Hull City 0 - 0 Newcastle Utd

Shay Given once again succeeded in putting himself in the shop window, as his heroics against a second string Hull team kept our name in the FA Cup hat for at least a week and a half and ensured we left the KC Stadium with a draw on Saturday.

With injuries limiting JFK’s options, he handed Andy Carroll a rare start up front and welcomed Sebastien Bassong back into

After 11 and half years as Newcastle United number one, the press are buzzing up about his retirements from the Black-and-White’s Army. Nothing is certain, but to tell he’s going to leave at this (what the paper say) “the very lowest point” on his career is something not very wise for his record.

Although the news are saying Given’s lawyer Michael Kennedy has took the unusual step of issuing a statement on his clients behalf, Joe…

Joe Kinnear has been forced to accept a New Year’s ‘Special Gift’, don’t have enough fit players on his Newcastle squad that makes him cancel-out Toon normal training on the first days of 2009.

After Sunday’s 5-1 Barclays Premier League defeat by Liverpool, the club’s injury list has reached double figures and Joe admits that it’s been more or less a case of cancelling training and wrapping all of his players, and see if he can…

Happy New Year from both of us at Black & White & Read All Over. May 2009 bring us rather more joy than 2008 did…

According to JFK, Shay Given - “the best goalkeeper in the Premier League by a country mile” - is going nowhere in January.

With the transfer window about to open and Given’s outstanding performance against Liverpool on Sunday the only thing that prevented the league leaders from registering double figures, that the Irishman’s future would once again be the subject of speculation was inevitable

So, Steven Gerrard MBE has been charged with assault and affray after an incident in a Southport nightspot on Sunday evening. It’s alleged that being part of a group of men who administered a severe beating once that day just wasn’t enough…

While we can be forgiven for bemoaning why the incident and arrest couldn’t have taken place before the demolition job at St James’s, in which Gerrard was

I guess whatever we say, we should not devalue Liverpool’s performance, which was as good as ours was abject. The difference between the two teams was an absolute chasm, and horribly demonstrated just how far we have fallen while the ‘dippers have steadily progressed.

To be perfectly honest, so utterly appaling was our defensive performance (and that includes the midfield) it could quite easily have been double figures. That it wasn’t was largely down to Shay…

Newcastle Utd 1 - 5 Liverpool

And there I was thinking the demolition job the Scousers did on us last season was bad. Having contrived to put a positive slant on the news that the club has proven unattractive to investors, Mike Ashley presumably had his head in his hands when the final whistle blew on this latest debacle, wondering what on earth he’s done to deserve being left saddled with it.

According to a statement released today, 2009 will be the year in which “we drive the club forward together”, with owner and fans back in harmony and striving to achieve the best for the club.

Ashley has apparently taken the decision to withdraw the club from the market so that we might “continue to progress under the new management team”.

Far be it from me to raise a cynical eyebrow at all of

Wigan Athletic 2 - 1 Newcastle Utd

Ah, the annual festive ritual: picking over the bones of the Christmas turkey and then picking over the bones of another miserable Boxing Day defeat. Given the catalogue of misery recorded in the history books and the four defeats we’d suffered on our four previous visits to the JJB, the fixture computer’s Christmas gift of a Boxing Day trip to Wigan was about