By Peter Donnelly
September 27 2003

Newcastle have definately got back to their best recenlty, with an excellent peformance against NAC Breda and then another brilliant effort at Highbury - how gutting it was that we lost though. The application from the players on Friday night was outstanding and it was certainly a cruel defeat.

The quality in our passing was to a very high standard again the and attitude in terms of work rate was spot on.

Laurent Robert carried on from Wednesday night and Kieron Dyer is well and truly finding his form now, too. He's especially re-discovered his immense attacking threat and is also helping out effectively going backwards too.

While Lee Bowyer wasn't involved too much going foward his work-rate was very important throughout. Jermaine Jenas also had a good game but his penalty give-away was unaaceptable and he sometimes looked just a bit too casual.

Titus Bramble did make a frustrating mistake for Thierry Henry's first goal, but overall he played very well and should be given great credit for that. Another class peformance from Olivier Bernard too, and what a goal.

Next up at is Southampton at home and the Toon Army should really appreciate the effort at Highbury come next Saturday. Although the pressure is still on, it's up to us (the fans) to make it a pressure-free game for the players and make sure we get that over-due first league win - a win which we maybe should have got on Friday.