United begin at the Hawthorns

The reality of relegation hit home for Newcastle United as the fixtures for 2009/10 season were announced today.

United begin the campaign away at West Bromwich Albion who were also relegated from the Premier League and are now managerless after Tony Mowbray left for Celtic.

The trip to the Hawthorns is followed by home fixtures against Reading and Sheffield Wednesday.

For the eighth season running, United play away on Boxing Day at Hillsborough in the return against Wednesday.

And for the fourth successive season, the last game is away - in the capital at Queens Park Rangers.

It should be noted that there is no New Year's Day league match as the FA Cup Third Round is being played on Saturday, January 2nd.

And even before the television companies butcher the fixtures for their own means, ten of the 46 league matches are in midweek - five at home and five away.

SkySports has the rights to show 65 live matches with the BBC also broadcasting 10 games across the season.

The nearest away match to my birthday is Blackpool but, irritatingly, this is one of those midweek matches.

The games at Reading and Peterborough United, where there is a possibility of a visit to friends, are just after Christmas and on Easter Saturday respectively.

Note: Due to antiquated legislation, I am unable to produce a list of dates and fixtures.

They can be found here on the BBC and via NUFC.com.

The law, dating from 1959, makes the publication of fixtures an infringement of copyright held by Football DataCo.

To publish just one club's fixtures, media sources must pay £266 plus VAT each year. To print the fixtures of every club, the charge is £3,931 plus VAT.

The English and Scottish leagues are the only ones in Europe to charge for fixture use.

And even reputable trade magazines like World Soccer have refused to pay up and publish in previous years.

In 2000, they wrote: "This season we have not included fixtures for England and Scotland, the only two countries whose leagues insist on charging the media to publish their fixture lists.

"Call it greed, call it stupidity, but they wanted us to pay a four-figure sum for the privilege of publicising their leagues. We declined."

This particular use of copyright is unusual anyway as 'facts' are not covered in law.

Moreover, the European Court of Justice ruled in 2004 that clubs could not use the European Database Directive to demand payment from media and pools companies.

But Football DataCo refuted this, harking back to the Football League's court win in 1959 against Littlewoods.

It may seem over-cautious as this is just one blog in a whole sea of blogs.

But no target seems too small for Football DataCo with fanzine writers previously targeted.

And - as Bob Dylan once said - money doesn't talk, it swears.