Battered at The Britannia! Stoke 4-0 Newcastle.

Newcastle suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of Stoke City this afternoon as they went down 4-0 at The Britannia Stadium.

Whilst 4-0 was probably a harsh scoreline it shouldn't detract from the fact that Stoke thoroughly deserved to win the match as they overpowered an injury hit Newcastle team that featured too many people having an off day. The fact that we actively helped them with three of their four goals just about sums up this performance.

Being honest, I never really expected us to get anything from the match anyway. Stoke are a tough proposition at home and they proved it again with another committed, all-action display in front of their vociferous home crowd.

The day started off pretty well to be honest. I boarded the 11:04 train armed with my four cans of Newcastle Brown Ale and promptly cracked one open. Marktoon had one as well as we settled down for the train journey only to find ourselves being subjected to the inner workings of the mind of a Stoke fan who chose the seat in front of us to rather loudly explain almost everything about Stoke City to his mate. I fell asleep soon afterwards...

The train pulled into Stoke train station and off we went, only to be directed by the Police to the Student Union where we could have a few drinks and wait to be escorted to the ground so as to avoid any potential problems. This was not a problem as an SU bar meant SU bar prices. Happy days.

After a couple more pints, and after having interrupted an interview by unwittingly walking straight through the middle of it, the time came for us to board the bus and make our way to the ground. To be honest I was concerned about wearing my club colours whilst making my way to the ground from the train station. I'm a lover these days and not a hater so I just wanted to get to the ground without getting into some sort of trouble. Mission accomplished thanks to these special red buses.

The atmosphere inside the concourse was already jumping when we arrived at the ground, but with kick-off approaching it was time to neck another quick beer and head to my seat, which turned out to be smack-bang behind the goal and only three rows away from the front, which was ideal to see the lads finishing their warm up.

Of course the good news with regard to team selection was that Jose Enrique and Joey Barton were fit enough to return to the starting line up whilst the other fitness doubt, Jonas Gutierrez, was fit enough to take a place on the bench.

Newcastle started off fairly well and Shola Ameobi forced a save from Asmir Begovic whilst Marc Wilson went close for the home side when he headed wide. Aside from that though both sides found chances hard to carve out in what was a fairly even affair. The balance of power shifted on 23 minutes however as Jose Enrique withdrew through injury to be replaced by young Shane Ferguson. Just five minutes after that Stoke took the lead, courtesy of the flank that Jose Enrique had now departed.

Shane Ferguson, who was without the luxury of having Jonas Gutierrez to help him out in defence, found himself outnumbered at left-back. Stoke passed the ball around him and Jermaine Pennant fired a cross into the box which Jonathan Walters headed into the net. Sol Campbell simply shouldn't have allowed Walters to coast in ahead of him and in my opinion that is what cost us the goal.

Newcastle regrouped and started turning the screw in the search for an equaliser, although despite all of the away sides huffing and puffing they were unable to blow down Stoke's steady house and the score remained 1-0 at the half-time interval.

I had hoped that any cobwebs would have been blown away at half-time and that Newcastle would come out and play the way that I know they can in the second half. That hope was extinguished within sixty seconds of the restart as a brain fart from Steve Harper and another miscalculation from Sol Campbell ended up with Jermaine Pennant tapping the ball into what was a virtually unguarded net.

I turned to Mark and said that it was game over then, but just to make sure of it Stoke added a third just three minutes when Danny Higgingbotham lashed a free-kick into the back of the net from 20 yards. At the time it just looked like Harper was beaten by the power of the shot, but upon closer inspection (TV replay) i would appear that Harper was beaten by the fact that the wall collapsed and offered him no protection.

From then on the game was dead as a contest. Newcastle had a lot of the ball, but it was only in territory where Stoke wanted us to have the ball. Shane Ferguson was unlucky not to have opened his scoring account after skinning three Stoke defenders only for Begovic to deny the lad a goal, and the Stoke stopper was on hand again to deny Joey Barton a goal from a free-kick.

It was a poor performance, and it hurt to watch it if I'm being honest. It didn't stop at three though and further salt was added to the wounds in stoppage time when Ricardo Fuller volleyed past Steve Harper from 18 yards to make it 4-0.

You can blame injuries or tactics or team selection or anything you want to blame for the result, but what you can't legislate for is for the majority of the players failing to do the basics right. There were individual errors strewn across the park today and it kind of says a lot when your best player is a lad who has hardly featured for the first team and is being played out of position!

Newcastle are making a meal of this survival malarkey, but they will have to pull something out of the bag pretty soon if they are to avoid being sucked deeper into a relegation battle. I think we'll still survive, but it's getting a lot closer than I would like it to be. Hopefully that can be addressed when we face Wolves in two weeks time.

Howay the lads!

Stoke: Asmir Begovic, Marc Wilson, Ryan Shawcross, Robert Huth, Danny Higginbotham, Jermaine Pennant, Rory Delap, Glen Whelan, Matty Etherington, Kenwyne Jones, Jonathan Walters.

Subs: Thomas Sorensen, Danny Collins, Ricardo Fuller, Danny Pugh, Salif Diao, Dean Whitehead, Andy Wilkinson.

Newcastle: Steve Harper, Danny Simpson, Mike Williamson, Sol Campbell, Fabricio Coloccini, Jose Enrique. Joey Barton, Cheik Tiote, Kevin Nolan. Shola Ameobi, Peter Lovenkrands.

Subs: Tim Krul, Steven Taylor, Danny Guthrie, Shane Ferguson, Jonas Gutierrez, Shefki Kuqi, Nile Ranger.

Referee: Lee Mason.

Attendance: 27,505.