The Weekend Review: a glorious victory for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Newcastle United claim their first major domestic trophy in 70 years while the Premier League relegation places seem sewn up. For paying subscribers, here's your one-stop shop for this weekend.

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So, the run has come to an end, then. Newcastle United have their first domestic trophy since 1955 and their first of any sort since the Inter Cities Fairs Cup (if you count that, and the case for doing so isn’t quite as simple as ‘this is what the UEFA Cup used to be’), but considering that they’d upset the strong favourites to win the competition, the central place that the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne holds within the lexicon of the game in this country, and the long-held position that the club had as many people’s ‘second club’, the celebrations upon the final whistle beyond Tyneside were somewhat muted.

Of course, we all know the reason for this. Newcastle United are the football arm of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia these days, and that makes a bit of sick come up into the mouths of many people. Add to that the wholesale adoration of the new owners by the club’s support (not to mention their wholesale adoption of the sportswashing model) and it’s not difficult to see why so many people have pretty much taken an attitude of, “yeah, fuck those guys” since the sale went through.

In purely functional terms, it was an outstanding performance, although it did help that Liverpool turned up for this fixture looking very much like a team that hadn’t recovered from their Champions League defeat at the hands of PSG the previous week. A stoppage-time goal from Federico Chiesa was enough to breathe a tiny bit of jeopardy into stoppage-time, but in all honesty this was never going to be enough to claw back the two-goal deficit they’d already run up. So, well done Newcastle. Shrug.

Back in the Premier League, meanwhile, it was a weekend of relative dullness. Arsenal closed the gap on the leaders to just the twelve person by winning their game in hand over Liverpool against Chelsea by a goal to nil in a match best described as a bit of a trial for all concerned. The good news for Chelsea is that Manchester City are still doing 2024/25 edition Manchester City things and were a little lucky to come away from their home match against Brighton with a point from a 2-2 draw. Chelsea stay fourth and City stay fifth, but Newcastle now have a game in hand which would leapfrog them both.

Nottingham Forest’s 4-2 win at Ipswich cemented their position in third place in the table, and the little blip which saw them lose three in four while conceding eleven goals now seems to have passed. With the FA Cup still a possibility, an end to the season that no-one could possibly have predicted at the start of season is now very much on the cards. Wolves’ 2-1 win at Southampton opened the gap between them and Ipswich to nine points and effectively sealed the fate of last season’s three promoted clubs. Astonishingly, 16th placed West Ham now have double the number of points that 18th placed Ipswich have. They drew 1-1 at Everton in The David Moyes Derby. More on that in this week’s podcast, which will be out tomorrow.

The late Saturday fixture between the two teams who I’m most concerned about getting mixed up, Bournemouth and Brentford, ended up in a 2-1 win for visitors which tightened the top half of the table even more. Two teams who aren’t going to be troubling the European places by conventional means this season are Spurs and Manchester United, though they did have very different results at the weekend. Spurs played very much like the 14th best team in the Premier League in losing to Fulham, another performance which punctured the tiny amount of optimism that supporters had allowed themselves after getting through their Europa League fixture against AZ.

Of course, the press are working themselves into a lather about Ruben Amorim’s ‘message getting through to the players’ following seven goals in two games, but how much can be read into beating a Real Sociedad team who’ve been absolutely flatlining in LaLiga since the middle of December and a Leicester team which is underwhelming all the way straight back to the Championship is debatable. The Roodle Van Noodle Derby ended in a comfortable 3-0 win for United. He was, of course, their temporary manager when they won their previous meeting in November, meaning that he has an aggregate score for this fixture of 3-3 while his Leicester team has one of 0-6. It is, as a wise man with a thick moustache and a Pringle jumper once said, “a funny old game”.

Meanwhile in the Championship, the race to be next season’s three relegated Premier League teams continues apace. At the top of the table, Leeds United’s lead at the top of the table has been reduced to goal difference following a 2-2 draw at QPR from which the silver lining was that things could have been worse, given that they were 2-0 down after half an hour. Leeds may have been hoping that Sheffield Wednesday would do them a favour in the Sunday lunchtime derby match against Sheffield United, but a Rhian Brewster goal was enough to win that match. Burnley stay third after a 2-0 win at Swansea. Could there be anything more frustrating than going unbeaten in the League since the 3rd November while having conceded just 11 (ELEVEN) goals in 38 (THIRTY-EIGHT) League matches?

There’s a team coming into form at the foot of that table. Derby County have now won three games in a row and have closed the gap on the teams above them—Stoke City and Cardiff City—to just a single point. Their win on Saturday came away to FA Cup giant-killers Plymouth Argyle, who are now rock-bottom in the table and seem to be heading back to League One after two seasons. The other team in the relegation places, Luton Town, managed a goalless draw at home to Middlesbrough, but we’re well into the point of the season at which those draws need to be wins if you’re near the bottom of the table. A second successive relegation is still looming.

Big capital finally won through at the top of League One with Wrexham’s 1-0 win at Wycombe Wanderers. The match was delayed by more than half an hour by a medical emergency in the crowd among the travelling supporters, and perhaps the most important result from the entire weekend, from any match in the country, is that the person concerned is now understood to be in a stable condition at hospital. Birmingham City stay top of the table, although they could only manage a 1-1 draw at Northampton, who found the gap between them and the relegation places trimmed to six points by Burton Albion’s win at Shrewsbury Town.

Potential end of season chokees Walsall had a weekend off, but Bradford City couldn’t advantage of it in losing 1-0 to (probably now former) relegation candidates Tranmere Rovers. Wimbledon vaulted back into third place with a 2-1 win at bottom of the table Carlisle United while Doncaster Rovers could only claim a 1-1 draw from a trip to Crewe. Only six points separate Wimbledon from Crewe in eighth place, so the promotion places in that particular division are still just about anybody’s guess with just nine games of the season left to play.

One of those two will surely be replaced by Barnet, who remain eleven points clear at the top of the National League following a 1-0 win at Woking. York City continue to hang on in second successive win with a win by the same margin away to Yeovil Town. At the bottom of the table Ebbsfleet United are already effectively relegated, but they did record their second League win of the season—the only other one came on the 14th September—1-0 at Fylde. It looks like it’ll be three from five—Maidenhead United, Dagenham & Redbridge, Wealdstone, Fylde and Boston United—to join them.

At the top of the National League, more than 2,000 people turned out to see leaders Worthing brush Hemel Hempstead Town aside 3-0 to retain pole position, and their lead at the top extended to four points with an extraordinary defeat for second-placed Truro City, who were 2-0 up at relegation-threatened Enfield Town but ended up losing 3-2 to two stoppage-time goals. It was Enfield’s third win in a row, which has opened up an eight-point gap between them and the relegation places. Survival at this level for the fan-owned club would be one of the more significant achievements across any division this season. The goals from that extraordinary match—which also featured both Truro goals coming from the penalty spot—are right here:

There was some shuffling going on at the top of the National League North again last weekend. Scunthorpe United became the third team to top the division in the last two weeks with a 2-0 win at the doomed Farsley Celtic, while leaders Brackley Town, who leapfrogged Chester last weekend to go top themselves, were beaten 1-0 at home by Buxton while Chester themselves climbed back to second place with a 1-0 home win against Leamington. Far from everything is as decided in the non-league game as it is in the Premier League, we can say that much for certain.