Game on! Newcastle v Birmingham.
It's game on against Birmingham City as the Magpies welcome the Blues to St James' Park for what is the final Saturday 3pm kick-off of the campaign.
Hopefully our lads can put a bit more effort into this game after the Anfield debacle last weekend. Now don't get me wrong, I never expected to win that game, but I did expect our team to put up a bit more fight rather than looking they were on their summer jollies already. A win today will go some way to erasing that performance from my mind!
That's the selfish view though. The more important thing that can be achieved today is Premier League safety. What would need to happen is for us to beat Birmingham and for Wigan to fail to beat Aston Villa at Villa Park. Alternatively a draw would do us if Wigan lose. I've personally thought that we've been safe for the last few weeks, but for those who are still concerned about it that is what needs to happen.
The match, much like any Saturday 3pm kick-off, is not scheduled for live TV coverage here in the UK, but it is bring broadcast in quite a few places overseas. With that in mind I would hope that there are a couple of decent streams available so once again, if you stumble across one then please feel free to share it with the rest of us.
I really can't see this game being a goal fest as neither team seem to be able to score at the moment. I wouldn't be surprised if it was 0-0 in all honesty.
Team news is as follows...
Newcastle: Tim Krul, Danny Simspon, Steven Taylor, Fabricio Coloccini, Jose Enrique, Joey Barton, Kevin Nolan, Cheik Tiote, Jonas Gutierrez, Peter Lovenkrands, Shola Ameobi.
Subs: Steve Harper, James Tavernier, Shane Ferguson, Ryan Taylor, Ryan Donaldson, Nile Ranger, Shefki Kuqi.
Birmingham: Ben Foster, Stephen Carr, Roger Johnson, Martin Jiranek, Liam Ridgewell, Sebastian Larsson, Lee Bowyer, Barry Ferguson, Jean Beausejour, Keith Fahey, Cameron Jerome.
Subs: Colin Doyle, Stuart Parnaby, Curtis Davies, David Bentley, Alexander Hleb, Matt Derbyshire, Kevin Phillips.
