It's the Champions League Proper - 29/08/2002

A Manager with proven European success

Last night’s victory was so, so important. Yes, we were expected to go through, but with so much on offer, the pressure was on. We can now look forward to competing in the greatest club competition in the world. Newcastle United will be up there with the best, something that is massively important to the club in terms of finance and credibility. It’s qualification that helped us attract players such as Hugo Viana and it’s something that we must try to achieve every year. Success breeds success, and now we’ve achieved this, we must look to the Premiership and make sure we again come in the top four.

So we can now celebrate, the Champions League logo’s will be plastered all over the ground and Juventus, Feyenoord and Dynamo Kiev are coming to St. James Park. Lets enjoy it, we’ve done well to get here and we’ll be doing everything we can to progress to the next stage. There’s a lot of optimism about, but don’t think we’re going to get through easily. We’re facing top teams who are technically brilliant and also very well disciplined and organised. Dynamo Kiev in particular have been highlighted as a team that we can take points from, but they’ve experience of this competition and although they may have lost Shevchenko and Rebrov, they’ll have players coming through who’ll be household names in years to come. Nevertheless, we fancy our chances at home and I want us to enjoy it together. We need you support and we’ll do everything to justify it!

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