It would be easy to start this report with a few paragraphs slagging off the players for what in many ways was a less-than-classic performance.

However, before extracting the proverbial, it's pertinent to remember that we actually won the game and the tie, keeping a clean sheet in the process - that's something Juventus, Liverpool and Celtic all failed to do last season.

This wasn't a classic, but for once it was job done - mission accomplished, whatever you want to call it. Far better for once the uninspiring success than the glorious failure that we so often end up being part of. Like Bilbao or Roma in this competition, for example (or for our older readers, Anderlecht...).
          
No, instead of throwing it all away like a certain former Newcastle and England manager's team did in Poland a few hours earlier, for Sir Bobby, Big Al, Speedo and the rest it was a case of keeping the dream alive.
                
And for us mere mortals, the fate that awaits us in Switzerland on December 12th could well dictate how good Santa is to generations of bairns in Tyneside and beyond.

If the name Rangers comes out, it could be bikes with daft suspensions, X Boxes....or Fairs Cup videos. However if one of those clubs with hardly any vowels in their names and from countries not on many maps appears, it's a hoop and a stick, apple and an orange - or another credit card bill.

Our possible opponents are the usual mixed bag, with recent European conquerors such as Feyenoord, Dortmund and Schalke out, old foes Partizan, Barca and Roma still lurking and a sprinkling of "where the hell is that" sides.

While we await our fate though, time for a few words about Thursday night, when 40,000 fans and a BBC3 audience saw the right team go through over the two legs, but not by the margin some had predicted, both beforehand and after we'd taken the lead in this game.

Still, memories of the Partizan cock-up are too fresh in the mind to worry about such trifles as the visitors hitting the woodwork, having a couple of worrying penalty claims rejected and seeing a goal wiped out for a narrow offside decision.

We just did enough in this game to build on the first leg success and our early attacking flurries yielded a yellow card for Shearer but crucially also a vital goal to stretch our league into the comfort zone.

Note that we've not written anything about calming the home crowd here - many present appeared to be asleep, or at least suffering from laryngitis.      

To be honest, the goal apart this was hard work to sit through. In the opening forty five minutes we threatened to repeat the damage we caused to Basel in the latter stages of the first leg, by attacking at pace down the wings.

Unfortunately this meant that Jenas, Dyer, Robert and Ameobi all took their turns in either howking crosses over into some uninhabited hinterland beyond the far post, fell over near the box or tried tepid, easily blocked shots.
                    
Had we hit form it could have been a cricket score - unfortunately it stayed at 1-0....and after the  break diminished more as a spectacle, until a late flurry of activity that followed the introduction of Ambrose and Solano.
                         
Ultimately though it of course didn't matter. Even given our occasional erratic interludes, it was never on the cards that the Swiss would stick three past Given, although the woodwork and a debatable offside goal made life a tad uncomfortable at times - none more so than when a penalty shout looked momentarily to have cost us a spot kick and the services of Given. Thankfully the Danish referee ruled that our custodian was the victim of diving.                   

Thin fare this might have been, but the result was all that really mattered in the end. The same could be said about our trip to Molineux on Saturday - only I suspect Sir Bobby that wants to go down there and wipe the floor with them. I know I do.