Newcastle win again to continue astonishing rise
By Mike Collett
LONDON (Reuters) - Newcastle United's astonishing climb up the Premier League table continued on Saturday when they beat Queens Park Rangers 1-0 at St James' Park to move up to fifth.
Alan Pardew's men were bottom on Sept. 22 but Moussa Sissoko's goal 12 minutes from time against bottom club Rangers secured a fifth straight league win.
The only blot on a superb afternoon for Newcastle was an injury scare for defender Ryan Taylor who limped off in tears with a knee problem in the 32nd minute on his first league start for two-and-a-half years.
"It is tinged with sadness really and our thoughts are with Ryan," Pardew told reporters. "We are all sweating on the scan and hoping that it's not bad news because he does not deserve any more bad news.
"Other than that the performance was high standard and we came up against a very motivated QPR but we did enough to win. I am so proud of the younger players and it was a great win."
QPR manager Harry Redknapp, whose team has shown glimpses of improved form in recent weeks, said his team lacked creativity.
"It looked like it was going to drift away to a 0-0," he told the BBC.
"The goal came and we couldn't get back into it unfortunately. Maybe we weren't quite creative enough.
"It's going to be tight (at the bottom). People were writing Burnley off two weeks ago but then they get two wins -- there are going to be seven or eight teams involved."
QPR, who suffered their sixth successive away defeat, have eight points, a point behind Crystal Palace and two adrift of Burnley who won 2-1 at Stoke City on Saturday.
Palace will climb out of the bottom three if they avoid defeat at home to Liverpool on Sunday.
(Editing by Tony Jimenez)
