**Newcastle United's quest for a win away from home in the Premier League continues, as for the second week running, the Magpies took the lead only to come away on the receiving end of a 3-1 defeat.**
Once again, Newcastle took the lead and shut off. The Magpies had ONE shot on target all game, and that was Harvey Barnes' 27th-minute opener.
This might actually have been an even worse performance than last week. What is going on with us that we simply can not play away from home?
Malick Thiaw once again comes away as the one player we can muster up some form of praise for. We might put Sven Botman in the decent category, too, but the rest of them were absolute garbage. I was going to rant about Nick Pope here, but I'm going to save that for a piece entirely of his own.
Why didn't Eddie Howe take off Dan Burn after his yellow card, or at least after the first penalty incident?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pope was squarely to blame for Brentford's equaliser when he came out to punch the ball away, despite everyone being able to see he was never going to get there, and Kevin Schade was on hand to put the ball in the net.
The second goal was entirely avoidable. Dan Burn had struggled all game, and when he picked up a yellow card on 49 minutes, Eddie Howe should have been thinking then about replacing him with Lewis Hall.
Newcastle got away with one ten minutes later when Dan Burn brought down Dango Ouattara in the box, but referee Stuart Attwell instead booked the Brentford forward for diving with VAR confirming there was contact from Burn, but not enough for Ouattara to go down the way he did and that was the point Lewis Hall should have come on for Burn.
Unfortunately, Eddie Howe procrastinated, and Burn was caught short again and stuck a leg out in the box, bringing down Ouattara again, but this time VAR Attwell brandished the second yellow to Burn and pointed to the spot. Although VAR would suggest there was even less contact than the first penalty decision, it still didn't overrule the on-field decision.
Eddie Howe made five substitutions today, and not one of them did anything of note
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the delay while VAR sorted through all the incidents before, during and after the penalty, Eddie Howe made four changes, one of which was taking off Nick Pope for Aaron Ramsdale, whose first job was to face the Igor Thiago penalty, which the Brazilian neatly tucked away.
The substitutions made absolutely zero impact as Newcastle continued to look like 12 aliens from outer space who'd never seen a game of football before, thrown onto the pitch and told to 'do your best'.
Five minutes into the 11 added on at the end of the game, Igor Thiago made it 3-1, latching on to a free ball following a Malick Thiaw tackle. Sven Botman watched on as Thiago ran clear to tuck it away beyond Ramsdale, who was left completely exposed.
Our next two away games in the Premier League are Manchester City and then Sunderland. We were hoping to have one away win to look to before the derby to give us some hope, but the way both sides are playing, I can see that being a very, very bad day on Tyneside.