Beaker's View

To all those who were prepared to write off Gus Poyet before he'd had a chance to make an impression: How do you like your humble pie ? He was that good that even the east stand got excited enough to break out in a spontaneous ripple of polite applause. Gustavo plays with an intensity and passion that, I think, is what separates ordinary players from players of the quality of Mark Hughes, Dennis Wise and, dare I say it, Roy Keane. He was everywhere on Saturday and even if he hadn't scored the winner, would have been my man of the match (just pipping Dennis Wise).

Gullit again opted for 4-4-2 ( are we seeing a pattern here?) surprisingly favouring Paul Hughes at right back over the available Frank Sinclair, with Myres and Le Boeuf in the Centre and Le Saux at left back. The defense had an eventful afternoon, in the first half it had a nightmare, and in the 2nd, Le Saux excepted, it played extremely well. Unfortunately, the turning point was the early removal of Paul Hughes who has now proved beyond reasonable doubt that he should be played in midfield or in emergencies at wing back but he is no defender, and mercifully for him and everyone else, he was replaced by Frank Sincalir after 20 minutes. After this Newcastle never looked like scoring. By this point however, Thomasen had missed a chance that neither Shearer or Asprilla would have spurned and we were lucky not to be a goal behind.

After this point Shay Given proved himself a great buy for any fantasy team with a series of stops from Poyet and Di Matteo, and Newcastle were let off by a glaring miss from Tore Andre Flo. We were also treated to our first view of Bernie "Burn Baby Burn" Lambourde, who had a patchy game but overall looked skillful and a useful addition to the side. Zola was also playing very well and missed one chance that really should have been buried after he had made Given look like an idiot, but he only found the side netting.

If the first half was quite even, the 2nd was much more one-sided with everything coming from us bar a couple of free kick from the visitors. Its amazing, but once again from the moment Mark Hughes entered the game (once again leaving us with 3 up front) we looked more dangerous and the toon army looked nervous.

We had had a string of corners before Poyet converted one with a great header. After that we looked assured up until the last minute when Ed (Land) De Goey made a save that earned him his pay. To be fair, he had done extremely well all game and seemed prone to none of the flapping normally associated with our 'keepers. Overall it was an extremely open and enjoyable match to watch.

If you read the papers and believe what Ruud says you could be forgiven for thinking that Newcastle hadn't contributed much, but to be fair to them, they played some attractive football up until they got into our penalty area and Batty had a good game in midfield. I don't think either manager could complain about their team's performance as Dalglish would have felt he might have got something from the game had he had Aspilla and Shearer available.

Ratings:

• De Goey: 8 Good game and made some tricky and important saves. Starting to look more confident (though with Anfield next weekend, that confidence is a fragile thing)
• P. Hughes: 5; He will be as glad as everyone else to have been subbed after 25 mins
• Beefy: 7.5; Good game and headed well, made a few of those attacking sorties we know he's capable of.
• Myers: 8; Good god, the boy can play. The fact that I didn't notice him is high praise and, from memory, had only one notable "Myers Moment"
• Le Saux: 6: Had a stinker by his or anyone else's standards. With Baba breathing down his neck he's going to need to work on his crossing or it could be a spell in the stiffs.
• Burn Baby Burn (Lambourde): 8 ; Good game as defensive midfield and some nice touches as well.
• Poyet: 9.5; And a ten from the Uruguayan judge. Best game yet for us and heralds the shape of things to come me thinks. If we are to grind out results when the team are not playing so well it will be Gus and Den who do the grinding!
• Wise: 9: Yet another memorable game and did everything as well as he normally does;
• Bobby D: 6.5; Something missing again though was very steady.
• Flo: 7; That's a generous 7 because for his first half miss he wants shooting but is obviously a skillful player.
• Zola: 9; Ominously moving into form; on this evidence someone's going to be on the wrong end of a game winning performance, and we all know he loves the big occasion. Lets hope it's after Oct. 13th.

Subs:

• Frank Sinclair: 8.5; If he can keep this up he could challenge for the Gary Nevilles England Shirt (And I'm serious)
  * Er, I think you meant "drunk", didn't you ? - Priesty *
  I really hope Gullit has the good sense to keep playing him at right back as he is obviously very comfortable in this role.
• Hughes: 7; Just being on the pitch is sometimes enough.

Overall: 7.5 Never really showed what we're capable of but a vital 3 points.

"Honest, I never saw a thing, Guv"

Priesty was away at a Chelsea fan from Taunton's 60th birthday for this game. It was well worth it, the guy was really chuffed that we'd missed a game to surprise him on his birthday. We took him down the new home shirt, he did an impromptu strip-tease before putting it on and refusing to take it off for the rest of the evening, juvenile delinquent that he is. I sincerely hope I'm the same when I'm sixty.

The worst part of it was having to listen to radio 5 live for updates while driving down the M4 - they kept going to Ryder Cup commentary - have you ever listened to golf on the radio ????? Still, they kept us entertained with comedy, they had the Man City - Swindon game live ;-)