Black and White Addicks

AAn interesting article on how a modern day football club seeks to keep discipline and injury free players while in the youth academy using an ‘old fashioned’ ploy;

Click here to see the article from BBC Sport

The IPL

Most people who know me, know I am a traditionalist when it comes to formats of cricket.

I love test cricket and wholeheartedly believe it to be the purest and most exhilirating form of the game, but I've been watching a fair amount of the Indian Premier League these last few weeks, and I think it is absolutely fantastic.

Great hits, great cricketers, and best of all, great catches.

Check this one out from David Hussey, my favourite catch so far...

This sort of cricket is wonderful, but I'm still more excited about the test cricket on offer in 2010. Bangladesh hop over briefly at the end of the month, followed by Pakistan, and then Strauss and his men pack their bags to go and give those Aussies a royal beating down under in December.

Black and White Army March On

Well, I’ll be honest here; this is undoubtedly the best season in a long time to be a Newcastle fan. I can’t remember these dizzy heights of joy since the Sir Bobby Robson reign.

For those of you far too interested in the higher echelons of English football to even warrant a glance at the Coca-Cola Championship, the Magpies are five points clear of second-place West Bromich Albion, and ten points and a game-in-hand above third placed Nottingham Forest with just eight games to go in the current season.

The season has gone through the motions with minimal fuss so far this season. At the beginning of the season, Alan Shearer declared that he was interested in what seemed to be a vacant manager’s hot seat at St James’ Park (or is that Sportsdirect.com@ St James Park Stadium?), but Chris Hughton has made the ‘poisoned chalice’ his with spectacular consistency in both performance and results, which has been lacking for a number of years.

Roberto Di Matteo’s West Brom have been superb on the attack, but questions are still be asked of their shaky defence which has seen them leak 42 goals in defence, in comparison to the 28 that Newcastle have let through.

It represents a remarkable turn-around in fortunes for the back four at St James’ Park. During Newcastle’s 17-year stay in the top flight, defence was the constant source of criticism from pundits all over the media. To name but a few of the defenders famous for leaking goals; Titus Bramble, Jean-Alain Boumsong, Craig Moore, Oguchi Onyewu, Claudio Cacapa, Olivier Bernard and many more.

But now stability has been found. Can it be retained in the Premier League next season? Only time will tell. Either way, it’s been a great season.

The authoritative voice of Nigel Adkins, Scunthorpe United manager, commented after their recent 3-0 loss to the Magpies; "That's a Premier League side you have just seen out there, end of story, so we don't need to get too disillusioned about the result because that is a Premier League side and a very, very good one."

While it is nice to hear of the fear that Hughton’s men are instilling in opposition teams, I cannot help but disagree with Adkins on this matter. We may just about qualify for Premier League quality at a stretch, but to say we are a ‘very, very good one’ is complete hyperbole. Andrew Carroll, Peter Lovenkrands, Nile Ranger, Leon Best and Shola Ameobi represent an astounding strike force in the Championship, but move them up a league and they are distinctly, distinctly average.

Looking back on my previous blog post about Premier League relegation, I still think that Burnley, Hull and Portsmouth will be ejected based on a lack of quality and ability to win matches that really matter. These three teams currently occupy the bottom three, and Burnley have been in absolute freefall since Owen Coyle left, and any side with an away form of one point out of a possible 48 is asking an improbable task from their home form to keep them up.