Location - SJP Kick Off - 7.45pm     Date - 24th August 2006

Tickets - General Sale     Telly - Channel 5 (7.30pm Start)

With the arrival of Roman Grigorchuk and his team due through the arrivals lounge at Newcastle International any time soon again our focus has been forced away from the coming fixture towards off the field rumours of an official takeover by the Belgravia Group. Will Granddad Martins change the stripes of the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza (San Siro) for the black and white of SJP? And finally has Jean Allan found a new home where he could probably wear his old Toon kit?

Again I'm finding it totally unthinkable similar to the Mackems’ winning the Champions League for us to be knocked out of the UEFA Cup at this stage. With an away goal in the bag and on paper a much stronger squad we can help but stumble into the next round. It seems rather strange but we have the current leading scorer in all completion's in our team which is Shola currently sitting on three goals. Again this can only be great for his morale. Let hope he can recover from his current niggles in time for Thursday. With the first round for real looming on the horizon this should be the carrot we need to push on.

If we come away from SJP with a good performance on Thursday we will be in the draw on Friday 25th to determine who will be our first opponent in the UEFA Cup when it kicks off for real on 14th / 15th of
September

Last Game (Thursday 10th August 2006)

Away (W) 0 ? 1 (Bramble)

Likely Squads:

FK Ven - Vanins, Ndjoumek-Ndeki, Kaspars, Ramkus Gorkss, Kacanovs, Bicka, Zangareeb, Dubensky, Vukovic, Kolefnicenko, Butriks, Slesarchuk, Davidovs, Sokolskis, Soleicuks, Stukalinas, Zizilevs,
Pokarynin, Kosmacovs

Man to Watch - Vits Rimkus, good record of scoring in the Inter-too-bob

NUFC - Harper, Krul, Carr, Ramage, Bramble, Moore, Taylor, Babayaro, Parker, Emre, Solano, Duff, Butt, N'Zogbia, Milner, O'Brien, Pattison, Ameobi, Luque


Man to Watch - Damien Duff needs to prove that scoring comes naturally.

Fitness News - Owen (Long Term), Dyer (who really knows hope fully end of September), Ameobi (Hip/Hamstring) Butt (Head Injury) Given (Back) Babayaro (Hamstring) Moore (Knee)

Squad Additions - With the reported move of JAB to Juventus for a £6m loss in 18 months that again increases the amount of first team faces leaving SJP to Nine ((Viana, Shearer, Caig, Brittain, Chopra, Bowyer, Elliott and Faye) and only one coming the other way. The increased speculation with Martins being left out of Inter’s summer training camp this sent the tabloids into a B&W frenzy, Dutch international Khalid Boulahrouz signing for Chelsea and Cole and Gallas reportedly going in opposite directions may mean Bridge is permitted to leave and someone else who Roeder is keeping Kloser to his chest. But again we are probable looking at the game on Sunday against Villa before we see any new faces.

ES