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3 weeks ago
18
Eddie Howe describes January as “season defining” for his side and Newcastle’s manager looked suitably delighted to kick it off by collecting three points as Crystal Palace’s winless run continued.
Yet snapshots of a beaming Howe allied with the bald statistics do not quite tell the story of an often chaotic meeting of the Carabao Cup and FA Cup holders. By the 78th minute, when a corner was dropped for Malick Thiaw to poke the ball past Dean Henderson, the disappointment writ large across Oliver Glasner’s face suggested the Crystal Palace manager knew the game was up.
Until then, though, Palace had looked eminently capable of securing a draw from an ugly match almost as bleak as the bitter chill that ensured there would be no imminent thaw on a snowy, icebound Tyneside.
Out on a pitch warmed by undersoil heating it was all rather untidy. Admittedly, there were minor early highlights; Henderson acrobatically tipped Fabian Schär’s header over the crossbar and Yoane Wissa selflessly slid a square pass for Anthony Gordon to tap home before a VAR review detected that Wissa had been fractionally offside.
Generally, an injury debilitated Palace proved reasonably resistant to the attacking threat and pace of Gordon and Wissa and might even have opened the scoring had a tremendous interception on Thiaw’s part not prevented Yeremy Pino from making the most of Adam Wharton’s excellent pass.
Shortly after a clearly offside Joelinton had swept a shot into Henderson’s net in the wake of one of Schär’s trademark long, lofted passes, confounding Marc Guéhi and friends, Jean-Philippe Mateta curved a shot narrowly wide. That chance had arrived when, with the atmosphere inside the stadium strangely flat, Brennan Johnson, newly arrived at Palace from Tottenham, dodged past Lewis Hall.
Although Nick Pope was not required to make a single first-half save, Howe’s players were still riding their luck a little and would be reprieved once more before half-time. A disbelieving Glasner was left looking alternately nonplussed and infuriated after Will Hughes and Pino played a slick one-two only for the former to somehow drag an extremely presentable chance wide. Small wonder a crestfallen Hughes walked towards the tunnel at the interval muttering to himself and shaking his head.
A big part of Newcastle’s failure to assert any sort of real control stemmed from a midfield department where Sandro Tonali had been left limping in the wake of a wince inducing early challenge from Maxence Lacroix, while Joelinton and a perhaps fatigued Bruno Guimarães underwhelmed. On this evidence, the sooner Lewis Miley, once again impressive as a stand-in right-back, can be relocated to central midfield, the better for Howe.
Even so, as the second half unfolded and the game became increasingly open, only some fine defending from Guéhi – once a defender on the very top of Howe’s shopping list – helped keep the score goalless as the frustration in the stands grew.
Palace were succeeding in fraying the bond between Howe’s players and their increasingly disgruntled fans seemed unimpressed as Wharton’s fine pass left Pope to repel Johnson’s shot. The mood became more upbeat when Guimarães headed Newcastle ahead from close range after Harvey Barnes’s cross and Miley’s cushioned cutback.
Shortly afterwards, Thiaw secured the win as Palace’s run without victory stretched to seven games in all competitions.
