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Date: Sat 28th April 2001 3pm. Venue: St.James' Park  Conditions: Pleasant, dry, calm

Newcastle United	1 - 0	Leicester
Half time:	0 - 0
Score Sheet:
Cort (90)
	Teams
Given Barton O'Brien Dabizas Quinn Acuna Bassedas Speed Glass Cort Gallacher		Flowers Impey Davidson Rowett Marshall Delaney Lewis Jones Guppy Akinbiyi Sturridge
Substitutes:
LuaLua for Bassedas (76) Ameobi for Gallacher (67)		Gunnlaugsson for Sturridge (61) Oakes for Jones (50) Benjamin for Akinbiyi (84)
Subs not used:
Harper Cordone Hughes		Royce Dudfield
Bookings:
Cort (45)		Sturridge (58)
Referee: Graham Poll (Tring)
Attendance: 50,501. We have our doubts as to whether this was the actual number of people in the stadium. Put it this way, we were surprised the attendance broke 50k. Is it season ticket renewal time??

Half time: Newcastle 0 Leicester 0

90 mins. Cort swung a leg and his shot was heading vaguely goalwards with Flowers almost certain to save. En route it hit Gary Rowett and left Flowers helpless as it found the bottom-left corner. United's players celebrated but looked somewhat embarrassed. 1-0

Full time: Newcastle 1 Leicester 0

A clearly relieved Mick Wadsworth said: 

On another day, we could have come close to repeating the seven goal feat that blew away Leicester in our final First Division game, but were ultimately grateful for an injury-time og to claim maximum points.

While wins have been elusive since our brief purple patch round the turn of the year, the gaining of this particular three points was hollow to the point of being almost embarrassing. The trumpeting of Mick Wadsworth in the post-match press conference didn't help matters, as he appeared to believe we'd played well - in truth we barely played at all.....

A Foxes team so under-strength that had they been Boro, they wouldn't boarded their bus were able to keep our brave boys at bay, thanks mainly to Tim Flowers in the City goal. As an attacking force, they were virtually non-existent, but came up against a Newcastle side who were in remarkably unimaginative mode.

In many respects, our performance continued in the vein of the mackem display, but shorn of the partisan atmosphere and localised pride at stake last week, our display was as inspiring as watching the test card. Shirts were never going to be thrown to the crowd after this one..... 

For some strange reason, the soon to be ex-Newcastle winger Stephen Glass was given a run, according to the local press "to put him in the shop window." How nice of Newcastle to allow the underachiever to try and impress potential new employees from the luxury of our first team - it certainly won't be our shop till that rings, the player being out of contract and available on a free in a matter of weeks. To anyone not yet convinced that Bobby is right to let him leave, his fitful performance would surely have provided ample evidence that he isn't English Premiership class. Talk of numerous Scottish clubs waiting to take him on tells it's own story.

Over on the other wing, at least Bassedas had the excuse that he was playing out of position, with Solano suspended and his alleged understudy Gavilan deemed fit only to play in a match against the crew of HMS Newcastle 24 hours earlier. With Premiership record appearance holder Speed looking like he'd played every one of those 318 games without a break (one free kick aside), it was left to Acuna to provide the most resistance in the midfield area against a wall of back-pedalling blue shirts.

Up front, we consistently struggled to string together passes and manoevure the ball into dangerous areas, with over-reliance on the dubious passing abilities of messrs Barton and Quinn. Lamping the ball in a vaguely forward direction from the halfway line isn't my idea of a quality service, and the two forwards seemed to agree, both Gallacher and Cort dropping deeper and deeper to pick up possession.

All of this may seem a tad mean, given that we not only kept our first clean sheet since September, but also claimed a second home win in succession, made it three games unbeaten and nudged our way into the top ten. However, we were playing against a team in the biggest rut of their history, who started with ten fit players (Jones having been pressed back into service when far from ready), and numerous others playing out of position. One worries what scoreline a good team might have inflicted upon City, even Boro rolling over them 3-0 the previous week.  

As for their alleged "striker" Ade Akinbiyi, the only thing he has in common with his predecessor Heskey is the Filbert street car park space he uses. If Peter Taylor is so keen on buying non-league players, he could surely pick up someone as adept in the Unibond league for rather less than the outrageous £5m that Wolves pocketed. 

While people continue to pat us on the head and be satisfied with scraps from the table like this game and the point from the draw at Bradford, we'll continue to play meaningless fixtures in front of an increasingly bored crowd, a significant proportion of whom preferred to find out the final score on the TV's in Dixon's window and left early, missing the goal. 

Bobby's absence from this game to pursue foreign transfer targets suggests that he is only too well aware of the fact that his present squad isn't capable of taking him where we believes we can go. Unfortunately, while Cort and O'Brien are contributing to the team, some of Bobby's other purchases simply aren't. Spending wads of cash is no guarantee of success as we've found in the past. 

Perhaps a few afternoons spent watching old videos of toon performances might be as useful to the players, with an enlightened tutor to point out important areas that are at present being neglected - like quality crosses, movement off the ball, shaking off markers and other such skills. One or two of the more recent arrivals may in turn notice that many of the match videos seem to have interference on the soundtrack - that's atmosphere lads, the sound of geordies spontaneously gravitating from their seats to shout and sing, inspired by the entertainment on the park. Unfortunately, that particular spectacle seems as much part of the St.James' Park past as floodlight pylons ands wagonwheels.   

In an increasingly uninspired league, we fit in well at present.

Biffa

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