Reality check after the Newcastle game

It's fair enough to say that a competitive draw against the Championship leaders is not the end of the world, and in fact many of our player's performances were encouraging.

Last night, however, having seen that Miller miss over and over, it was clear that the game was very much there to be won.

Some things concern me at present:

- what has happened to Chris Brunt? I thought he was lucky to stay on the field last night. I would have replaced him for Miller at the hour stage. I sense some complacency in his game and not for the first time.

- our reader's poll suggested that most of you wanted to see a Miller/Cox or Miller/Wood partnership up front against the Magpies. With no new injuries to report I felt that we limited ourselves with the lone striker for the whole match? Bednar should have stayed on.

- defensively we are still struggling from set pieces. If we aren't going to buy a new keeper then can we at least make sure that we know how to defend free-kicks. The wall didn't look as if it new whether to jump against Guthrie's shot or not; Mulumbu simply ducked.

Plenty of positives from the game though, including great performances from Jara, Dorrans, Cech and Mulumbu. We didn't crumble under pressure and we didn't shirk the physical stuff.

See you on Saturday and we'll see if we can finally get that victory that was so nearly ours last night.