Newcastle United Fan View: Next month will make or break promotion push

Newcastle United returned to the top of the Championship yesterday with a hard fought victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers. The 1-0 victory was certainly not spectacular but it was an important victory never the less as we’d briefly lost the top spot to Brighton following their earlier victory over Burton Albion.

In just under a month, I personally believe we will know exactly how this season will end; be it promotion, the title, or the play-offs. The next six matches see us play four of our promotion rivals, all away; Brighton, Huddersfield, Norwich and Reading. We have a couple of home games sandwiched in the middle but those 4 away games are crucial and in my opinion at least, will define our season.

Newcastle United’s away form this season is certainly something to shout about. The victory at Wolves yesterday was our 11th of the season – just 2 short of our highest ever total set by Kevin Keegan’s title winning side in 92/93 – and there are still a lot of away games left! It is an impressive record to break given how good Keegan’s side was in 1992. Yes, football has changed a lot but it is certainly a record we should be chasing.

Sometimes, I think it is easy to forget just how good we have been this season, especially on the road; at home, our form has been decent, if a little patchy. Teams come to St. James’ Park to defend, they come for a draw and sometimes we find that kind of side hard to play against; often conceding silly goals along the way.

Away from home is a different story, teams often want to grab a win; they chase the game, they attack us and that suits us just fine. Rafa Benitez loves a good counter attack and when we have the likes of Shelvey in the side who can turn defence in to attack in the blink of an eye with a well placed 50 yard pass then we will be just fine thank you very much!

Whilst I am certainly not expecting four victories away from home against the chasing pack, I do not fear them and I’m extremely hopeful that we can start to pull away from most, if not all, of the chasing pack come mid March. All four sides are good and are winning games well and often but Newcastle United is a different class of opponent. We are the side that everyone wants to beat, we are the side that sells out every single away game allocation.