WHEN Fabricio Coloccini joined Newcastle last August, he always expected May to be a momentous month for the Magpies. Back then, though, he thought he would be heading into the Champions League rather than the Championship.

Having made a £10m move from Deportivo La Coruna, the Argentina international was looking forward to a season in the upper reaches of the Premier League, with the possibility of an extended cup run further fuelling his optimistic outlook.

Nine months on, however, and he will take the field against Middlesbrough tonight knowing that Newcastle’s Premier League status is in the balance.

If the Magpies fail to beat their North-East rivals, they will be at least two points adrift of safety with just two games remaining.

As Kevin Keegan, the manager who signed him, famously once remarked, things have been nothing like they were advertised in the brochure.

“When I joined Newcastle, I could never have imagined the club being in serious danger of relegation, having to win their last two home games just to stand a chance of staying up,” said Coloccini, who has started 33 of the Magpies’ 35 league games this term. “It would have sounded crazy.

“I was sold a club that would be challenging in the top half of the table with maybe a good chance of doing well in the cups.

“When I joined, that is what I believed would be happening here.

“But the reality is that we are in the relegation zone and we have to fight to get out of it.

“If someone had told me May would be a very important month for Newcastle, never would I have thought it was for this reason.

“We must now show that we are ready to fight to stay in the Premier League.”

Just as Coloccini is in no doubt as to the importance of this evening’s game, so Magpies manager Alan Shearer acknowledges the significance of the Tyne-Tees fixture.

Shearer has just about done it all during his career, from winning a Premiership title with Blackburn, to breaking Newcastle’s all-time goalscoring record via an appearance in the European Championship semi-finals with England.

Nothing, though, compares to tonight’s game, a match that could well determine what league the Magpies are playing in next season.

“This is as big as it gets,”

said Shearer, whose most high-profile match as a Newcastle player was probably the 1998 FA Cup final against Arsenal.

“In fact, I’d go as far as saying that this is the biggest match of my career. This is the biggest without a doubt.”

That is a pretty bold claim for someone who has captained his country and scored in a World Cup tournament in 1998, but it underlines the importance of tonight’s game, a match that has been widely touted as the biggest North- East derby since Newcastle and Sunderland met in a twolegged play-off semi-final in 1990.

Despite having won just one of their last 17 league matches, Newcastle will surely have to claim at least four points from their remaining three games if they are to stay in the top-flight.

Fail to beat Boro this evening, and the task will look all but impossible ahead of matches against Fulham and Aston Villa, but while Boro have proved every bit as ineffective as Newcastle in recent weeks, the Magpies do not boast a good record against their Tyne-Tees rivals.

The clubs’ last four meetings at St James’ Park have ended in a draw, and with time running out, a fifth successive stalemate could prove terminal to both sides’ survival hopes.

During the 1998 World Cup, Shearer and Boro boss Gareth Southgate took part in a players’ challenge in which they tried to shoehorn as many Abba song titles into a television interview as possible.

Tonight, 11 years on, it is fair to say that the winner takes it all.

“Hopefully, that songs competition is the only thing he wins against me,” joked Shearer. “We are playing for big stakes and there is a lot of pressure on both teams.

“A win could get us out of the bottom three, and it would give everyone a huge lift in confidence ahead of the games we have left.

“I believe we can get that win, I really do.

“As long as we create chances like we did in the last home game (against Portsmouth), one of them will go in.”

Coloccini is similarly optimistic, and while the South American did not envisage becoming embroiled in a relegation battle when he moved to the North-East, he would still regard survival as a cause for celebration.

“We will celebrate because of the position we are in now,” he said.

“We know fourth bottom is nothing to celebrate, but under the circumstances, it would be an achievement. Of course it will have been a very disappointing season, but we will feel very happy.”