Safety!

SAFETY!

Hooray! So the Toon have been spared the ignominy of being relegated circa 2009 following their overnight (in these parts anyway) win against QPR.

This is what websites from Soccernet to the geezers at NUFC.com are telling me despite the slightly unnerving reading of the Table on my part showing that Wigan can hypothetically match our current 41 points if they win their remaining two games in hand and we should end up losing our remaining game at home to Arsenal. The Goal Difference is similar territory as well.

Nevertheless, thanks to some brain-snaps to Jose Basingwa in defence for QPR and not necessarily our own industry, we nevertheless prevailed to record a vital win that apparently secures our top-flight status after an all-to-close ‘dalliance with death’ so to speak.

Indeed, a quick glance at the Premier League Table reveals Newcastle have the potential capability to make the financial dizzying climb above West Ham up into tenth. I’m not sure what the EPL financial reward allocation are for each position these days but hopefully whatever comes our way is convincing enough for Mike Ashley to loosen the purse strings over the off-season.

Achieving tenth will be a tall order given we play Arsenal who are in a fierce fight with arch-rivals Tottenham for fourth spot and the UCL qualifying spot that comes as a prize.

My memory of the season will be of a quite decent start in August and September, which began to unravel from October when a mix of injuries, suspensions and fixture congestion began to take their toll. 

The form around Christmas was such that of all the matches Newcastle played during my brief visit to England at the time, I managed to attend only game that the Toon managed to conjure up win during my brief visit.

At the end of the day a bittersweet irony to Rob Eliot’s sending off is that Steve Harper will be able to play out the final match in front of a St James Park crowd. 

One can feel for Harper in a way, I recall the time in the late 90’s when it was very hard to pick the difference between he and Shay Given, but Given went to another level while Harper was unavailable and Harper was on the bench for some of the clubs best years during the reign of Sir Bobby.

In the latter years, one of the unfortunate elements of his lack of first team football was that he was unable to take advantage of the fact that the English goalkeeping stocks became diluted to such a degree that teams on the lower end of the table were the homes of some of the national teams squad keepers.

Through all that though, my over-arching memory of Harper was one of ‘comfort’.

This was in the sense that if our first choice keeper were ever to get injured or sent off, I always felt comfortable we would have a competent replacement ready to fill their gloves in an instant.

Santa gave me a 1-0 win over QPR for Christmas!

Speaking of relegation, a curious sidenote of the QPR game is the fate of a certain Loic Remy, the fellow who turned down the overtures of Newcastle during the January transfer market to take up Harry Redknapp’s absurdly high offer.

I think a quote from my very own father to the effect that “it really tells you something the day we are outbid by QPR of all clubs” best epitomised that issue for me. 

This of course was on top of the fact that it was Redknapps comments as Tottenham manager revealing buyout clause value of 7 million pounds that began the unsettling of Demba Ba.

It was a good feeling to have ended up being able to do the double over Redknapps QPR (more the Redknapp part) – with our safety from relegation being confirmed against Redknapp and Remy and oh...QPR.

So, Redknapp is going to have to take a pay cut, Fernandes has to get to grips with Financial Fair Play regulations governing Championship clubs and as for Remy, it is highly likely he will seeking a reasonable pay day elsewhere.

The result is probably better for QPR as well, I'm sure their fans don't want their club to end up like Bradford City.