Source: Northern_Echo
Home wins mean a Premier return
JONAS GUTIERREZ believes Newcastle will be back in the Premier League if they win their five remaining home games.[LNB] Saturday's 6-1 rout of Barnsley left the Magpies eight points clear of secondplaced Nottingham Forest, with a game in hand, and nine points ahead of West Brom, who currently fill the first play-off place.[LNB] Seven of their remaining 12 matches are away from home, but the extent of their advantage means they can afford the occasional slip-up in the final eight weeks of the campaign.[LNB] They remain on course to go through an entire league season with an unbeaten home record for the first time since 1907, and Gutierrez feels what happens at St James' will be the crucial factor in determining the club's promotion fate.[LNB] Newcastle still have to entertain Scunthorpe, Nottingham Forest, Sheffield United, Blackpool and Ipswich, and the Argentina international claims a maximum 15-point haul will all-but-guarantee promotion.[LNB] The gap is a big one and we're in a really strong position,[LNB] said Gutierrez, who donned a Spiderman mask to celebrate his long-range strike against the Tykes. It was important we won again, and I think if we win all our remaining home games, that will be enough to get us up.[LNB] We've got to play Nottingham Forest here this month, and that is obviously going to be a big one. We have five home games still to play and we are playing so well here at the moment.[LNB] Saturday's victory was Newcastle's biggest of the season, with the hosts running riot after Barnsley goalkeeper Luke Steele was dismissed for a professional foul three minutes before the break.[LNB] Peter Lovenkrands and Danny Guthrie scored two goals apiece, with Gutierrez and Kevin Nolan also finding the target, and boss Chris Hughton admits the five-goal victory represented a major staging post in what is surely shaping up to be a successful campaign.[LNB] It was a big day for the club, he said. It's unusual for us to score that amount of goals, so to score that number here at St James' and play a brand of football that you know the supporters enjoy was good.[LNB] We're nine points ahead of third now, and this was arguably our best performance, apart from maybe the Cardiff game. We scored five against Cardiff and they had 11 men for the whole of the match.[LNB] They're also going for the play-offs and have been pushing for promotion for the last few years. But the two games together are very much the home highlights for us.[LNB] Indeed, with Newcastle coasting to victory during a one-sided second half, thoughts even began to turn towards what was happening with the club's promotion rivals, Forest and West Brom.[LNB] The first thing we do when we get in the dressing room is check the Forest and West Brom scores, admitted Hughton. There are emotions at the end of a game and, if it's been a very tight match, you maybe come in afterwards and have a sigh of relief that the whistle has gone.[LNB] But halfway through the second half (against Barnsley), we were far more relaxed than if it was 1-0 or 2-0 and we were waiting for the whistle to go.[LNB] Alan Smith missed Saturday's game after turning his ankle in training last Thursday, but the skipper should be available for this weekend's Tees-Tyne derby at Middlesbrough.[LNB] Jose Enrique hobbled off shortly after the half-hour mark, but Hughton claims the substitution was a precautionary measure rather than a full-blown recurrence of the hamstring injury that recently sidelined the Spaniard for a month.[LNB] I'm hoping it's good news,[LNB] he said. When he was coming off, he said he hasn't pulled it, it just felt tight. He didn't want to get to the stage where he might have done more damage. We're hoping that's all it is.''[LNB]
