Home wins can save Newcastle United from relegation

Apr 21 2009 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

Newcastle United have won just four league games at St James’s Park all season, so why would anyone expect them to win their next three on the trot? Chief sports writer Luke Edwards reports

NEWCASTLE United have looked at their last three home games of this heart-wrenching Premier League campaign like a small toddler clinging on tightly to a teddy bear.

These final three games at St James’s Park have been the one constant cause for comfort during every single one of the litany of disappointments, failures and catastrophes that have befallen this most troubled of football clubs in recent months.

It has been both a security blanket as the skin-crawling fear of relegation has gradually intensified with each passing week, and it has been the supposedly reliable safety net as yet more must-win games have been and gone without a win for a team which has managed to take under-achievement at Newcastle to a new level.

If the Magpies, with Alan Shearer in charge, had three home games left against moderate opposition like Fulham, Middlesbrough and on Monday night, Portsmouth, then surely their survival bid would be nine points better off as a result.

Fine in theory, but when has anything gone to plan this season? Whether it was the sudden and controversial departure of Kevin Keegan, pictured, the supposedly sophisticated European management structure which drove him out, the planned sale of the club by owner Mike Ashley, Joe Kinnear’s health problems, or the shamefully naive decision to leave Chris Hughton in charge as caretaker manager twice in one season, nothing has panned out well.

In the perfect world, all three games would bring morale-boasting victories, nine priceless points and another magnificent chapter of the Shearer legend, but if the world was perfect, we probably would not have any need for football to distract us in the first place.

Nevertheless, what is life without hope? It may as well be death, and the bottom line is nobody at Newcastle United can afford to give up at this stage. “It’s tough mentally, but you have to stay focused on the hard challenge we have over the next five games,” said Habib Beye, perhaps the one player to emerge from the 1-0 defeat by Tottenham Hotspur with any lasting credit.

“There are 15 points we can get and we start again on Monday. Mentally everybody must be strong because we have the points available to us.

“If we get those 15 points, we will be safe and we have to remember that. I think it’s really important we stay focused on what we have to do to get out of this.

“It was disappointing and frustrating not to get anything at Tottenham because we are four points behind the team which is fourth from bottom, but we have five games still to get out of this.” Big and bold predictions have fallen flat time and time again this season, whether it was the trips to Bolton Wanderers or Hull City or the home games against Wigan, Stoke, Blackburn Rovers and, of course, Hull City again.