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Champions League beckons for Newcastle

Sunderland - 0 Newcastle - 1: PREMIERSHIP: When it comes to the Owens, Alan Shearer is more often like Michael than Wilfred

Michael Walker at the Stadium of Light
Mon Apr 28 2003 - 01:00

Sunderland - 0 Newcastle - 1:PREMIERSHIP: When it comes to the Owens, Alan Shearer is more often like Michael than Wilfred. But any more injuries and Shearer might consider poetry. Wor poetry.

He began Saturday sporting a headband to conceal four stitches in a wound and a bandage on his right hand over a fractured knuckle. He ended it as a black and white and black and blue idol struggling to walk on crutches.

Shearer's right hand needed to be strong to take the weight off his freshly swollen right ankle, bruised and twisted in a 25th-minute tackle with Sunderland's Sean Thornton. But the pain was so great Shearer had to hop out of Wearside.

Shearer's 16th season of frontline football is over. When Newcastle fans see him again in August he will be on the verge of his 33rd birthday.

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Having hobbled off here, Shearer was given a foretaste of what might be, sitting in a dugout, fretting.

Yet it was a good day for Newcastle, after four bad ones. They jumped back over Chelsea and will finish third if they beat Birmingham on Saturday at St James' Park and West Bromwich at the Hawthorns on the season's final day.

But they will have to do so without their captain and inspiration. Craig Bellamy, Kieron Dyer and Laurent Robert excite a few fancies, but it is Shearer who has been truly and consistently outstanding.

For that, he has had plenty of recognition of course, and was in London last night to collect another trophy - he was voted the best player of the Premiership's decade, British or otherwise - but the prize he would value most is Newcastle's first major silverware for 33 years.

This win - "mammoth, close fought, tight, terse, tense," Robson said - should edge that silverware closer. But for that to happen the money guaranteed by Champions League qualification will have to be spent. Fans talk often about the need for two high-class full-backs, but Shearer limping off offered a reminder that another striker might be required.

Had Shearer's fifth-minute headed goal been allowed, Newcastle could have won comfortably. As it was they had to rely nervously on Nolberto Solano's 43rd-minute penalty after Kevin Kilbane had tripped Bellamy.

For a side embracing a 13th consecutive defeat Sunderland played well.

There was an assured 15 minutes from Richie Ryan three months after his 18th birthday, and Kevin Kyle had another headed goal disallowed as the final whistle approached. Mick McCarthy felt hard done by at that but Newcastle deserved their three points.

SUNDERLAND: Sorensen, Williams, Bjorklund, Craddock, Gray, Arca (Flo 83), Kilbane, Thornton, Kyle, Proctor (Ryan 76), Bellion. Subs Not Used: Poom, McCartney, Clark. Booked: Williams, Proctor, Bjorklund, Kyle.

NEWCASTLE: Given, Griffin, Woodgate, O'Brien (Caldwell 19), Hughes, Solano, Dyer, Jenas, Viana (Bernard 72), Shearer (Ameobi 26), Bellamy. Subs Not Used: Harper, LuaLua. Booked: Viana, Caldwell, Dyer, Griffin. Goals: Solano 43 pen.

Referee: S Bennett.