It's now or never on Judgement Day

United have triumphed only four times on home soil all season - against Bolton, West Brom, Aston Villa and Spurs, the last before Christmas.

Now we require not just victory tonight but against Middlesbrough and Fulham as well. It's a three-legged race to survival.

Can it be done? Well, put it this way, it has to be done.

Do footballers in black-and-white stripes want to be playing Man U and Liverpool next season or Doncaster and Peterborough?

Fergie Snr or Fergie Jnr? The choice is theirs! Perhaps if those selected to fight the good fight cast their minds back to Pompey away on December 14 it will help.

Three-nil it was, Michael Owen and Oba Martins scored, as we wish them to do tonight, and so did Danny Guthrie.

To get Owen firing again would be a massive bonus, one which I'm certain Alan Shearer was banking on when he sensationally quit the BBC couch for the electric chair in the manager's office. Unplugged for the moment of course!

Goals came so easily to Shearer but sadly not to those who have followed him.

Strikers naturally carry the biggest criticism, but who is weighing in from midfield?

That area remains a major problem in terms of creativity as well.

If grand football teams have a Picasso to paint extravagant pictures then United haven't even a Rolph Harris.

Horrendous, but no matter. Shearer must make do with what he's got and look to the treatment room recently galvanised by Paul Ferris for possible salvation.

If Mark Viduka and Oba Martins can leave hibernation to add punch up top, even if it's for a shift less than 90 minutes, perhaps Joey Barton can fleetingly add movement to a stagnant midfield before the season runs out. It has come to thus.

Shearer is a man of great mental strength who cuts no slack and tells it as it is, however unpalatable, but needs must and suddenly he has had to become a politician cajoling those who in other circumstances might be given the shortest of shrifts.

The Middlesbrough, Hull City and Sunderland results went ideally - only Blackburn yesterday didn't - but it all only matters if United start winning.

Visitors Pompey are no slouches it ought to be warned.

They have in Peter Crouch, Glenn Johnson and David James current England internationals and in veteran Sol Campbell and ex-Magpie Sylvain Distin two centre-backs who have rediscovered last season's best form.

Caretaker manager Paul Hart has revitalised Pompey since Tony Adams left, organising them with such efficiency that defeat at Manchester United last midweek was only their second Premier League setback in nine matches.

However it isn't about them. It's about those in the garb of Newcastle United. With 50,000 fans at their back willing them on with one voice the encouragement will be constant till the very last kick.

IT'S NOW OR NEVER!