· 22 November 2025, 20:30
Newcastle United looked like a team reborn when they faced Manchester City at St James' Park on Saturday evening.
Right from the off, the high press was back, the intensity was back, and it almost paid off after just 30 seconds when Gianluigi Donnarumma was pressured into a mistake, which saw Harvey Barnes take an early shot on goal.
As the game went on, City got back into it and did start to dominate, but whereas Newcastle have recently given up in those situations, tonight they kept pressing, they kept that pressure on and never stopped attacking.
The big reason for this, in our opinion, was the return to the starting line-up of Tino Livramento and, more importantly, Lewis Hall.
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Lewis Hall brought a whole new dimension to Newcastle's game
We weren't expecting Tino to start today, but Eddie Howe said that Kieran Trippier has a slight niggle. It was Livramento's first game back from injury, and he looked in good fettle.
Lewis Hall, meanwhile, looked full of energy and never stopped running until he was hooked towards the end of the game.
It was even mentioned in the commentary on Sky Sports how he looked like he'd never been away. He and Harvey Barnes linked up brilliantly down the left, and that's where we caused Manchester City the most problems.
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Who was your Player of the Match against Man City?
Nick Pope
Tino Livramento
Malick Thiaw
Fabian Schar
Lewis Hall
Bruno Guimaraes
Sandro Tonali
Joelinton
Jacob Murphy
Nick Woltemade
Harvey Barnes
Sven Botman
Anthony Elanga
Joe Willock
17 votes · 2 days left
Are we getting carried away?
We look like an entirely different team with Hall in it, and now hopefully he can stay fit and continue this fine form.
It was clear that we'd been missing him down the left wing while he was injured, but honestly, we forgot just how good he was until today.
With Tino and Hall fit and firing, and Malick Thiaw in the form he's in (what a tackle to stop Erling Haaland dead in his tracks in the second half by the way), we're going to be an entirely different proposition for the rest of the season.
A win against Everton next week will get that monkey off our back in terms of not having a win away from home, and then it's full steam ahead.
Or are we just getting carried away after one win?