Newcastle United 0, Chelsea 0.

ELEVEN years ago, Newcastle United effectively handed Manchester United the Premiership title. Yesterday, courtesy of a gritty goalless draw with Chelsea, the Magpies might well have done exactly the same thing again.

The circumstances are different, and Newcastle supporters will surely wish their club was throwing away the title themselves than merely robbing another of their rivals of the crown, but the upshot of yesterday's closely-found encounter is that Manchester United are back in the driving seat as the closest title race in recent years reaches its crescendo.

For Chelsea, a goalless game at Gallowgate represented a golden opportunity squandered.

Instead of having their destiny in their own hands with four games of the season to go, Jose Mourinho's side must now rely on Manchester United losing at Stamford Bridge and dropping at least another point if the Reds are to squander their three-point deficit and render their superior goal difference irrelevant.

For Newcastle, on the other hand, yesterday's match ended on a far more optimistic note.

True, a failure to beat Petr Cech made it almost six-and-a-half-hours of Premiership football at St James' Park without a goal, a statistic that merely underlines how badly the Magpies have missed Michael Owen during his season-long absence.

But with Chelsea joining Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal on the list of teams that have failed to win a league game on Tyneside this season, Glenn Roeder can at least take some solace in his side's ability to compete with the best.

Glaring weaknesses remain apparent, and will have to be addressed in the summer, but after a second half of the season that has sapped both optimism and belief at St James', yesterday's spirited performance provided a timely reminder of the talent that Roeder will still be able to call upon next term.

In Nicky Butt, a player who overshadowed the efforts of Frank Lampard and Claude Makelele, the Magpies boasted the best midfielder on display.

In Nolberto Solano, a revelation once again at right-back, they possessed a full-back capable of combining steel and skill.

And in the dominant Steven Taylor, they also boasted a defender with enough pace and power to neuter Didier Drogba, the Premiership's leading goalscorer by a distance.

They might have ridden their luck slightly when Salomon Kalou's eighth-minute pull-back appeared to strike Stephen Carr on the arm but, for the majority of a surprisingly incident-free encounter, Newcastle were superior to their opponents in every department.

They chased, they harried and they tackled as though their lives depended on it.

A victory proved beyond them, but Chelsea were nevertheless chastened.

Had the Magpies been able to field a proven goalscorer alongside Obafemi Martins, they might even have been leaving the North-East empty-handed.

As expected, Newcastle lined up without Owen and Shola Ameobi. What was not anticipated, however, was that they would spend the entire 90 minutes in the ascendance.

While Chelsea's narrow midfield formation enables them to overpower teams in the engine room, it also provides their opponents with an outlet on either flank and, for once, James Milner and Kieron Dyer made the most of the space that was available to them.

Milner, in particular, proved a thorn in Chelsea's side during a one-sided first half in which a tame John Terry header proved the visitors' only effort on goal.

Newcastle were hardly carving out a series of golden opportunities either but, with Butt marshalling operations via a series of precise first-time passes, the hosts spent the majority of the first half probing for an opening on the edge of the Chelsea box.

It didn't really arrive despite repeated assistance from the fumbling Paolo Ferreira - when the Portuguese full-back was twice outpaced by an overlapping Carr he must surely have known it was not going to be his day - but a succession of half-chances suggested that a visiting defence that had conceded just one goal in its previous 15 hours of Premiership football was surprisingly vulnerable.

It certainly looked that way when Ferreira sliced a second-minute clearance from his own six-yard box into the arms of a grateful Petr Cech, and further cracks were evident eight minutes later when Dyer stole in to snatch a shot wide following an impressive knock-down from Antoine Sibierski.

Martins might have broken the deadlock in the 16th minute had the covering Wayne Bridge not deflected his 18-yard strike wide and, while the deadlock endured to the interval, the improvement in Newcastle's play from last weekend's dismal defeat at Portsmouth was considerable.

Roeder had questioned his players' commitment at Fratton Park but, back in the North-East, it was champions Chelsea who appeared to lack vigour.

Indeed, with the visitors' sole first-half tactic being an unsuccessful attempt to release Drogba behind the Magpies' back four, it was the second time in succession that Newcastle had been involved in a game that saw an away side perform pitifully before the break.

Given Manchester United's four-point advantage at kick-off, Chelsea could hardly afford to be as bad in the second half, so it was perhaps inevitable that they would carve out their best opportunity of the match within two minutes of the re-start.

The source of the opportunity was equally predictable, with the otherwise reliable Titus Bramble straying onto the wrong side of Salomon Kalou and enabling the Ivory Coast international to produce a pull-back that Lampard wastefully blasted over the crossbar.

A month ago, Bramble looked to have played his last game for Newcastle when Roeder singled him out for criticism in the wake of his side's UEFA Cup exit in Alkmaar.

Injuries to both Craig Moore and Oguchi Onyewu gave him a temporary reprieve but, while yesterday's performance was one of his more impressive this season, Bramble's powers of concentration remain far from perfect.

Fortunately, for Chelsea, Cech does not switch off as readily as the former Ipswich centre-half, and the Premiership's leading shot-stopper enhanced his already-exalted reputation even further on the hour mark.

Butt's incisive through ball sent Dyer scampering down the inside-right channel but, while he evaded the out-of-position Wayne Bridge, the Newcastle midfielder was unable to slide his shot under the legs of the advancing Cech.

With Sibierski also heading over as the Magpies continued to press, Sir Alex Ferguson must have been enjoying his Sunday afternoon viewing.

And while substitute Joe Cole prodded a stoppage-time strike narrowly past the left-hand upright, the Manchester United manager now has reason to be grateful for Newcastle's assistance once again