Match Review: Newcastle United 0-1 Brighton
The Proclaimers used to sing about walking 500 miles to fall down at a door. After Saturday, we’d happily travel 692 miles via rail replacement bus, underground and train and climb over a thousand steps to the away end of St James’ Park to see Brighton win 1-0 at Newcastle United every week.
It’s been a long time since the Albion have travelled home with three points in the bag. 350 days had past since it last happened, a 1-0 victory away at Swansea City that lifted the Seagulls into the dizzy heights of eighth in the Premier League.
That lofty position was as a result of an extremely generous run of fixtures, with the points that we put on the board between the start of September and the end of the November proving to be the foundation for securing a second season of Premier League football.
We’re now into this season’s similar run of fixtures. It started with the game against West Ham United a fortnight ago and goes right the way through until Chelsea visit the Amex just as Santa Claus is starting to prepare his sleigh. There are 27 points up for grabs before that Sunday lunchtime date with Eden Hazard and co and we’ve already nabbed six of them.
Newcastle had 68% of possession, 27 shots and 10 corners but for all their pressure, their attack was toothless. Against a side with a half-decent Premier League striker, you suspect that those stats might have translated into something on the scoreboard. Newcastle don’t have that, and if Mike Ashley fails to splash the cash on one in January then the Toon Army could be in real danger of slipping back to the Championship which would be a shame as it is a spectacularly good away day.
On the couple of occasions Newcastle did managed to make their pressure count, they could find no way past Maty Ryan. Ryan made a brilliant one handed stop to keep out Ayoze Perez with the first chance of the game and then the Australian number one produced two outrageous saves to deny Jonjo Shelvey.
In front of Ryan, Lewis Dunk and Shane Duffy were back to their very best of last season. Dunk made 15 clearances to justify his inclusion in Gareth Southgate’s last England squad in front of home supporters who were had been extremely vocal that their captain Jamaal Lascelles should’ve got the call up instead.
Duffy meanwhile made an astonishing 19 clearances. The bloke who runs Crystal Palace Twitter page HLTCO was on his stag do in Newcastle and claimed on Saturday morning that his best man had seen Duffy running past Sleeperz Hotel after a late evening. In the unlikely event that is true, on this man-of-the-match showing then Duffy needs to go out on the piss the night before games every week.
The only goal was credited to Beram Kayal but really it was all about Jose Izquierdo. There had been some controversy surrounding Chris Hughton’s decision to start Izquierdo over Anthony Knockaert who had been the Albion’s best player in the last three games, but the move was justified just before the half hour mark when Izquierdo picked up a loose ball on the edge of the box and riffled a trademark long distance effort goalwards which Kayal deflected past Martin Dúbravka.
Glenn Murray had already exited proceedings by that point after a sickening clash of heads with Federico Fernández. Murray was clearly out of it before he’d even hit the ground with Hughton revealing afterwards he’d received a concussion which will rule him out of next Saturday’s game with Wolverhampton Wanderers at least. Thank Christ it wasn’t worse and fair play to the Newcastle supporters who clapped Murray from the pitch as he was stretchered off.
The much-maligned Jurgen Locadia took Murray’s place in what was a difficult game for a striker to come into given how much defending the Albion were set to do shortly after his introduction. Locadia’s work rate continues to leave a lot to be desired, probably because he’s thinking about the latest bangin’ tune he can release on iTunes, but he did play one beautiful pass to Yves Bissouma who somehow contrived to shoot 20 feet wide of goal with only Dúbravka to beat.
Thanks to the Albion’s defensive efforts, that miss didn’t prove costly. Three precious points were in the bag and not one defibrillator was needed at the very top of St James’ Park. Great city. Great day. Great defensive performance. Great result.
