Newcastle United have announced a third pre-season friendly. Thursday night seeing a game against Benfica made public, that match taking place on Tuesday 26 July. This Newcastle United official announcement…

Have you ever been stuck in a lift at 2:30am with 4 drunken Geordies? No? Well, I’d highly recommend it. If you’d indulge me, I’d like to tell you of…

The night before the match against Benfica, Newcastle fans packed out a bar and treated the locals to a rousing rendition of ‘Tell All The Boys You Know..’.

If Cabaye can step up on recent performances and Gouffran give a little more goal threat then Newcastle can take the game to Fulham and come away with three points.

Sometimes, I have a nagging feeling about how things are going to go. I’m sure we all do. I had a feeling that we would get to Amsterdam. Not win the tournament but get to the final. Classic heroic failure stuff, or classic Newcastle as I prefer to think of it.

One thing that I think can’t be forgotten is that we are missing arguably our 2 best players in HBA and Colo; they would be making a big difference on the pitch and to our options on the bench. With just a few injuries our squad just isn’t strong enough yet.

The comforting thing was undoubtedly the number of chances Newcastle managed to create and on another night Papiss Cisse would have been taking the ball home as well as three points for United. A goal early on at St.James’ and it will be some atmosphere.

Alan Pardew; “We had them just where we wanted them before the second goal, then two poor goals from us.”

A spirited and intelligent display by Newcastle in Lisbon, was eventually undermined by simple mistakes. Despite the two goal defeat United are still in the tie and Benfica’s manager agrees.

The bench last night showed Newcastle were down to the real bare bones and any further injuries would be a killer, though there could be a chance of Massadio Haidara coming back in for that Benfica match at St.James’ Park.