Magpies poised to join Premier League elite

The force is with Newcastle United as they attempt to gatecrash the Premier League’s annual private party.

A handful of elite clubs have made the Champions League their own in recent years, turning the financial gap between them and the rest of the Premier League into a chasm.

Now Newcastle have come along and, contrary to popular belief, are lasting the pace and underlined their right to challenge for a top four finish with this hugely-impressive performance.

Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham should be very worried because Newcastle are the team in form, as they proved here with their sixth successive win.

Aand manager Alan Pardew senses they can sustain their challenge. He said: “Momentum at this club can be a powerful force and I am sure this year the momentum is with us. I drove in and had a coffee on Saturday morning and you can feel the buzz.

“Football is important in this city. There are a lot of people out of work but when they come to the stadium they see a team playing like we did on Saturday and it just lifts you. They can take that back into the workplace.”

Those factories and offices will be spoilt for choice as they dissect this game today. Yohan Cabaye, Hatem Ben Arfa, Papiss Cisse and Cheick Tiote were the most influential figures, but everybody won their individuals battles against Stoke players who are already thinking of their summer break.

But Cabaye, substituted because of a slight injury in the 60th minute, was the key to this win. He put them ahead in the 14th minute with a close-range header, then produced a pass that Pardew described as “exquisite” to enable Cisse to score for the sixth successive game four minutes later.

Stoke never threatened to recover from those early setbacks and had capitulated long before Cabaye stroked in his second following sloppy defending on the edge of the area after 57 minutes.

Pardew relished the performance as much as the fans. He said: “You couldn’t not enjoy some of our play, especially with the four-pronged attack. It was great.

“I have played in a very good Crystal Palace side which finished third in this division and I had a very good side at West Ham but not had the camaraderie of this group.

“I hope that means the players we have got all want to stay and we can do it all again next year because clubs will look at these players now and try and take them off our hands.

“I am hoping that we get to such a point where there is not really many places above where they can go.”

Tiote underlined that qualification for the Champions League will boost Pardew’s chances of keeping his stars. “It will definitely convince players to stay,” he said.

“If the team is playing in Europe, it is better for us to keep our best players. It will be difficult to keep our very best players if we are not playing in Europe so to achieve this is good.”

Stoke manager Tony Pulis accepted his side had been well beaten and there was little validity in his claim that Jon Walters could have affected the outcome if he taken an early opportunity.

Pulis said: “The biggest difference today was that every chance they got they made our goalkeeper make a save.

“Things are going well for Newcastle. If they get into the Champions League, it will be a fantastic achievement for them. If they don’t and it’s the Europa League, they’ll enjoy that as well.

“It’s a fantastic tournament. If you do it right you can be successful. We got to the last 32 and we loved it. It’s a great, great tournament.”