IT seems that fate is conspiring to ensure Wanderers suffer every emotion possible.

Highs and lows seems to be a common occurrence for the team and fans as we acclimatise to the Premiership and on Saturday we had an abundance of both.

Yet again though we had a larger helping of the latter than the former. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised because every team struggles to come to terms with the higher quality in their first season. But are we really just another team like Bradford, Barnsley and Palace who are only there to make up the numbers? I don't think so.

I think we have more than that and the fact we have taken points off four of the top five teams surely backs that up.

It should have become five out of five because how we didn't take at least a point at St James' Park I'll never know.

In the lead twice we did enough to take something from the game.

The crucial moment came when referee David Elleray pulled Jussy Jaaskelainen up for holding on to the ball for too long.

I wish I could blame Alan Shearer or the ref as they did on Saturday's night's Premiership TV show. But I'm afraid I was screaming at Jussi to get rid of it at the time and my view hasn't changed since.

He wasn't under any pressure from Shearer and Elleray gave him the six seconds allowed in the rules and another half as much again so we can't complain.

It's just our luck that Shearer made us pay the ultimate price from the free kick, rubbing out all the good work we had done to take the lead.

It's a shame that two great goals counted for nothing in the end. But that's as much to do with our defensive weaknesses than Newcastle's attacking play.

We showed again how vulnerable we are at the back and unless we sort that out we're just going to go the same way as we have in the past and go straight back down.