I once thought that Newcastle’ new owner Mike Ashley has matched with most of the Toon Army expectations of how this club should be leading to, but several of disagreements from Toon directors especially with previous manager, this club has relegation battle for months.

And after Keegan wrote off United’s chances next season to closing the gap with the Premier League’s elite, Mike Ashley is starting to speak about Toon summer spending with King Kev.

Keegan also branding the League as one of the world’s “most boring” competitions. He insisting we were a “million miles” away from the top four and there’s nothing he can do next year to get near them unless Ashley backed him with major investment in the transfer market.

“I haven’t got enough money and I wouldn’t be able to get the players anyway, so I’ll soldier on.” Keegan said on Telegraph site, “Maybe the owner thinks we can bridge that gap - but we can’t. This League is in danger of becoming one of the most boring but great leagues in the world. The top four next year will be the same top four as this year.”

I believe Mike Ashley has the pride of the Tyne, and if that is the reason why he invite Keegan for a talk, it would be something that would be good benefit for this club future and not the other way end.

Telegraph said, Keegan is understood to have angered Ashley with his remarkably downbeat assessment of the club’s future and in particular the claim that they were “a million miles away” from the top four. I don’t see any reason why Ashley should get mad about what Keegan said.

Ashley was there, at St. James’s Park last Monday when he witnesses the lack of quality in Newcastle squad against the top four team. He also seen how we’re heavily beaten by Manchester United or Liverpool before, so Keegan is trying to wake him up about the current Premier League reality, he was simply being realistic.

From the news today, Keegan wants £80millions to strengthen his squad next season. For me, that amount of money is nothing if we compare to how much the Chelsea’s owner is providing to pursue Lionel Messi from Barcelona with the same amount of money that Keegan want to spends this summer to push for a place in Europe next season.

Kevin Keegan also confirmed on Tuesday that Stephen Carr, Peter Ramage and James Troisi will leave the club at the end of the season. That would make our team even more thinner, we need immediate action very soon from Ashley or we could face another bad season to come.

Howay Ashley! Keegan loves this club, and he will use your money for good and will not waste it like any other Toon previous managers!

Well, now we know the answer. Despite giving Chelsea a helluva battle with a highly creditable 1st half performance, we were steam-rollered in the 2nd half and ultimately couldn’t live with a team in the Champions League Final and within a breath of stealing the Premier League from ManU.

It’s difficult to know what happened during the half time break to so utterly change the course of the game. Certainly without Viduka we seemed to lose all shape and organisation, and never really got back into the game from the restart.

We had worked extremely hard during the first 45 minutes, and seemed unable to continue making the telling runs, retain good possession, or provide support to the man in possession thereafter. John Terry revealed that Avram Grant had given his team a real rollicking at half time, so perhaps it was simply down to Chelsea moving up a gear or two.

Whatever the reason, the 2nd half was a real disappointment after such a thrilling opening 45mins. To be fair to Chelsea, they were excellent during the opening 30 minutes of that 2nd half, during which we were totally overrun in midfield.

I thought Taylor, Butt and Owen were our best performers on the day, although Martins caused Chelsea problems in the 1st half. Taylor handled Drogba terrifically well, and perhaps deserved his official MOTM award.

Butt had an excellent 1st half, being involved in almost everything for us, but like most of the others rather faded in the 2nd half. Owen worked his socks off all over the pitch. He missed a couple of difficult half-chances, but had a goal-bound shot cleared off the line by Terry.

I thought we ultimately lost it in midfield, where Barton in particular was poor, barely making a telling contribution in the entire 90mins. Smith ended up in midfield – I think. He was truly dreadful. We seemed to start the 2nd half in 4-4-2 with Martins and Smith playing up front.

With Chelsea running all over us, Smith dropped back into midfield leaving Martins on his own up front. This left us with no ‘out’ ball, and effectively conceding possession to Chelsea time and time again.

Tbph, I’m not sure what else we could have done in the circumstances, but I felt we’d have been better off telling Smith to stay forward, occupy Terry and Carvalho, and hopefully hold up the ball to allow others to get forward when we had possession.

As always, Smith was utterly useless in midfield, and we couldn’t possibly have been any worse off had he stayed up front with Martins foraging. There again…

Regarding Kevin Keegan, I didn’t see his post-match interview, but almost everything he is saying publicly right now concern me. I really don’t think he is happy with the management support behind the scenes at St. James’s Park, and I’m becoming increasingly concerned that, having kept the club in the Premier League, he may throw in the towel unless he starts getting the support he feels he needs.

One of his his most recent quotes is something like - “my relationship with Mike Ashley is perfect - I never speak to him”. Read into that what you will.

This was a game that provided us with a reality check, if one was needed, and confirmed just how far behind the Top 3 we really are. At our very best we can give them a game: drop below our very best by even a couple of percents and we are snookered.

For me, the game confirmed what I already knew – we have improved immeasurably under King Kev, but our midfield, in particular, is nowhere near good enough to take us back into the Top 6.

PS: nice to see Frank Lampard getting a little round of applause, after a few loons starting booing his introduction. Also nice to see him reciprocating on the final whistle. He seems a decent blerk to me, and has had a tough time personally recently.

Although very slim, but we still have the chance to finish in 10th place this season, something that is hard to imagine regarding to our relegation battle couple months ago.

To achieve that, we must win the last two matches against Chelsea and Everton. If we can do that we will have 49 points in total, with assumption Spurs lost in their final match at White Hart Lane against Liverpool and West Ham also lost at home to Villa.

The best chance we can get is to finish above Tottenham, which I will celebrate it all night long. So let’s concentrate for today match and hope the Lads can give all the very best of them at St. James’s Park.

A win today will also means alot to those who are lucky enough to get into the fortress St. James to watch the game live. According to the official site, United will select a season ticket holder at random from their database and the lucky fan plus a guest will be able to enjoy the first home game of the 2008/09 season in style with a hospitality package in the Magpie Suite.

This special treat is to celebrate more than one million fans passing through the St. James’ Park turnstiles. From our 20 home games this season, including Carling Cup fixtures against Barnsley and FA Cup replay against Stoke City, an aggregate of 988,419 fans have been recorded and the million mark will break through again with a confirmed 52,000 tickets sell-out today.