He said in a Sky Sports interview:

“Claudio is one of the few you thought wouldn’t make that type of mistake, but he did. We all try to learn from those mistakes and eliminate them as much as we possibly can.”

I’m not interested in speculating about Allardyce and his future. I think he’s still in the process of making the team. Let’s reasonable here. All this talk of Hughes or Sven is not helping matters at all!

As the team fell asleep on Saturday, we’d expect the team to be at their very best playing at the Staduim of Light! Our biggest rivals are back in the Premiership and Roy Keane is for the large part untested. What better opportunity to grab points and boost morale in the team! Although losing will not be much of an option, I’m hoping the fans will not judge the team too harshly if things go pear-shaped again. We stuck by the team through rough times and so I for one will await the Sunderland match with hope.

Things started spritely for Newcastle as we commanded much of the first half. Spurs showed no resilence in midfield with Jenas being a target for most of the Newcastle fans’ boos. Geremi & co lead the forward push with Martins and Owen paired up forming  the striker partnership in the abscence of Viduka. The match was deadlocked as we couldn’t really find that something extra to finish with Owen missing the target earlier on. It was not until near the end of the first half that Enrique chipped in a 50 yarder to Martins, who then used his pace to get past Dawson,  shooting close range shot through the helpless Cerny. 1-0 to us before half time.

The second half started much like most of the first half. Spurs were nervy and less confident. A corner setpiece gave us the second goal of the night. Emre drifted in the ball and again defensive errors in the Spurs side allowed Capaca to hit head the ball near post for a clean crisp goal. It was as if we do this kind of thing like second nature. But then for some reason or other, we started to get in some kind of lull and Spurs were playing with a kind of drive they had lacked throughout. A ball put in our penalty area was struck in by Bent only to hit the post beating Given, however, on the rebound , Robbie Keane was able to knock the ball into the net. 2-1 and there was a sense of a fightback by Spurs but it fizzled away once Milner was able to strike a peach of a volley to tie up the match 3-1. Berbatov and Lennon were eventually bought on but their contribution had come too late to turn the tide of the match for Jol.

There is no doubt that this game would be tough but it turned out that for Spurs, who are sagging in the relegation zone, have indeed lost much of their fighting spirit and confidence judging by this display. For Newcastle, we certainly see that the team is beginning to bond with some deserved praise for the back and midfield display. We always looked like scoring which was a great feeling to have after the disappointment of some of last season’s lacklustre performances. There were certainly many positives to take away from this game including seeing Joey Barton come on as a sub and Capaca scoring his debut goal. We are heading in the right direction and bring on Reading.

Michael Owen featured in a friendly against local outfit Blue Stars last night in which Shola Ameobi scored a brace to sink the lightweight opposition. Also playing was Claudio Capaca, who put on a determined performance. Kieron Dyer also featured in the friendly match.

Keep you posted!