A gigantic game in the race for Champions League football and Eddie Howe’s Mags did it…just!
The scoreline looks comfortable and we were very much that in a strong first half showing sparked by Sandro Tonali’s early opener, but the second was one to forget and very nearly disastrous until Bruno Guimaraes’ long range strike looped in.
We always thought two wins from our final three games would be enough, but yesterday’s results added even more importance to today’s match, with Aston Villa moving level after their 1-0 win last night and Man City’s 0-0 at Southampton leaving third up for grabs.
The result sees us leapfrog Man City and move up to third, yet the crucial part is moving three clear of Chelsea and Aston Villa, although it’s practically a four point lead over the latter given our superior goal difference.
At the time of writing, Nottingham Forest are drawing 1-1 at home to Leicester, but even a win for Forest would leave them two behind us with Chelsea to come on the final day.
Howe made two changes, with the absent Kieran Trippier and Joe Willock – both out with minor muscle issues – replaced by Sven Botman and Anthony Gordon, resulting in a system change that saw us shift to a 3-4-3 formation.
Tino and Murphy acted as wing-backs, and our two centre-backs either side of Botman pressed their attacking midfielders, with Burn going for man-to-man on Palmer and Schar taking Fernandez.
Howe’s changes stifled Chelsea and we made the dream start, as Murphy’s low cross from the right was finished by Tonali at the back post. St James’ Park absolutely erupted and rightly so. 1-0 and the perfect early goal to immediately liven up a crowd who sounded like they’d had plenty of mid-morning pints in preparation!
We were pressing them brilliantly, dominating duels and regularly getting in behind their midfield, with the only real negative being our final ball. We failed to capitalise in good areas, with Barnes sometimes picking the wrong pass and Isak lacking conviction.
However, some of Murphy’s passing down the right was brilliant, Burn superb and Botman was winning every duel, dominating Jackson and showing such an impressive level of sharpness on his first start for months.
The Dutchman was bullying Jackson and the Senegalese striker clearly didn’t like it, leading to the game’s second major incident as he planted a blatant elbow on the former Lille star. The initial decision was yellow but VAR intervention soon led to the red he deserved!
We didn’t quite capitalise on the man advantage in what was a fairly low key end to an intense first half, but we attacked the Gallowgate 45 minutes away from a huge win, crucially with 11 against Chelsea’s 10.
You’d have expected that to give us a huge lift, yet what followed was a horrifically tense and messy 45 that Chelsea controlled for much of it.
We made an attempt to sort out our slow start by taking Botman off on 55 minutes and bringing on Miley to beef up our midfield, but very little changed. Our passing fell off a cliff, we were suddenly losing so many duels and at times it looked like we were the side with 10 men!
Moments to make it two passes us by, as Barnes and Murphy miscued cut-backs and Bruno smashed over, but Pope was the busier goalkeeper and made vital saves to deny Cucurella and Fernandez before James headed over a big chance.
It’s like we’d lost our identity and Howe didn’t know how to react to Maresca’s half time shift in tactics, seeing the players freeze and the crowd crowd increasingly baffled at what they were seeing.
Then finally a massive, MASSIVE win was settled. A slice of luck with the deflection and roar of relief as Bruno’s effort from outside the box looped over Sanchez to make it 2-0. Phew!!
We made hard work of it at times and it had shades of that 4-3 win over Nottingham Forest where we struggled to see it out, although those concerns can wait now we look just one win away from securing an all important top five finish.
Next up, a trip to Arsenal and chance to move second should the Gunners fail to beat Liverpool at Anfield this afternoon.
**Newcastle XI****:** Pope; Schar, Botman, Burn; Murphy, Guimaraes, Tonali, Livramento; Barnes, Isak, Gordon.
**Subs**: Dubravka, Ruddy, Lascelles, Krafth, Longstaff, Miley, Osula, Neave, Wilson.