Newcastle find their weekend in Brighton to be very accommodating

Newcastle United were being watched by Eddie Howe for their match at Brighton, and they may have given him some cause for cautious optimism.

In Amanda Staveley’s fever dreams, Unai Emery emerged from the tunnel at The Amex Stadium for this match holding a black and white scarf above his head. The Newcastle United team was transformed in 72 hours by a new manager bounce so spectacular that it could be seen from space. Emery’s black and white army cruised to a comfortable win, as the new era was kickstarted.

Except this isn’t a fever dream. Eddie Howe was watching from the stands with the look of a man who had just realised that he may have just purchased a house on a flood plain, and Graeme Jones was still in control of the same bunch of motley suspects that have pratfalled their way through the season. Norwich City had upped the ante earlier in the afternoon with a first win of the campaign away to Brentford, before sacking their own manager. Newcastle United had been Bottom of the Table Newcastle United for 35 minutes by the time their match kicked off.

And then, of course, there’s the small matter of Brighton being 350 miles from Newcastle, for a 5.30 kick-off. The last train back to Newcastle from London Euston leaves at 7.41. Two and half hours from Falmer to Brighton, and then from Brighton to London Victoria, and then from London Victoria to London Euston on the tube in about 20 minutes sounds tight. But who cares about the match-going fan, eh? There are 3,000 Newcastle fans in the away end at The Amex, and not one of them mattered a jot to those who made the decision to schedule this match at this time.

Brighton have been everything that Newcastle haven’t so far this season: an attractive and confident team with a manager who’s performed a transformative job in setting the club’s ambitions higher than an annual battle of attrition against relegation from the Premier League. A decade and a half ago, Brighton were playing in a dilapidated athletics track in the third tier. Now they’re playing for a place in Europe.

But for 20 minutes, Newcastle matched them, step for step, set up in a slightly more attacking formation and looking spritely when they did manage to break. Brighton, all neat flicks and short passes, didn’t seem in that much of a hurry to come out of first gear, but then Leandro Trossard fell under a tackle from Ciaran Clark. The contact was fairly minimal, but it was the sort of challenge that looks more like a foul with every viewing, which is never good when a video assistant is involved. Referee David Coote was eventually summoned to see it for himself, and the jig was up. Trossard converted a penalty that Karl Darlow seemed to dive past.

Newcastle’s collective shoulders slumped, and by the last five minutes of the half they looked worn out, as though the referee’s whistle couldn’t come soon enough. It took them until ten minutes into the second half to have their first shot on target of the night. But while Brighton play some lovely football and have been superb in the Premier League this season, they do have an issue with killing games off, especially at home. They passed the ball around very nicely. At one point, they maintained possession through 46 passes and two and a quarter minutes. All very nice, yes, but they didn’t create that many chances, and they didn’t take the ones they did create, so by half-time their lead remained at 1-0.

But after 66 minutes, a goal came from just about out of nowhere. Matt Ritchie and Allan Saint-Maximin combined on the left-hand side, Ritchie crossed to the far post and Ciaran Clark headed down for Isaac Hayden to sweep the ball in from eight yards. The goal was cathartically received by the travelling supporters. Newcastle hadn’t done a great deal to deserve it, but Brighton had spent the previous 20 minutes doing very much as they had for the last 20 minutes of the first half. If ever there was a team setting itself up for a sucker punch, it was them.

And it certainly knocked the wind out of the home side’s sails. The fancy flicks of the first half were long forgotten as Newcastle woke up with the equaliser and the balance of the game changed. The home side started to look tired and the away side played as though the wind was on their backs. Brighton didn’t look like testing their defence that hard.

By second-half stoppage-time, Brighton were hanging on for the point. They’d been pushing forward for a winner when a long ball from Joelinton found Callum Wilson, who broke free only to find the Brighton goalkeeper Robert Sanchez haring towards him. Sanchez clipped Wilson as he tried to pass him and another VAR delay ended in a red card for the goalkeeper, then the all-too-rare sight of an outfield player – in this case Lewis Dunk – having to take his place in goal.

There is something fundamentally thrilling about the sight of the outfield player in goal, whites of their eyes clearly visible, carrying the quiet resignation of the player who knows in his heart of hearts that this is a job that he doesn’t know how to do. But Dunk saw out his few minutes between the sticks without Newcastle bothering him; even in those closing few seconds Brighton might have snatched a chance, had they not dithered about with the ball on the edge of the Newcastle penalty area before tamely over-hitting a pass into Darlow’s arms.

Howe may have seen something that he can build on, and Newcastle’s players might well be disappointed that they couldn’t greet the man who will be their new manager with a win. It would be a stretch to say that they were particularly good, but they worked hard, took their chance when they got it, and had they had another ten minutes with an outfield player in their opponent’s goal, they’d likely have won it. The key difference between these two sides had been so far has been that when Brighton don’t draw they mostly win, while when Newcastle don’t draw they always lose. Small wonder they cancelled each other out when they came to play each other.