Derby Day The Crunch For Stunned Toon!

Last Updated : 05-Nov-2007 by
Elano led Newcastle's back-line a It will be Sam Alladyce's first Tyne/Wear derby as a manager, although he knows the ferocity of the event from his days as a Sunderland player.

And how he needs something out of the game to get his bandwagon back on track.

Nicky Butt is backing the boss and he sees the derby as the perfect way to banish the frustration of the 2-1 horror show at struggling Reading, and the 4-1 defeat to Portsmouth.

Butt, however, will miss the match because he picked up his fifth yellow card of the season on Saturday.


Nicky Butt: "It's a derby and all qualities to a point go out of the window.

"In the first 20 minutes you've got to give it your all, get stuck in and fight.

"The way you've played over the last few weeks goes out of the window, it's just a one-off game, so the bigger the game the better."

"It was a disastrous 12 minutes on Saturday. The first goal (from Noe Pamarot) was a wonder goal, that can happen to any team, but the two after that were really slack.

"It doesn't count for anything now but we got back into the game and I thought we were quite good.

"There was a little ray of light with the goal but half-time killed us really. We couldn't get going in the second half and all in all it was a disastrous day.

"We basically just wanted to get to half time then try and change it. You can't explain it really, it's just shock.

"We got back into it and did reasonably well but in the second half we couldn't capitalise on the goal we got.

"It's a while since I've been involved in a game like that.

"There was one at Man United when we were getting beaten 3-0 at half-time by Tottenham and came back and won (5-3). When we got the goal before half-time I thought if we got a bit of pride into it and got one more goal, maybe something could happen.

"When you go in 3-1 down it's a team thing and you've got to look at yourself first.

"If you feel like you've got something to say, you say something but I didn't. The manager told us it was just a bad 12 minutes, play for yourselves and get a bit of pride back, which we tried to do. He was okay.

"He was totally different at full-time."