who got off injured, he performed ok by making some decent tackles and mistimed a few too! Most probably caused by his rustiness of being on the bench most of the time.. Solano came in for the ineffective Zoggy and later Shola for Martins..

We deserved all 3 points with a disciplined perfomance but against a side which gameplan is to get 1 point, we could have scored more if our wingers today were better players! Zoggy and Milner was just poor.. They didn't lack in determination, just that the crosses from both flank was totally predictable! Many opportunities in the final 3rd were wasted by the lack of quality.. Let's hope we continue to improve as a team and grab another great result in this week's derby!