Damage limitation on Saturday for Newcastle United
After a Friday night for Newcastle United where everything that could go wrong, did. You would have been forgiven to think it would be more of the same on Saturday.
Both second placed Brighton and third positioned Reading looked to have winnable away games, whilst fourth placed Birmingham appeared to have a straightforward home game with Barnsley.
Wins for the three of them would have seen points totals at the top of:
41 Brighton
40 Newcastle
37 Reading
34 Birmingham
Not a pretty sight after getting used to top spot and having a distant club in third.
Happily though, we are (still) top of the league!
Instead, these were Saturday afternoon’s results:
Birmingham 0 Barnsley 3
Blackburn 1 Huddersfield 1
Bristol City 2 Ipswich 0
Burton 2 Rotherham 1
Cardiff 0 Brighton 0
Fulham 5 Reading 0
Norwich 5 Brentford 0
Sheffield Wednesday 2 Preston 1
Wigan 0 Derby 1
As you can see, Brighton could only draw at third bottom Cardiff and Reading thrashed by five at mid-table Fulham. It kind of puts into perspective Newcastle’s narrow defeat at Forest which happened on the back of a shocking refereeing display and some creative cheating by Henri Lansbury.
Fourth placed Birmingham (who Newcastle play at home next Saturday) crashed by three at home to Barnsley, all these results a reminder that Newcastle simply have to get back into a groove and there will be no worries going forward.
This is how the table looks now and Leeds could go fourth on 32 points if they beat Villa at home in the Saturday teatime match.
40 Newcastle
39 Brighton
34 Reading
31 Birmingham
31 Sheffield Wednesday
30 Norwich
30 Huddersfield
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