Pardew thinks Toon fans are worth 1 or 2 league places

May 8th, 2012 | 53 Comments |

So, just the one game to go then. And then what are we going to have in terms of football until next season? Well I suppose there’ll be the Euro’s to keep to keep us amused, although I’m finding it hard to raise any enthusiasm for England at the moment. One thing we will have though is a fair few extra fixtures next season thanks to European qualification and, assuming we don’t manage a miracle next weekend, that’s looking like it’ll be the Europa League.

If we finish 5th, we’d start in the Play-Offs, which take place on the 23rd and 30th of August but if we get bumped down to the 3rd qualifier – maybe due to Chelsea winning the Champions League or us only managing to finish 6th – then we’d have two ties ahead of that on the 2nd and 9th of August.

There will of course be plenty of rumours about players leaving and joining during the summer and it will be interesting to see how our squad looks at the end of the summer transfer window, which opens in July. We’ve already had press reports about teams who might ‘swoop’ for our players and on the weekend the press was suggesting Arsenal would be in for taking both Yohan Cabaye and Demba Ba. As is often the case with such reports, no evidence by way of direct quotes from any official at the club has been offered, so it’s probably all tosh. (more…)