Newcastle 0-0 Stoke
Jack Butland’s status as a strong man of the match contender emphasises that Newcastle United were entitled to feel a little hard done by. Steve McClaren’s side are improving incrementally but Stoke City’s stubborn resistance merely highlighted his board’s folly in refusing to sanction a move for an extra striker in the Charlie Austin mode during the summer.
In the absence of such a figure, Newcastle are left still stuck in the bottom three with their manager facing yet another apparently must-win fixture at Bournemouth next weekend.
If Newcastle look convalescent rather than entirely convincing Mark Hughes’s Stoke are on an overall upward trajectory. Granted they rode their luck at times here but Stoke thought they might have had an early penalty when Paul Dummett appeared to clip Bojan in the area. If Roger East, the referee, was not buying that one, the remainder of the first half proved low on controversy but big on freneticism.
Exciting and frustrating in equal measure it featured two sides in stylistic transition to more controlled passing games arguably trying too hard at times.
Slightly better, Newcastle were full of slick little cameos invariably featuring Ayoze Pérez, Georginio Wijnaldum and Moussa Sissoko. Aleksandar Mitrovic, too, was having a good game and it took a slice of stalwart defending on Philipp Wollscheid’s part to deny the Serbia centre-forward a goal following his connection with a Dummett cross.
There was though a caveat. McClaren’s players and the potentially excellent Pérez in particular did much of their best work in areas of the pitch where they were never likely to inflict serious damage on Stoke.
That all looked set to change when Mitrovic rose to meet Sissoko’s cross before unleashing an imperious arcing header. Yet it rebounded tantalisingly off a post before Butland eventually gathered it.
Clutching his head in his hands a disbelieving McClaren greeted that Stoke reprieve by starting to talk to himself but it could have been worse for Newcastle’s manager. Minutes earlier the otherwise impressive Chancel Mbemba had been thoroughly wrong-footed by a wonderful ball from Charlie Adam before looking mighty relieved when Jonathan Walters somehow failed to turn the ensuing scoring chance into Rob Elliot’s goal.
If that would have reflected harshly on Pérez and friends it served as a reminder that Newcastle needed to start making their final balls count. Attempting to heed this warning, the Spaniard curled the subtlest of shots fractionally wide and Wijnaldum directed a free-kick against the bar.
Previously elusive, clear-cut chances were suddenly emerging all over the place and the hitherto under-employed Elliot had to react smartly to repel Walters’s point blank range header in the wake of Marko Arnautovic’s cross. It will not have been lost on McClaren that Stoke improved radically once Hughes replaced the largely ineffective Bojan with Ibrahim Afellay.
Yet much as Afellay proved a midfield force to be reckoned with, Butland remained the busier goalkeeper and did well to first deny Sissoko after a defence-bisecting one-two with Wijnaldum and then to divert Pérez’s shot away for a corner.
By now Mitrovic was becoming a little frustrated and when he and Wollscheid squared up after contesting a loose ball much macho posturing followed. It concluded with Mitrovic falling theatrically to the floor clutching his head in an unforgiveable attempt to get his opponent sent off. Fortunately East saw straight through the intended deception and simply booked both players.
There was a case for McClaren withdrawing Mitrovic but instead he simply told him to calm down. Such faith almost reaped a fairly instant reward but the Serb was denied what seemed a certain goal by Eric Pieters’s last-ditch block.
Hughes though had his goalkeeper to thank for keeping his side in the game and never more so than when Wijnaldum laid off and Sissoko sold the visiting defence a clever dummy before shooting.
Butland did even better to subsequently push a vicious header from Jamaal Lascelles over his bar.
Guardian