Review of Newcastle United Season Review 2002/03

Introduction

Time to fly off to St James`s Park for Newcastle United`s 2002/2003 season review. The team finished third in the Premiership behind Manchester Utd and Arsenal on 69 points. Trailing behind were Chelsea and Liverpool. By all accounts The Toons have played well. Skipper Alan Shearer shunned international games in order to concentrate on the club matches and he excels. He scored his 100th United goal and what a moment! Add in the other goal scorers: Craig Bellamy, Solano, Jenas, Ameobi, Dyer and Laurent Robert and you can see there`s an incredible amount of talent driving Newcastle forward.

There are interview clips throughout with Shay Given, Gary Speed, Jermaine Jenas, Jonathan Woodgate as well as Booby Robson, Alan Shearer and Craig Bellamy. One of the differences between this and say Arsenal`s Season Review is the amount of near-miss goal footage, which is included here. Having everything to hand along with the full stats in the extras section gives this disc a lot of replay value.

If it`s instant access to individual games that you`re after, you get it right here. Fixture List lets you select from Premiership, Champions League, FA Cup and Worthington Cup. Within each competition you can select from home or away games and watch the goals in each. It`s very well done.

Video

Presented with a full frame transfer, it`s variable throughout. The worst it seems to get is some smearing and pixellation, but thankfully it`s not a common occurrence and doesn`t obscure viewing. Colours and detail look good and you can see every goal without problem.

Audio

Nothing fancy in the audio stakes, this is football after all! Plain old Dolby Digital 2.0 gives us exactly what we want, clarity. All the interview footage as well as football video is clear in terms of sound. No problems heard at all.

Features

Easy to navigate menus with a few extras:

• Interviews with Bobby Robson (14:47), Alan Shearer (6:58) and Craig Bellamy (7:33). There are clips of these interviews played in the main programme interspersed with matches so it`s good to see the whole interviews here.

• Toon Top 20 (6:28) - This is Newcastle`s top 20 goals of the season and there are some very impressive goals to see! You get action from Shearer, Solano, Bellamy and others. Good stuff.

• Statistics - Player Appearances table, Final League table, and Goal Scorers table. Great for all you stats fans.

• Weblink - A link to the Newcastle United website.

Overall this range of extras is better than average, but it lacks the sparkle of the extras of Arsenal`s DVD. There are no subtitles. It comes packaged in a slim Amaray case. This doesn`t have the printed inlay with fixture results like Arsenal`s DVD, which is a shame.

Conclusion

There you have it, 100-minutes of Newcastle United doing very well in the last season. There are some great moments here including that penalty shoot-out with Everton. One of the good things about this DVD, or any of the football season reviews is that they concentrate on goals and interviews. It`s great for footie fans, and good too for anyone that just wants to see the goal scoring. I`m of the latter! This is a good solid DVD. Recommended.