Damien Duff must have made the best choice of his professional years a few days ago, when he decided to sign a deal with Newcastle United. And I'm not saying that because the St. James Park side is one of the best in the Premiership - because they're not even close - but because staying with Chelsea would have probably meant the final of his top-football career. We all witnessed Chelsea's transfer fever during the summer and it was just impossible for Duff to play in a starting line-up.

So, in order for the player not to suffer, Jose Mourinho thought it was better for him to find a new team, than to sit and watch every "blues" game from the bench. So Newcastle stepped in and offered Roman Abramovich about 7, 5 million euros for the winger. And, to our surprise, Chelsea agreed, even if they first transferred the Irish player from Blackburn for almost 25 million euros.

After signing the deal with Newcastle, Duff stated that he couldn't be any happier for his decision and that playing for "The Toon" will give him the chance to forget the Chelsea nightmare. "I want to play football and be happy inside me - and I haven't been for a while now. I've had problems for the last three or four months because I didn't play enough. I just had a feeling that I wasn't guaranteed to play a lot this season. So I told Chelsea that if clubs came in for me I'd like to speak to them. Newcastle did and I'm happy to be here", said Duff.

On the other hand, his new coach, Glenn Roeder, stated that Duff's coming to play at St James Park is one of the Premiership's major hits this summer and he rated his new pupil as one of the best wingers in the world: "I couldn't have wished to make a better first signing for Newcastle. He's one of the best wide players in the Premiership. Make no mistake, he's every bit as good as Chelsea's other wingers".

More, Newcastle's chairman, Freddy Shepherd, admitted that Chelsea has done their club a big favor by letting Duff go that cheap and he assured everybody that the winger will help Newcastle in the future: "Chelsea are happy and so are we. Let's be honest we owe Jose Mourinho and Chelsea a big favor".