Newcastle Make an Important Point

We hear a lot these days from managers about teams being decimated by injury, but no-one has more right to say it than Newcastle United boss Glenn Roeder, who has been so short he was planning to use Nicky Butt as a central defender - until he got injured. And if there’s one team you wouldn’t want to face in these circumstances, it’s high flying free scoring Manchester United.

Understandably, the atmosphere was pretty tense at St James Park before kick-off, where the Geordie faithful were no doubt fearing the worst, especially with youngsters like Paul Huntington and David Edgar in the back four.

As things turned out, they needn’t have worried. Glenn Roeder’s boys played with magnificent spirit and no little skill to earn a remarkable draw against Sir Alex Ferguson’s side and young Edgar capped a mature performance by hammering in a superb 25 yard equaliser. And though Manchester United created a hatful of chances and brought a string of great saves from Given, it was by no means one way traffic. Dyer tested Van der Saar as early as the 12th minute and 20 minutes later James Milner opened the scoring with a wonderful curler inside the far post, then after Paul Scholes had equalised, Sibierski blew a tremendous chance to put Newcastle ahead again on the stroke of half time.

Inevitably, there was a second half onslaught from United but even the loss of Emre to injury did not prevent Newcastle hanging on for a heroic point.