Pain at the Lane! Tottenham 5-0 Newcastle

Newcastle took on Tottenham last night knowing that a win would take them to a lofty fourth place in the Premier League.

However what happened next demonstrated the gulf in class between us and a true top for team as we came up against a rampant Tottenham outfit who put Alan Pardew's men to the sword.

Tottenham were outstanding in all honesty. With pace and creativity all over the park they got through us time and time again and unfortunately that was reflected in the 5-0 scoreline. While Pardew got it wrong in my view, I'm not blinkered enough (unlike some) to put the blame solely at the feet of the manager. The players should take their fair share of the blame, especially in defence.

The game started off bad and only went in one direction from then on. Newcastle found themselves two down within the opening six minutes thanks to goals from Benoit Assou-Ekotto and Louis Saha and four goals down after 34 minutes, Louis Saha again and Niko Kranjcar doing the damage. The scary thing is that it could have been even worse!

The second half resembled a training exercise in truth. Tottenham coasted but you could tell they had an extra gear to slip into if they required. The duly made it 5-0 through Emmanuel Adebayor - who had a hand in the first four goals - just after the hour mark as he volleyed past Tim Krul.

Newcastle had their chances. A penalty was turned down at 2-0 and Demba Ba and Dan Gosling had efforts late on, aswell as Gabriel Obertan who registered our only on target effort of the first half, but the reality is that Tottenham were sublime and could have beaten anyone last night.

However that shouldn't detract from the fact that our players were poor. To a man they virtually all underperformed with the only credit I'm willing to give going to Demba Ba and Papiss Cisse, but only because the rest of the team were awful/Tottenham were awesome and never gave our strikers anything to work off.

Some consolation was the fact that other results went our way. We're still one point off fourth place and three points clear of sixth although it has to be said that fourth place is not where we're likely to end up at the end of the season.

A bad day at the office all round, and I'd like to apologise for the delay in the match report although I do have a small story which will cheer some people up. Essentially the delay is because I was working yesterday and couldn't watch the match, so I've had to watch it again to form an opinion on it before typing this out. Why did I miss the match? Simple... Because I'd broken down near Bristol with a coach load of Tottenham fans who had tickets to the match on board. It made me smile anyway!

We have two weeks without a game now. An ideal window to regroup ready to face Wolves at St James' Park in a fortnight, with a refreshed Yohan Cabaye and an influential Cheik Tiote back in the ranks we'll give a much better account of ourselves after stewing on this defeat for a while I'm sure.

Howay the lads!

Tottenham: Friedel, Walker, Dawson, King, Assou-Ekotto, Krancjar, Parker, Modric, Bale, Saha, Adebayor

Subs: Defoe, Nelsen, Cudicini, Khumalo, Lennon, Rose, Livermore

Newcastle: Krul, Simpson, Williamson, Coloccini, Santon, Obertan, Guthrie, Perch,Gutierrez, Ba, Cisse

Subs: Elliot, Ferguson, Gosling, Abeid, Ben Arfa, Lovenkrands, Shola