Newcastle In A Game For The Ages At Coventry

Newcastle looked to be coasting home on Tuesday night when, after around 44 minutes we were two goals to the good, and looking for a third.

The Magpies had dominated the game after about 20 minutes and were playing football as good as you saw in the first Keegan era at Newcastle in the 90s.

James Milner had made a goal for the impressive N'Zogbia, and then had scored one himself and Newcastle should have been at least 4-0 up if they had taken just half their chances. 

But then right out of the blue there was a little looseness in the Newcastle central defense, the ball well to Clayton Morrison, and he rifled a beautiful goal past the astonished Newcastle defense.

Goals change games and this is what happened in this game.

But in the second half, although Coventry played a lot better Newcastle saw out the danger and saw out 90 minutes with just 2 minutes added for injury time. Two minutes came to an end when Nicky but was in the corner of the Coventry side,m but no whistle from the referee - strange.

Then after 3 minutes and 10 seconds of injuury time, captain Scott Dann amazingly headed in to equalize, with Coloccini beaten in the air for the first and only time in the game.  Unbelievable.

Most teams would have cracked under the luck that seemed so heavily against them, but not this Newcastle side.  Michael Owen had been brough on as planned for the last 15 minutes, and he scored another poacher's goal after 13 minutes of extra time, and Newcastle this time hung on for the win.

But that wasn't before Coventry hit the cross-bar and Given made a superlative instinctive save down to his right, to keep out Coventry. But Newcastle played very well and Coventry were great, and the winner of this game was English Football, without a doubt.

Any more games like this from Newcastle United, following the Manchester United game, and they'll be called the Entertainers again, because this was what this game was all about, and the viewers who saw the game beamed live around the world were the winners, with Newcastle scraping through to the next round at the end of the day.

There's only one comment after watching a game like this - what a game!