Jack fearing pack attack
JACK COLBACK says the chasing pack in the Championship are a growing concern for Newcastle.
The Geordies must beat Aston Villa tonight to reclaim top spot from Brighton. But with automatic promotion the priority this season, it is the sides in the play-off places who are moving into greater focus.
Huddersfield keep on winning despite their FA Cup distractions while Reading, Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday are all in good form.
Midfielder Colback, right, does not want Newcastle scrambling for a top-two finish. “It’s getting irritating now,” he said. “We focus on ourselves first but of course you look at the other results. And it’s the closest it has been for three or four months. But we’ve got to play everyone around us, so it’s in our own hands.”
A win over Villa would send Newcastle eight points clear of Huddersfield in third, having played a game more. Fit-again top-scorer Dwight Gayle is expected to start. THE LAST time Nicky Bailey took on Arsenal, he was on the wrong end of a 10-1 scoreline.
He has painful memories of desperately chasing Thierry Henry all round the pitch. Tonight the veteran Sutton midfielder has vowed it will be different. Bailey wants his team to help bury those memories and create one of the greatest FA Cup upsets.
Whatever happens, it is better than working on his dad’s fruit and veg stall.
On the back of their mauling in Munich, Arsenal, 12 times FA Cup winners, most recently just two years ago, no doubt take a nervous step with the exploits of Sutton’s fellow non-Leaguers Lincoln making all the headlines.
This may be cosy, semi-detached Home Counties, season-ticket to Waterloo territory – but as Arsene Wenger will be all too aware, humiliation lurks. When Sutton turfed out First Division Coventry in 1989 at Gander Green Lane, the nation rocked.
Arsenal arrive in what for them is a crisis – their league title chances gone, Champions League hopes crushed by last week’s 5-1 thrashing at Bayern and Wenger, almost 21 years at the helm, insisting that he will manage somewhere else if he goes at the end of the season.
Bailey, now 32, has seen it all and done it all.
Having been rejected by Fulham as a teenager, he then joined Sutton and went on to a career in League football at Barnet, Southend, Charlton, Middlesbrough – who paid £1.4 million for him – Millwall, Barnet, and eventually, last year back here, when manager Paul Doswell rang him to help out when he was without a club.
The all-action midfielder has never actually played Arsenal in a competitive game but has faced them in friendlies – and one in particular for Barnet at Underhill in 2004 stands out for all the wrong
KICK-OFF:
reasons. He said: “When I was at Barnet, Arsenal used to play us every pre-season. One time they had Henry, Dennis Bergkamp, Robin van Persie and Jose Reyes all playing. They beat us 10-1. “That was like a welcome into what proper football was all about. We won the Conference that year, so we were not a bad side but what a game that was. “I remember that one because of the scoreline. It was a tough day. The place was packed out. Chasing them up that hill at Underhill was hard. It was good to play against them but not a great memory.” This evening different. “We have had a great run in the cup, beaten teams in successively higher leagues than us,” said Bailey. “We have got no fears about playing teams above us. We have a lot of players who have played at higher levels. “Arsenal are a massive club. Everyone is talking about the manager but look at all the good things he has done for them. We will be quite don’t look at what is going on with Arsene Wenger, we just know they are a good team and no matter who they put out, they are going to be strong. If we are not on our game, we could get a beating.
“But we know that if we play half-decent, if we can impose our game, we have a chance. We don’t go out on the pitch thinking we are going to lose.”
Bailey is looking to get into coaching – anything to avoid working on his dad’s fruit and veg stall in the North End Road market in Fulham. He said: “I used to work with him when I was younger, but I stacked the boxes up wrong one day and he had a go at me. He chased me out and I ran to my nan’s house. I thought ‘I’m having no more of that!’
“I am looking to stay in football and get into coaching but I have still got a few more years in me yet. I am enjoying all this so much again, whatever happens tonight. This has been fun.”