Well, it was only Stoke so we musn’t get carried away - especially given our ‘unreasonable expectations’ - but, despite playing with 10 men for an hour.

We saw more football from the black ‘n whites tonight than we’ve seen in all the games combined so far this season, and perhaps half of last season too - full committment all round, and some really encouraging passages of play.

The massive area of improvement tonight was our ball…

When two United with different class meet last night, the only possible result was another heavy defeat for one of them, and without have to think hard it was for Newcastle.

But, as a Newcastle fan no matter how predictable the result is, it was still hurt me badly to see how the team going on so far after last Wednesday’s Big Sam parted company with Newcastle. I was wondering what the result would be if…

January in the north east of England can throw up vicious weather and that’s what we had last night. The wind was blowing a paddy and it pissed down in the last ten minutes.

The pitch has a rugby team and a non-league football team playing games on it together with the reserves. The pitch is no better than a bog, well maybe slightly better because the mackems coped.

Therefore two teams tried to play against each…

After 10mins tooing and froing, we had a decent 20 minutes spell where we kept the ball and probed for openings. We created only one, which Owen bottled with the keeper closing on him. Stoke seemed to realise they had little to fear, and gradually took control.

From our perspective, the 2nd half was an abomination: we were truly appalling. While I’m not really feeling charitable, it looked to me as though fatigue may have contributed…

What would be the better option for next season? I personally believe we should stick with Sam Allardyce. I understand why others don’t. But quite frankly it won’t make a jot of difference to the outcome of this season. We need to be realistic in this sense.

But I’m still optomistic about next season if we let things settle down for a while and really focus on what is positive and think about what it is…