600 up for Shay

Congratulations to Shay Given on making his 600th club appearance at the weekend - just a shame it was for Middlesbrough. Not only did he mark that milestone on his debut, he also kept a clean sheet as the Smogs beat Bolton 1-0, new boss Aitor Karanka's first win. Not that he had an awful lot to do - even when the visitors were awarded a late penalty, Jermaine Beckford sent the spot-kick sailing over the crossbar.

Of those 600 appearances, 462 came in Newcastle colours - and the 17 appearances for the Mackems prior to signing for us make Given only the sixth player ever to play for all three sides. Personally I'm delighted to see a player who hasn't had the best of luck since leaving Tyneside back in action.

Meanwhile, one player who won't be following in Given's footsteps is ASBO, who has taken to Twitter to rubbish suggestions he might leave QPR for the Mackems in January: "Me to 5under1and? Somehow I just don’t think so." "I value the time I spent at NUFC. I value the relationship I have with the toon army to this day. I could never play for the Mackems." "It wouldn’t be right. Not sure were the rumour came from. But as usually its nonsense."

It'll be all Jim White on the night

A quick round-up of other goings-on of interest on deadline day...

For a brief moment I thought we'd managed to offload French flop Romain Amalfitano to West Brom, but unfortunately not - it's actually Morgan Amalfitano, his older brother, who has joined the Baggies. More's the pity.

One eyebrow-raising move involved the purchase of one-time Toon target Adrian Mariappa by Crystal Palace. The Premier League new boys bought the central defender despite the fact that he's been out of favour in the Championship and has made just one appearance so far this season - in Reading's 6-0 League Cup humilation at League One Peterborough.

Meanwhile, the Eagles waved goodbye to Peter Ramage - the defender featured 43 times in their promotion season, but Ian Holloway appears to have seen sense, realised he's not Premier League material and loaned him to Championship strugglers Barnsley. Bradley Orr, who likewise never made the grade on Tyneside, has been farmed out to league leaders Blackpool by Lancastrian rivals Blackburn.

On the continent, January target Florian Thauvin left Lille for Marseille in an acrimonious and controversial £12.7m deal, just six months after signing from Bastia, to whom the Young Player of the Year had been immediately loaned back for the remainder of the season. A former Lille midfielder going on strike in an attempt to force a move? Sounds familiar...

One move that didn't happen was Shay Given's mooted switch to early Premier League pacesetters Liverpool. Instead, he's been left to collect splinters at Villa, hoping Brad Guzan picks up an injury.

Dreamboat a driving force for the French

OK, so if this site is your sole source of footballing news (and if it is, you're mental), then you might be forgiven for not knowing that there's a major international tournament on at the moment. With the quarter-finals already underway, we'd probably best take a quick look at how those with Toon affiliations have got on thus far...

Let's start, most obviously, with Dreamboat. A fine performance in the opening draw with England, in which he troubled Joe Hart from distance on more than a couple of occasions, was followed by an even better one in the victory over hosts Ukraine. After play was suspended for an hour due to a freak thunderstorm, France took the lead and Dreamboat doubled it with a clinical strike using his lesser spotted left foot before rattling the post. His evening was curtailed on 68 minutes by a knock which then kept him out of the final game against Sweden, the French defeat only serving to underline his increasing importance to the side. While we can rightly be smug at having snaffled him up on the cheap last summer, we can't ignore the fact that these performances will be putting him firmly in the shop window whether we like it or not.

HBA, by contrast, has had markedly less game time. He appeared as a sub against England, running into blind alleys and surrendering possession cheaply on a couple of occasions, and then failed to spark when handed a starting place against the Swedes, hauled off just before the hour mark.

Still, he's fared better than Tim Krul, who sat twiddling his thumbs on the sidelines while his misfiring colleagues in the Netherlands side slumped to a truly shocking hat-trick of defeats, thereby making a mockery of anyone who predicted they would win the trophy - such as yours truly. Hopefully some good may have come from it, though, if Krul has been able to sweet-talk Luuk de Jong into contemplating a move to Tyneside.

Old boys Shay Given and Damien Duff had an even more horrific experience as the Republic of Ireland were sent packing pointless, Given forced to pick the ball out of his net no fewer than nine times over the course of their three matches. For England, James Milner and Scott Parker both started all three group matches, while Rocky was selected for the Sweden fixture, scored with a trademark header and can feel slightly aggrieved at being the fall guy for Wayne Rooney's return.