It was tricky knowing what to aim for, after securing the promise of an apology off Shaun Goater in the last Sixy Talk, but as this will be our fifth of these articles, it really would be enough to find someone who ate pies at all, let alone properly. With that in mind, I took my coat off and roamed the streets of Newcastle until I came across the guys from Newcastle Blog, Leazes Terrace sat in a Greggs doorway mumbling somethingn Taylor’s right foot. Here were people who surely knew their way around a piece of pastry…

…and could answer the six questions you’ve all got on your mind this week.

Wigan Athletic, what do you *really* think of us?

I find Wigan an aboslute pain in the arse – nothing personal, I’m just sick of losing to you! Seriously though, as a football team since Martinez has been in charge I’ve found Wigan solid entertainment – easy on the eye football combined with the an unpredictability that is all too familiar to me as a Newcastle fan. Mind, none of that excuses Dave Whelan’s love of being a vox pop on all subjects unrelated to him – I imagine he makes regular calls to Sky Sports to offer an opinion…

Mike Ashley. Hero, villain or just the bloke that owns your football club? Sports Direct may have won the war with JJB, but will Ashley ever get the level of respect (begrudged or otherwise) that Dave Whelan seems to get these days?

Depends when you catch him – at the moment he’s getting a great deal of flak for a lack of spending during the summer, which has been mostly fair flak. I still believe it’s the long game with him, and people are forgetting to easily the state Newcastle was in off the field before he acquired the club. We’ve only recently managed to rid ourselves of the last of the horrendously overpaid players bought in 2007 (£60k a week Alan Smith) so from now on we *should* see sensible building. There’s many up here that will hate him no matter what – personally, I’m giving it more time.

Alan Pardew has officially held the position of fourth most hated man in Wigan, since he was manager of Reading, so we find it hard to believe that anyone would take him as manager, but eight years? What’s that all about?

It’s symbolic only – a statement of stability, or Ashley keeping his friends close, whichever your agenda likes to see it. What’s farily certain is if the club begins to seriously underperform (ie to the point of being in a relegation battle at the wrong end of the season) it’ll not save his job. Currently it’s only providing some (frankly, arseholes) an easy dig given his run of results since being handed his contract – but he’s having a host of factors out of his control to deal with (injuries to Cabaye and Taylor, suspensions etc).

Personally I’m happy with the man as long as he continues to progess and learn from his mistakes, which was his greatest attribute last season.

You’ve had a (comparatively) poor start to the season, the wheels have fallen off right? Was it the lesson in football that we gave you last season that caused it?

Not quite – up until the West Ham game our season had started slowly but steadily, and with 6pts from the following four games (a more than reasonable ask) we would have been 3 pts off 5th with a lot of difficult away games out of the way. The problem that faces us now is clawing back the points we should have picked up in those games over a December period which has some traditionally woeful fixtures (Fulham and Man Utd away). As for the footballing lesson, if there was one to learn then Newcastle would be passing a lot better now.

That, and scoring from every chance, and half chance, they made…

We’ve got a few injuries so you can expect us to put out a team of midfielders, how do you see the game panning out tomorrow?

I was expecting a team of midfielders anyway, to be honest. As usual, I can see Newcastle struggling to deal with your typical control of possession – we’re woeful at both regaining and maintaining possession at present (no surprise) and the prospect of two men in central midfield against Wigan’s standard three doesn’t help matters. In Ba and Cisse, Newcastle potentially have an awesome strike force, but providing service to those two is providing difficult and they’re currently like two nuclear warheads sitting in a silo – all that power, no real use… It’s a harsh reality, but Newcastle need to win at any cost on Monday – as mentioned before the up coming fixtures are very tough at a time we’re desperate for points.

I know that Greggs probably makes pastry all about steak slices and apple turnovers in Newcastle, but what is your method for eating a pie, what’s your flavour of choice and is any form of condiment acceptable?

Erm, take a sensible bite – chew it, then repeat until the pie is gone. I used to be partial to a Balti pie at St James’ Park, but once the price of one overtook that of a Bugatti Veyron I had to go hungry..

Leaze’s Terrace is a blog covering Newcastle United and footballing subjects such as transfers, teams, news, match report and general rants about things in the ‘beautiful game’. It can be found on the Web at http://www.leazesterrace.co.uk and on Twitter at @leazesterrace.

?

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PIE AT NIGHT PODCAST
We promise you that it’s easier to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t have to rely on us to remind you when a new episode comes out.

Apple sorts can find it on iTunes here – https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-pie-at-night-podcast/id1097853442?mt=2

If you prefer a different podcast app then just search for “The Pie at Night Podcast”.

You can also find us on Stitcher, here – http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-pie-at-night-pocast/the-pie-at-night-podcast

If you’re that way out, you can find and subscribe to our RSS feed here – http://feeds.feedburner.com/thepieatnight

And if you just want to take pot luck then you can find all our episodes on our Soundcloud page