Damian Duff made his long awaited Newcastle come back last night in a behind closed doors friendly. Duff played about 70 minutes and capped his return with a goal, meaning he should be back in first teams plans before very long.
The Fulham game will obviously be too soon for the Irish winger, but he should be pushing for a squad place for the Derby match Sunday week. Hopefully he’ll bring the creativity that Newcastle are desperately seeking at the moment and I for one am looking forward to him linking up with the likes of Barton and Milner in supplying the bullets for Matins, Viduka and Owen. The later too is pushing for a place in the squad to face Derby after a spell on the treatment table, so it could be all guns blazing when the Rams visit St James next week.
Switching the focus to more pressing matters and the trip to a cottage in South West London to face a Fulham side who aren’t exactly performing that well of late. Fulham have lost their last two matches while Newcastle have had a couple of good results, what with the draw against the Gooners and a somewhat fortuitous win against the Brum. This has lifted the mounting pressure off Big Sam, but a slip against a struggling Fulham side on Saturday, albeit away from home, and that pressure will engulf the Magpie boss once more, making his Christmas less then merry.
Luckily for Sam though, Newcastle (without actually knowing it) will be taking their Premier League good luck charm, and that, or he should I say, comes in the form of ME. I have yet to witness Newcastle get beat in the Premier league home or away or in fact any domestic or European cup game. I know over the recent years that I have only been to a handful of games, however, the games I have seen have been against some of the big guns in the league, Arsenal (twice), Liverpool, Chelsea, Man U (twice), Spurs (four times) plus quite a few of the more lesser teams. I was a regular during the Keegan era but once I moved doon Sooth and played Saturday league football I only got to see my beloved team two or three times a year. This may sound like I’m a glory hunter as a lot of the St James park massive currently undoubtedly are (as we didn’t always have 52k fans at a home game), but, I was at every home game bar two during the mighty promotion season and rarely missed a game the two or three seasons before that, being part of Jim Smith and Ossie Ardiles ‘Black and White Army’, witnessing near relegation into the then third division to boot, not to mention the many freezing cold, wet, midweek anglo-itanlian cup and other mickey mouse cup fixtures.
Anyhow, I’m off to Fulham with a ramble of Toon fans and some non-believers for jolly all day session in the smoke and will hopefully keep my non-losing streak going. My prediction 3-1 away win the Toon with Barton notching his first goal for his new club.
Up the Toon.
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