Season 2007-2008

MIDDLESBROUGH

 v

NEWCASTLE UNITED

- Damien Duff (ankle) is expected to be out until November after having surgery on his injured ankle.
- Joey Barton (broken metatarsal) is out for another month after breaking his foot in the pre-season friendly at Carlisle United.
- Celestine Babayaro (groin) is back in training but isn't expected to return soon.
- Shay Given (groin) is back in training but isn't ready for

My thoughts:

Being unbeaten and ahead of Manchester Utd, Arsenal and Liverpool in the table is a strange but certain nice feeling. Granted its only 2 games into the season and we certainly didn’t look convincing against Aston Villa but lets not split hairs here. With a game against a disjointed looking Middlesbrough next, we have a great opportunity to remain unbeaten.

Trips down the A19 to this small town in Yorkshire bring back memories of smog, gas masks, dodgy looking geezers standing outside bars on the walk to the ground from the train station, mounted police, waste land, seeing a girl go for a piss behind a bush (don’t ask), fingers of fudge, shit home fans, annoying PA bloke, Tino’s debut, Gazza and the female streaker, a Shearer thunderbolt, Hasselbaink’s handball and standing up throughout the game.

This game marks the return of Mark Viduka and Geremi to their old club and in Viduka’s case, for the first time. Viduka is no doubt preparing himself for a rough ride from the home fans, who were devastated to see him leave for a club they hate so much.

When you think about it the Middlesbrough fans certainly do hate us a lot more than we hate them. Why? Well for starters Newcastle has and is everything Middlesbrough isn’t. Newcastle is a vibrant, sophisticated, multi-cultural city, which is the regional centre for arts and commerce. This makes Newcastle the icon of the North East and they are jealous, their town and people have no identity. You ask somebody from down south, or anywhere else in the UK for that matter and they'll say 'oh yeah Middlesbrough, that's near Newcastle isn't it?'.

It will be interesting to see if they sell out the Riverside Stadium for this game, as the last few years they certainly haven’t done so. The capacity of the ground is 35,100 and last season the attendance was 30,060 and the season before it was only a 1,000 or so more. Allowing for the usual empty seats used to segregate fans, they are still way short of capacity for a game they class as a derby, which sums them up as a set of fans really.

Getting to the game then, my money is on Viduka opening his Toon account and how sweet that would be too. Michael Owen came through unscathed from England’s midweek game but you’d still fancy Big Sam will easy him into Toon duties by using him from the bench, leaving Obafemi Martins to play upfront with Viduka.

I'm sure we all looking forward to this game with it being a social able hour. A 10:30pm(AEST) kick off represents a rare occasion of being able to watch the Toon before midnight. Three of my mates are coming round to watch this one, so lets hope the boys come up with the goods and make it a perfect end to the weekend.