Results from the Coca-Cola Championship
Saturday 12th September
- Coventry 1 Bristol City 1
- C Palace 0 Scunthorpe 4
- Derby 0 Sheff Utd 1
- Leicester 2 Blackpool 1
- Middlesbrough 3 Ipswich 1
- Preston 2 Swansea 0
- QPR 1 Peterborough 1
- Reading 0 Doncaster 0
- Sheff Wed 1 Nottm Forest 1
- Watford 1 Barnsley 0
- West Brom 3 Plymouth 1
Latest Table
Prior to Toon Match
Position |
Team |
P |
GD |
PTS |
1 |
West Brom |
6 |
6 |
14 |
2 |
Middlesbrough |
6 |
8 |
13 |
3 |
Newcastle |
5 |
7 |
13 |
4 |
Preston |
6 |
7 |
12 |
5 |
Sheff Utd |
6 |
5 |
12 |
6 |
Leicester |
6 |
2 |
11 |
7 |
Bristol City |
6 |
0 |
11 |
8 |
Cardiff |
5 |
7 |
10 |
Takeover You Can Not Be Serious
The Mail, Saturday and Charlie Sale's wrote this:
The marathon takeover saga at Newcastle took another twist on Friday night with a New York investment fund dealing direct with owner Mike Ashley in an attempt to fast-track the sale of the club.
It has been claimed their negotiations had reached the stage of a sale and purchase agreement with the Americans, having satisfied Ashley they have the necessary £100million funding to complete the deal.
But the situation — as ever during Ashley’s regime — is by no means clear as the Americans, represented by Manchester law firm Halliwells, are bypassing the official selling agents Seymour Pierce and conducting their business with Ashley’s London legal advisers Travers Smith.
The middle man in the deal is businessman Geoff Sheard, a former commercial director at Preston, who has kept in the background to avoid any publicity after an attempt to buy Sheffield Wednesday proved unsuccessful.
Stockbrokers Seymour Pierce don’t regard Sheard as a serious buyer, having not been satisfied with his proof of funding.
But a spokesperson for Ashley said last night that Sheard’s consortium were being treated as genuine buyers, yet had ground to make up on Newcastle businessman Barry Moat’s bid.
Blackburn U18 2 Newcastle U18 1
NUFC: Johnson, Newton, Dummett, McDermott (Liam Henderson 77), Tavernier, Folan, McCrudden (Spear 55), McLaughlin, Airey, Inman, Ameobi. Subs n/u: Mogwo, Dan Tayor, Page
Kevin Nolan Tales from Janauary
talking to The Times he said:
“From the first day we got back in training, Chris didn’t know what was going on and he brought us together and told us that.
He said, ‘I don’t know if I’ll be here next week and neither do you. Half the lads in this room could be gone’. You’ve got to take your hat off to the man for saying that he is just one huge, genuine fella.”
“What we are is a decent bunch of lads who are trying our best and the fans have taken to us. We are getting some respect back and if we can get back into the Barclays Premier League, we have such a good core of lads that you’d only have to bring in five or six players and you could continue to build.
“No disrespect, but we could end up like a Leeds, Charlton or Southampton unless we get things right. The club has been at the top for a long time, but it doesn’t mean if you spend a lot of money on the best players, you have a divine right to be in the Premier League. We proved that last year. Now it’s about us making sure we get back up there.
“I’ve been a part of some great dressing rooms at Bolton, and most of the time that gets you results. You can come away from a Manchester United or a Liverpool with a 0-0 draw. When I first came here, I thought ‘we never, ever get scrappy 0-0s away from home, or win 1-0 at home despite playing badly’. That never happened. That’s what I’ve found in the last six months.
“After we went down, we all sat around a table and asked ourselves, ‘where do we want to go?’ We all agreed that while we are here, we have to give 110 per cent. We said, ‘anyone who wants to leave, tell us now and you can go’. But everyone stuck their hand up and said ‘no – we want to be a part of this’. It has brought us tighter together.
“We have even had Championship managers who have never been in the Premier League slating us. It’s been laughable. So every time we play against those teams it will be in the back of our heads. We’ve just say to ourselves, ‘let’s prove them wrong’.
“I still can’t believe that Newcastle are in the Championship, but we are. When we lost against Aston Villa and were relegated, I went out with my dad on the Monday and had a few pints. We had a talk and I said, ‘I still can’t believe it’. All the players were devastated.
“He said, ‘What are you going to do, son?’ I said, ‘I’m going to get us back up as quickly as possible’. The only thing that matters to me is what goes on in the dressing room, nothing else. Everyone in there wants to come to work.”
“I had a few good years at Bolton, but that’s gone now. This year is all about trying to prove that I am a Premier League player and that I deserve to be there. We’ve started well, but we’ve not proved anything yet. We can only prove things at the end of the season. The only time I can say I deserve to be a Premier League player again is when we get back there. I was part of the team that took us down, and nobody thinks they deserve to be in the Premier League in our dressing-room right now. They need to prove it.
“You don’t ever win titles or anything in the first month of the season. We’ve made a great start, but there is so long to go. We have to prove ourselves again and again and again.
“There is something in the dressing room this season. I think it is going to be very hard to break us. Hopefully, I’m right. All the staff have been brilliant, even though they haven’t really known whether they are coming or going. There has been some mayhem this summer, I’d agree. But the lads have just got down to work.
“You can’t have an ego if you’ve just been relegated from the Premier League. No one can blame anyone else, because we’ve all been a part of that team. Some people say, ‘You’re not to blame’, but I was the one that got sent off against Everton and I played ten games or so after I came here in January. So I was a major part of what happened last season.
“I’ve told the players that we will always be remembered as the players that took Newcastle out of the Premier League. After we had come back after the summer, I said to them, ‘Now, we can be remembered as the players that took the club back’. That is my view of where we are at.”
“I just admire them (the fans) for the loyalty they’ve shown the club and the passion they bring. We have to thank the fans every day for their support. We’re averaging over 40,000 and we sell out every away ground wherever we go. That’s the way these fanatical fans are.
“Sam Allardyce at Bolton said, ‘If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for your family’. But when you come up here, you can add the fans to that list as well. They work hard to come and watch us and to try to have a good weekend and they’ve probably not had many of those for a while. Hopefully, in the last month, they’ve had something to smile about. I hope things get sorted and we can get this great football club back to where it belongs.”
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