Newcastle [relegation] Watch

What a fantastic day. As a Newcastle supporter, these days have been hard to come by so please forgive me just a bit of a gloat.

First off, let me set the stage by saying FSC had the match on replay today - and I hate these days. I can't go to any sort of football media outlet because I'll ruin the surprise of watching the game later and I just hate that. And then, once I do watch it A) we usually lose, meaning I've wasted all this time not checking any news, etc, just to watch a boring, miserable game and B) whether we win or lose, by the time I go on to my favorite NUFC blog sites to read all the other supporters' opinions, they're either off to bed or enjoying themselves in a bar somewhere with other Newcastle supporters and I'm here alone by a computer. Yipee.

But today, Mrs. Architectureandfootball and I had quite a household craft project to complete, so that, along with some movie watching took up all of my attention so not looking at the news wasn't too hard. Then, once the match started, it was off.

First, KK puts out the same side as the last two games. I love this. I don't necessarily agree with every assignment he's made, but this is great for two reasons - 1) he's giving the team some balance, some stability, that some managers (Allardyce) never achieve. and 2) he's playing a 4-3-3 (three strikers) AWAY FROM HOME. He's going into London, against one of the hottest clubs in England, the club who just recently won the Carling Cup - and he's TRYING TO ACTUALLY WIN IT. Not just squeek out a boring 0-0 draw. He's trying to score goals.

So we start the match positive, with Beye shooting once off the crossbar. We maintain a majority of the possession, and while I couldn't say we were dominating, I was quite pleased with the performance from the boys, being away from home. We give up a goal to Bent (horrible defense in letting the cross come in uncontested, but a spectacular header to finish it) but the lads keep on with it and continue going for chances. Then, of all people, Nicky Butt hits in a fairly easy looking shot in stoppage time in the first half. And right here I have to say - Nicky Butt, as much slack as I've given him, has probably been one of the main reasons we've played so well the last three games. He was my man of the match today, and honestly, recently we've been living and dying by Nicky Butt. As his game comes and goes, so goes Newcastle's. And today he was immense, pure and simple.

Second half comes, we show no signs of slowing down and after a foul just outside the box, Geremi takes advantage of some sloppy wall work by the Spurs defense and puts in an easy goal to ACTUALLY TAKE THE LEAD. Later, Owen scores a fantastic goal set up by Barton (who was great today) and a clever Viduka dummy. Owen has really come on as of late and has shown what a classy guy and player he is by really turning it on once he has been given the captain's armband. He hasn't showed as much as any one would have hoped, but with all the injuries he's had, and with the poor offensive displays shown by Allardyce, I think Owen is showing now that he loves playing and scoring goals and this team has REALLY started to gel as of late with him in charge. Then finally, to finish it off, my boy Obafemi Martins put in a stellar goal and you could CLEARLY see his relief and joy at scoring his first goal in a LONG time.

It was a great match by every single player on the pitch, barring Alan Smith who came on in the 78th minute(poor as always) and maybe Jose-Enrique, who still stupifies me sometimes. He's a great physical specimen who clearly has skill and potential, it just seems that his head isn't there sometimes. But we were able to get both Carrol and Edgar on in the end, and all the Geordies love our young kids (and what a talented bunch we've got at the moment...very exciting).

So now we're 9 points clear of the drop - looks like we'll be staying in so it's time to slowly start thinking about this off season!!

Other stuff -

For the first time EVER all #1 seeds have made it to the final four of the ncaa college basketball tourney. I think I'm still in first place in my pool, but not totally sure. It's strang that all 1 seeds made it, considering how horizontal the field was this year. GO KANSAS!!

Also - Saturday night we went to this amazing Polish restaurant called Szalas for dinner with some friends fromwork. Absolutely unbelievable food. I'm thinking of changing this blog to Architecture and Football and Food - because food is an incredibly important part of my life as well - and I think I put a lot of time and effort in my passion for it. I could offer reviews of recipes or restaurants that we go to and hopefully widen it up a bit - as most readers care nought about my beloved NUFC. Any thoughts on this?

Newcastle Relegation Watch - Goodbye, Shola

Massive develpments hit today, as Shola Ameobi opted to take a loan spell at Championship leaders Stoke City for the remainder of the season. Shola moved to Newcastle from Africa at the age of 9, and has come up through the Newcastle ranks throughout his career. He was always a fan favorite, but could never live up to the huge expectations he gained by showing some great young class.

He was always one of my favorites, too - but I could never explain why. He would make some of the most awful mistakes I've seen on a football pitch. But he was a true Geordie, he loved the club, he loved the fans, and he always had a smile on his face.

So good luck, Shola. Hopefully we'll get to face you next year in the Premiership when Stoke get promoted! (and when we DON'T get relegated!)

"Shola Ameobi - Legend" YouTube video

Newcastle [Relegation] Watch

After 60 days or so the man's finally done it. Finally. A victory. While the whole Geordie nation has been waiting for this since he first poked his head out in the crowd during that glorious FA Cup match, Kevin Keegan's had quite a bit of ground work to lay, and although it hasn't been a very fashionable or inspiring campaign as of yet, I truly believe that he's made wise and almost responsible decisions since coming. Not spending his 1-million pound treasure chest in January to keep it for the summer where the true talent awaits, having courage to move from cowardly, defensive football, to controlled, attractive, attacking football, giving Michael Owen the captain's armband and re-igniting his career to the point where I actually WANT him to stay on Tyneside. But this is just one man. Let's get down to the Relegation watch.
Newcastle, as I said, finally won a game, against a struggling Fulham side, 2-0. Fulham look favorites to go down for sure now, although it really pains me to say that. It's a team full of Americans, who my cousins support, with a great little stadium in London. I fear that none of the Americans on the team have the clout to automatically switch clubs to stay in the Premiership, so that means a lot fewer of us will be representing the highest level of English football. But such is life. Newcastle look a LOT safer at this point. Although other teams around us such as Sunderland, Middlesbrough, and Reading, the bottom three didn't fare to well, with Derby losing (obviously), Fulham losing to NUFC, and Bolton only picking up a point at home. So they, in effect, all spaced themselves out farther from everyone, securing everybody's place by just that much more. But there are still plenty of matches to go.
On the opposite end of the table, Manchester United played a great victory over Liverpool 3-0, showing how sub-par Rafa's men really are compared to true Champion contenders. Chelsea came back at the end to beat Arsenal, in effect leapfrogging their opponents to take over second spot. Now, Chelsea really look like a more likely team to swipe the title away from Man U if anyone is. Keep in mind - Man U still have Arsenal at Old Trafford and Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. And of course - Chelsea still have Newcastle - an automatic win for the Blues. So these final weeks will be exciting.

Now to something a bit more red, white, and blue: March Madness has engulfed us. If anyone has predicted this group of 16 teams in the entire county, I would be very impressed. A lot of good teams who have always had the potential to win more games than predicted - but this many of them? I mean - a 7 seed, a 10 seed and two 12 SEEDS?? This makes the FA Cup look like a run of the mill situation comedy. After a couple of my sleeper picks - Arizona and USC - both went out in the first round, I figured my bracket was busted and I was effectively OUT of the office pool - oh how I couldn't be more wrong. I'm currently tied for second with Mrs. Architectureandfootball! So we'll see if this brings out some hidden bad feelings if it stays close much longer.....until then, enjoy the matchups and GO DAVIDSON (And Kansas)!! (AND NEWCASTLE.)

Newcastle Relegation Watch

Okay, okay.
Man United won handily over Bolton today - increasing their lead over Arsenal, while Chelsea drew in a THRILLER against Spurs, so the Red Devils have helped thier cause immensely today. But really - nobody cares about them. The big news is that Bolton LOST. That was Bolton's game in hand in relation to Newcastle, so now we're a clean 4 points clear of the drop zone. What all this boils down to is that this upcoming match against Fulham on Saturday will be the BIGGEST of the season. If we can take all three points in this one, we'll be 9 points clear of Fulham, and with Bolton playing AGAIN on Saturday, this time against Manchester City, this time at home, they'll surely be a tired squad and hopefully will retain 0 points. Then we'll be 7 points clear of the drop with 31 matches played and on our way to stay in the league.

Newcastle Relegation Watch

Well, after an overall productive weekend for NUFC supporters, we're one point further away from the drop zone. Newcastle were able to get a well-deserved draw (1-1) against Birmingham on the road. Birmingham have been playing well recently, and did again tonight, but so did we and the scoreline was, from what I can say, an accurate depiction of the match.
In other matches, everybody around us lost (Hooray!) except for Wigan (which is bad), who beat Bolton (which is good) and Fulham actually BEAT a surging Everton. This was by far the most surprising match of the weekend in my book, and gives Fulham one last breath to survive this season and stay in the Prem. But to do so, they've got to come through St. James Park, and that match is next weekend. Neither side can emphasize enough how crucial this game is for their respective Premiership hopes, and I'm exceedingly glad it's taking place at SJP. I think we'll get our first victory under Keegan - but I really hope the boys take it seriously, because Fulham showed this week that they've got plenty of fight left in them.

So at the moment - Newcastle are 14th spot on 29 points, with the current drop zone sitting at 25 points.

The greatest thing about English Club Football

In America, professional sports are professional sports. They're the guys getting paid big bucks to play the games we love, and we're the guys on the couch watching them with kettle chips and Natural Ice. There's no in between. But in England (and throughout Europe at that) there's a little something called the relegation system, otherwise known as the football pyramid. Basically it's this: All the clubs in the entire English country are ranked 1 through whatever it be. (By quick estimation I think it's around 1,400 teams - I kid you not) Now - The Premiership consists of 20 of them, the top 20. The Championship consists of teams 21-44, League 1 consists of teams 45-68, League 2 consists of teams 69-92. This is the League portion of the English system following that - well hell, let's just take it directly from Wikipedia to make it faster for me:
"The top tier of non-League football is the Football Conference, which contains a national division of 24 clubs (Level 5), followed by two divisions at Level 6, covering the north (Conference North) and south (Conference South), with 22 clubs each. Some of these clubs are full-time professional and the others are semi-professional. Below the Conference some of the stronger clubs are semi-professional, but continuing down the tiers, soon all the clubs are amateur."
So this is basically the system. As you can see - it's all interconnected, making it a bit easier for the schmuck on the couch, like myself, to feel connected to the teams. And at the end of each season, the top three or so teams go up one division, and the bottom three or so teams go down one division. This makes the whole thing very fluid and exciting (and that isn't even bringing up the wonderful FA Cup - GO ON BARNSLEY!) - and even if your team is on the bottom of the tables, it makes you keep watching and makes the end of the season very very important for not only the good teams, but the bad ones as well. I think it's a brilliant system, and usually I find the relegation battles MUCH more interesting than the Prem Championship races because A) the champion is usually decided around march anyway (usually) and B) the teams on the lower end tend to be the ones with smaller wages, less money flow, and the players are always fighting for spots and careers, and actually give a damn about the teams and supporters they play for. If you're at a top team and you do poorly there's really no need to worry - another team will come in and swipe you up (keep reading for more on this). It's the old trick of getting fired to get a pay raise.
Anyway - I've always loved the relegation battle. Always - that is - until the team I support was actually IN the relegation battle. Well, now we are and I'm not looking so fondly at the cute little relegation battle wayyyyy down there at the bottom of the table!!

So - here are Newcastle United - a team with Shay Given, Michael Owen, Obafemi Martins, Steven Taylor, Damien Duff, Mark Viduka, Habib Beye - all representatives on their respective National teams - are within three points of the "drop zone," and are very much in the struggle to stay in the top flight of the Premiership. Of course, it's easy to say "These players are too good to go down" and just shrug it off like it's just one, big unlucky streak. But I've been following this league to closely to think that ANYTHING can be explained by pure luck. That's NEVER the case. When something happens - ANYTHING - there's a reason for it. So let's take a look at NUFC's situation. They begin the season with Allardyce - a man who plays players out of position, using tactics that none of them are used to or respect. Keep in mind - these players make more in one week than I do in a full year - and they're being told to play differently than how they've played to get to this great point in their career. So obviously this doesn't go well. They lose big time. Then, in January, Big Fat Sam gets the sack - Justifiably - and Keegan comes in. Everyone is genuinely excited because he goes back to the more traditional - and fun and exciting - methods of playing football. By trying to score goals and enjoy yourselves. But it just so happens that at the same time, half the team is either injured, match banned, or in the Africa Cup of Nations. So he takes over only a fragment of the Newcastle side that he was given. Well, by the time he gets the full squad back, we've had losses - big ones - to NUMEROUS opponents - most of which were justifiable, whether it be due to away matches, quality opponents, what have you. It was just a very difficult time in our schedule. And we never stepped up. And somewhere in there, in the whole muck of changing managers, players being gone, fans getting too anxious, the players on this squad realize - we're shit and we're going to keep going down. Now - what do they think to themselves? The best case scenario is that we all play well and work hard and stay up and maybe make something of this squad, and the worst case scenario is that I don't give a crap, we'll lose, and since I'm on the National squad, I'll be able to find a job at any of the other premiership teams. I'll leave Newcastle, and pick up somewhere else." And that didn't seem like that bad of an option. These days in any sport, players aren't tied to a team like they were back in the day. They can be gone with a phone call. They know their own value. So since the Titanic had broken its hull, the players said - "I might as well just sit here on the deck at the lowest point and wait for it to sink - because I can see the rescue boats waiting for me."
Well, my friends, in the world of football, Newcastle United Football Club is the Titanic. It's sinking. Ashley, Mort, and Kev Keegan are all up in the captain's deck wiping the sweat off their brow, the players are comfortable in the rescue boats with the string quartets on them, and all us supporters, me included, are the little twirps running like mad just trying to stay above the freezing water levels. And run and struggle as we may - even if we get to the highest point on this junk metal heap of a club - there's no more rescue boats on the horizon, and the only thing we've got to keep us warm is the comfort of knowing that once our frozen bodies sink to the depths of the ice-cold Coca-Cola Championship, we'll be amongst friends - and without any of these prima donna's who put their ugly mugs on the TV every Saturday night and proclaim loyalty to this "Massive Club."