The Newcastle United Blog

Newcastle United 0-0 Chelsea, St James Park, 22 April 2007

Newcastle United held Chelsea to a goalless draw in a fairly dull game at St James’ Park on Sunday and Chelsea missed the opportunity to move to one point behind leaders Manchester United.

Newcastle played well with Steven Taylor playing majestically (again) at the heart of the Newcastle defense. Newcastle gave a spirited performance and when they are in this form are difficult to play against – as Chelsea found out.

Jose Mourhino is a known admirer of Taylor and the youngster did nothing to change that view with another sterling performance and John Terry could well be looking at a player who will shortly start pushing for a place in the full England line up.

In the first half Newcastle were if anything the better side with James Milner causing trouble on either wing and sending in some good raking crosses.

However the number of clear cut chances were few and far between.

Chelsea were improved after the interval but still looked a tired looking outfit after so many games in the past few weeks – and were unable to make the breath-through. They came closest with a long range effort by Joe Cole after 92 minutes which was only inches wide of the left upright.

With nine successive victories in the league a win was on the cards for Chelsea but Newcastle always seem to play well against them and a clean sheet was good reward for a solid defense that has come under intense criticism this season.

Manager Glenn Roeder seemed pleased with the performance after the game and said :

"I was happy with the performance. The boys have taken a little bit of flak over the last month or so and I told them before the game that this was an opportunity to get some pride back and show the supporters they are prepared to show the bravery and courage you need when you are playing the double champions.

"They did that today. I do not think there was a poor performance from any of our players and it was probably a fair result."

In summary a good point for Newcastle but two points wasted for Chelsea.