We won't panic despite festive blip, says Ryan Taylor

Dec 30 2009 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal

RYAN Taylor has admitted Newcastle United did not get what they were hoping for over Christmas, but the versatile Merseysider will be delighted if their current run of form is “as bad as it gets”.

The Magpies went into the Christmas programme with a 10-point lead in the Championship, only to see it whittled down to six by West Bromwich Albion, who have a game in hand.

Newcastle drew both their festive matches against relegation-threatened opposition. And, while Taylor concedes they were targeting maximum points, he is in no mood to panic.

“We had a meeting before Christmas and targeted six points from the two matches, but unfortunately that didn’t happen,” said Taylor, who was unfortunate not to open the scoring in Monday’s 0-0 draw with Derby. “It’s important to keep things in perspective. Yes, it’s a wobble, but if this is as bad as it gets all season, I think we’ll all take that and be happy. We were all disappointed in the dressing room after the Derby game.

“We’ve drawn two games of football and are still 11 games unbeaten. We’d won seven or eight before we won these two games, so we can’t really grumble about the situation in which we find ourselves. We’re still top of the league by quite a few points.”

Both Sheffield Wednesday and Derby showed great fighting spirit to upset the odds in the past few days. Taylor realises it is the sort of challenge which comes with the territory when leading a division.

“Maybe it is a bit of a reminder about just how competitive this league is,” he said. “Derby are fighting for points like everyone. They might not be having a great season, but they need points for survival and we’re going to run into quite a lot of teams like that in the second half of the season. I’m sure this was just one of those games where we couldn’t score.