Dan Burn refuses to give up on Newcastle's European dream

The Newcastle United players are still fighting for the club with just three games to go in this season.

There have been plenty of suggestions from fans lately that Newcastle's players are 'on the beach' already and have given up on this campaign, and honestly, looking at the recent run of results, it's hard to argue with that assessment.

Last week against Arsenal, the team and style of play were much improved, but the result didn't follow. This week, Newcastle got the result, but the performance wasn't quite there. We'd obviously much prefer the points, and the fact that Newcastle nabbed a late goal to seal the win today shows that while they struggled in the second half, they never gave up.

There was a moment during the game after Newcastle had scored where Dan Burn rushed to the dugout to give a big hug to Eddie Howe and Jason Tindall, which was a good show that at least some of the players are fighting for the gaffer.

The players are still eyeing Europe

Bruno Guimaraes spoke after the game about his aspirations of getting back into Europe, and Dan Burn echoed those sentiments in an interview with Sporty TV on X when he was asked if they could still get into one of the competitions.

"Yeah, you never know. I think we're going to have to get maximum points if we want it. I know we've got three games coming up, but three games that we think we can win.

"I'd like to think if we do that we'd be able to nick it, but it's disappointing on our side that we've left it this late to have that push."

From relegation fight to Europe - what a weird season

Last week, we were panicking about being sucked into a relegation battle, and now we're back talking about potentially getting into Europe. It really is a funny old game.

We really need to be in Europe next season in some form or another just to keep our momentum going, and more crucially for financial reasons. Not to mention how it makes recruitment that little bit easier.

There's still part of me that thinks we'd be better off without Europe for a season, just so we can focus on domestic competitions and adding to the squad so that we are more prepared for Europe the following season. It's a catch-22 situation, though. 

Ideally, let's just get into one of the Europa competitions and win the whole ruddy thing!