Newcastle United Blog.

Gary Speed MBE: 1969 – 2011. With the sad news on Sunday morning of the passing of the ex-Newcastle United midfielder and Wales manager, I thought it would be a nice gesture to post something that would give an opportunity for our readers to reminisce about Speed’s career on Tyneside. I wrote the this article [...]

With the news that Newcastle United will be changing it’s name to “Sports Direct @ St James’ Park”, the Managing Director of the club, Derek Llambias, has sought to reassure fans that the St James’ Park name would remain so long as he and current owner, Mike Ashley “reigned” at the club. Firstly though, he [...]

Eight days ago, the letters which used to make up the famous “Newcastle United” sign were offered for sale on the online auction site EBay, with all proceeds from the sale going towards a night in Asper’s Casino for Mike Ashley, Derek Llambias and Alan Pardew the “Newcastle United Foundation” charity, who in their own [...]

Speaking in a recent interview (here and here) on his “Entertainers” side of the 1990s, ex Newcastle United manager, Kevin Keegan, suggested that his own “Entertainers” side of the ‘nineties were the vanguard for current attacking teams such as Barcelona, Manchester City and Manchester United. Speaking on the eve of a reunion last weekend with [...]

Of course, the League Cup is regarded as the lowest rung of the “major” trophies. Conventional wisdom in the highest echelon of English football, ie the Premiership clubs and especially the top Premiership clubs, is that it gives them a chance to give their precocious bairns who aren’t quite “ready” yet a chance for some [...]

<< Part two. Moving on from part two, it’s now time for the final chapter in the trilogy of articles I have written profiling Shay Given’s time at Newcastle United. Hopefully, it will end on a high and not be resurrected with a 4th instalment some 20 years into the future (Kingdom of the Crystal [...]

<< Part one – Part three >>. Part two: Shay celebrates his 300th game! As Given’s first 5 years at Newcastle came to an end, the 2002-2003 season began with United qualifying for the Champion’s League first group stage after a comfortable 5-0 aggregate win over Bosnia and Herzegovina’s FK Željezničar. At the season’s start, [...]

On arrival at Newcastle United Demba Ba was handed the number 19 shirt, leaving the number 9 shirt vacant. Does this indicate that there are plans to recruit another striker to fill it or is the shirt going to be retired for a while? The Newcastle United number 9 shirt is of course sacred. Leaving [...]

Part two >> Moving on from my previous article on Gary Speed, it is now time to profile another ex Newcastle United legend from the past decade. This time focusing on current Manchester City and Ireland international goalkeeper, Shay Given. Born April 20th 1976 in Lifford, County Donegal, Ireland, Shay started his career at his [...]

This will be the first in a series of threads I am going to write, profiling some of my favourite ex Newcastle players from the last decade, starting with current Wales manager and MBE, Gary Speed. Born in Mancot, Wales on the 8th of September 1969, Speed joined the Magpie’s in 1998 when Kenny Dalglish [...]