Habib Beye Watch at Bolton

Newcastle failed to capitalise on an opportunity to gain a vital 3 points on Sunday. Regardless of the fact that it was away, the Newcastle team should have gone to the Reebok confident of getting something from the game to keep us comfortably with the rest of the clubs attempting to keep the bottom three at arms reach. Instead though, an uninspiring display saw us dragged back into the mire, closer to the Smoggies than is comfortable after their surprise result against Liverpool.

Neither team looked like capitalising on their opportunities until Gardner looped a shot over Harper early in the second half. Shola was anonymous again and Martins missed arguably the games best chance before being subbed strangely for Viduka when most would tell you that Shola should have been the one to give way. Without a threat up-front the game's result was never really in doubt. Again, not for the first time this season, we huffed and puffed but did very little to threaten the Bolton goal. Even if we had, Jaaskelainen looked in decent enough form to stop anything we had to throw at him.

To add insult to injury, Butt's name was added to the sick-list of midfielders still unavailable to the first team. Hopefully the injury is not too serious but it remains to be seen what kind of midfield we can put out in the next few games. To our untrained eyes it looked like we went to Bolton looking for a point, no suspensions and no injuries. We came away with a bloodied nose, an injury but very little else...

Newcastle now need a 'Boro like result against ManU to keep us out of the dirt, otherwise in 3 matches time we could be looking up at a bunch of teams with easier run-ins than ours.