For today’s ‘On This Day’ article we look back two years to Newcastle United’s programme for the 2017/18 season. Read our review below and click here to see all the 2017/18 issues.
One of the more advert-heavy issues in the league, taking up approximately one-third of the programme, Newcastle’s issue still provides decent value for money despite the lowest number of net pages in the league. There is plenty of good quality, well-written, original content within these pages, with the programme costing just £3.
The best features are an extensive interview with manager Rafa Benitez, covering some ten pages, which goes beyond the usual fluff pieces many programmes settle for, and a series of historical articles towards the back of the programme. ‘Gems in the Attic’ looks back 125 years to the introduction of the club’s current name, while a four-page feature looks at memorable matches against the day’s opponents, including pictures of the programmes from those fixtures.
The design and layout are largely well suited to the size of the programme. The text can appear a little small on occasions but is usually perfectly readable – the main exceptions being the use of some dark colours on a black background in the statistics section and the league tables for the under-18’s and under-23’s teams, which you may need a magnifying glass for!
Opposition content is limited. A good introductory article on the visitors is worth reading but the programme provides only basic pen-pic information on the players. More interesting is a ‘scene setter’ page towards the front of the programme, which provides a form guide, the line-ups from the last fixtures played by the clubs, and a head-to-head record.