West Brom 1-3 Newcastle - Match highlights

Match highlights of the rather impressive 3-1 victory at The Hawthorns for you all to enjoy now, including a scintillating performance from one Hatem Ben Arfa.

Quite simply Newcastle blew West Brom away with a superb first half performance. We've been due one for a while and yesterday everything just seemed to click as we raced into a three goal lead thanks to two strikes from Papiss Cisse and one from Hatem Ben Arfa. Enjoy!

That win puts us eight point clear of Liverpool in 7th, ten points clear of Sunderland in 8th and means that we are now level on pints with 5th placed Chelsea, who only stay above us on goal difference. It also guarantees us our best points return on a Premier League season since 2006 and takes us over the 50 point barrier.

However the victory was tinged with some bad news for us as Fabricio Coloccini looks to have dome something to his hamstring which could rule him out for two or three games, which is of course a blow. Mike Williamson has been shaky recently but I'm going to go against popular opinion and say that, yesterday anyway, he had a fairly decent game bar a couple of incidents - most notably with the goal conceded, although I would argue that it is a goalkeepers job to command the penalty area and I've seen no evidence of Tim Krul doing just that yesterday. Where was the shout? Anyway, you have to think now that our season hinges on what we can do while Coloccini is out. It's pointless moaning about it as it can't be changed now, it should have been changed in January of course buy hey ho.

Let's not let that overshadow what was a fantastic away performance though. At times we were brilliant, better than I can remember us being for a number of years in fact and it was a joy to watch. At 3-0 up I was still nervous, and those nerves grew at 3-1, but realistically we were never in danger of losing that lead and could have added two more through good chances for Papiss Cisse and Hatem Ben Arfa.

It's the bindippers next at St James' Park, and you really get the feeling that it is a "must win" game for them if they are to catch us up and finish in the top six. As Archie Mag said yesterday, 6th is ours to lose.

Howay the lads!