Newcastle 1-0 West Brom
by Roger Domeneghetti
at St James’ Park

WE’VE been here before. Speculation about Steve McClaren’s job staved off by a home win that saw Newcastle climb out of the bottom three. In the past they’ve always been dragged back in. The challenge for McClaren now is to ensure that this time they are not.

They dominated this match and the home fans were cheering on the half-hour mark when Cheick Tiote, whose move to China fell through in the transfer window, lashed in a 30-yard piledriver then wheeled away to celebrate his first goal for Newcastle in five years. Those celebrations were quickly muted by the linesman’s flag, raised because Aleksandar Mitrovic had been blocking Ben Foster’s view of the ball.

No matter — the fans were back on their feet following the home side’s next attack. Jonjo Shelvey’s neat through ball found Mitrovic, who made no mistake and drilled home past Foster.

Newcastle couldn’t find a way through for a second although it never really looked like they needed one.

Mitrovic was denied a second by Foster while Andros Townsend, making an impressive home debut, hit the post.

“This was a big game and these were three enormous points,” said McClaren. “We’ve said it all season: if we’re focused and we’re ready and we perform like that consistently then we’ll win games. We just need to do that every week.”

By contrast, West Brom couldn’t muster a shot on target and their manager Tony Pulis made no excuses.
“That’s the most disappointing game we’ve played since I’ve been at the club. If that was a boxing match, we shadow-boxed for 90 minutes. Newcastle were better than us all over the pitch; we couldn’t get near them.”

He was also under no illusions that the Baggies themselves are not clear of relegation threat. “Nobody in the bottom half of the table will think they’re safe and we’re no different, but my players are human beings and human beings have days like this.”

When he was asked whether he was surprised by the position Newcastle found themselves in, he smiled and replied: “The club’s spent a lot of money.” With that he was gone.

It was an enigmatic answer but one that holds a lot of truth. Owner Mike Ashley, the Sports Direct billionaire, has opened his chequebook and given McClaren the tools to keep Newcastle out of the drop zone, now it’s up to the manager to use them.