Thought of Blackpool Scares Newcastle!

Lee Ryder of the Newcastle Evening Chronicle has made it very clear that The Magpies don't fancy getting relegated from The Premiership much.

The thought of playing away at Blackpool seems to be enough inspiration to try and avoid the drop as much as anything.

The local journalist, talking to Arsenal's official site ahead of their fixture on Saturday, said:

'To be totally honest I'm not 100 per cent sure they (Newcastle) have got the quality they need to steer clear of relegation. The quality players we are meant to have haven't turned it on in games. Michael Owen has had his injury problems and he was starved of service at Hull last week in his comeback game. Obafemi Martin was also starved of service in that game. So really it's about the big guns starting to put the ball in the back of the net and they're not doing that at the moment. That leaves Newcastle in deep trouble. My prediction is that Newcastle will probably stay up but will only just scrape it. We need three more wins and I don't see that coming against Arsenal. After that we've got Chelsea and we've still got to go to Aston Villa and Liverpool as well. They are hard games. I think Portsmouth, Fulham and Middlesbrough at home are the key games - if we win those we'll probably we safe. If not they could be preparing to go to Blackpool next season!!'

Let's hope they do go down, eh? 'Big' recently relegated teams such as Birmingham City, Derby County, Charlton and Norwich City have all fallen at Bloomfield Road - it'd be nice to add Newcastle United to that list.

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