Newcastle United have reached their first cup final of the century, their first league cup final since 1976. I’m not going to get bored of typing that over the next few days. I might even start every article with it until the final, whether it’s relevant to the story or not.
Anyway, Newcastle reached their first cup final of the century last night (hehe) by beating Southampton 2-1 at St James’ Park, coming away with a 3-1 win on aggregate. The other semi-final takes place tonight but Manchester United hold a 3-0 lead over Nottingham Forest going into that game, so Forest have a lot of work to do.
Whomever we face in the final, however, Eddie Howe isn’t content to just be there, he wants the trophy.
Speaking after the game, Eddie Howe said on reaching the final: “As humans, you think you want something and then you achieve getting to the final, which is what we wanted. Then you go, ‘Well, I’m not happy with that. We’ve got to win it.’
“That’s a great thing and I want my players to feel the same way, but that can wait now and that has to be at the back of our minds – not at the forefront of our minds. At the forefront of our minds is West Ham.” (via The Chronicle)
The final is set to take place on Sunday 26th February and we will all be hoping that memories of 1998 and 1999 are far enough behind us that we no longer fear Wembley – the entire club has changed from top to bottom since then, we have winners in our squad – Kieran Trippier can lead us to that podium. Eddie Howe can prepare us. Sean Longstaff and Dan Burn can relay the importance. I’m nervous, but I’m not worried – I don’t even know if that makes sense, but the next few weeks leading up to that fateful date are going to be amazing.