**Alan Shearer was at St James' Park on Saturday to watch Newcastle United beat Fulham in the Premier League.**
The Magpies made hard work of it in truth, despite dominating for large parts of the game. Once again, Newcastle just couldn't turn their dominance into goals, but Jacob Murphy and Bruno Guimaraes got their rewards for their perseverance, scoring the opener and the winner, respectively.
There was a portion of the game, in the middle, once again, where Newcastle let the game get away from them and Fulham got back into it, even scoring an equaliser. At one point the game looked balanced on a knife-edge and could have gone either way.
Newcastle woke up towards the end of the game, though, thanks to some masterful substitutions from Eddie Howe.
Alan Shearer was very impressed with Malick Thiaw on Saturday
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It was far from a classic performance from Newcastle, as Alan Shearer admitted on The Rest Is Football podcast, but the former Toon striker was impressed one one of Eddie Howe's summer signings.
> “They won the game, they weren’t brilliant.“I thought Malick Thiaw at centre-half was superb. Bruno got a brilliant goal, captain’s performance.
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> “They made hard work of it. Fulham came very close to going away with a point. You have to feel for them a little bit.”
Malick Thiaw has been a phenomenon since joining Newcastle
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Malick Thiaw was sublime on Saturday and seemed to be the first to every ball. It will have been a huge boost to the German's confidence, especially if he'd seen the, frankly, ludicrous rating he was given by Portuguese media on Tuesday night, where A Bola gave him a score of 4/10.
We're sure he doesn't bother himself with things like that, but we've been scratching our heads about that one all week.
Being praised by Big Al should put that one to bed, though. As for Bruno, well, he's probably used to it by now.