Newcastle 3 - 0 SwanseaNewcastle grab lifeline as Andros Townsend caps vital win over Swansea
Home team scorersJamaal Lascelles 40
Moussa Sissoko 82
Andros Townsend 89
The Rafalution finally has liftoff, hope is flickering for Newcastle United and the race against relegation has just become very interesting.
No matter that the performance was not always quite as convincing as the final scoreline, Rafael Benítez celebrated his 56th birthday with a fully deserved first win in five attempts since succeeding Steve McClaren last month.
“Rafa, Rafa Benítez,” sang an exultant Gallowgate End in between bouts of serenading the Spaniard with “Happy birthday to you”. It may yet prove a false dawn but goals from Jamaal Lascelles, Moussa Sissoko and an especially impressive Andros Townsend were sufficient to leave Newcastle – who face Manchester City here on Tuesday night when victory would lift them out of the bottom three – breathing down the necks of Norwich and Sunderland.
Benítez’s team sheet made interesting reading. Jonjo Shelvey, McClaren’s marquee £12m signing from Swansea and Newcastle’s recent captain, was dropped to the bench, thereby facilitating a midfield recall for Cheik Tioté.
Few would have expected to see the armband handed to Sissoko but not only did the former Liverpool and Real Madrid manager offer the France midfielder that role but he permitted him a rare outing in his preferred “in the hole” position.
With Aleksandar Mitrovic – the sort of traditional centre forward Swansea’s Ashley Williams and Federico Fernández relish marking – dropped to the bench, Sissoko found himself operating behind the fleeter-footed Papiss Cissé.
Benítez was rewarded by much- improved displays from the recently anonymous Sissoko and Gini Wijnaldum while Tioté’s sometimes bruising ball-winning abilities helped diminish Swansea’s initial enthusiasm for the contest.
There were cameos when Newcastle still looked horribly vulnerable and a decided edginess inhibited their passing but, encouragingly, importantly, they were winning virtually every second ball.
Yet if Francesco Guidolin’s team were largely on the back foot, Lukasz Fabianski initially did not have an awful lot to do. True, the goalkeeper reacted well to scramble a cross to safety before diving low to swoop on an early Townsend shot but generally Swansea defended intelligently enough to keep a nervous audience in fairly muted mode.
Significantly though, a distinctly ersatz home rearguard, featuring Vurnon Anita out of position at right-back, was succeeding in subduing the dangerous Gylfi Sigurdsson while ensuring Karl Darlow first involvement – the goalkeeper’s retrieval of a deflected shot – did not come until the 35th minute.
The odd patch of sustained visiting pressure apart, Newcastle largely continued doing a very good job of strictly rationing Swansea’s possession by gobbling up all those second balls and this strategy – a hallmark Benítez game plan – paid dividends when they finally took the lead for the first time under their new manager’s charge.
This breakthrough was delivered by the slightly unlikely figure of Lascelles. Sigurdsson was tugging him back as Townsend whipped in a corner but the centre-half shrugged off the Icelander before bravely putting his head where it hurts, throwing himself at the ball and powering home a header which went in off the helpless Fabianski.
Newcastle fans – and even Benítez – seemed so startled by what they had just seen that there was a momentary collective pause, a sense of suspended animation, before the celebrations began. It was as if no one could quite believe that something had finally gone right for a team which, despite its manifold faults, has been all out of luck just lately. Early in the second half Lascelles might have scored again but, tantalisingly, he failed to apply the decisive touch after very nearly connecting with the fall out from a free-kick.
All in all it was perhaps not the best day for Jason Levien – who, along with his fellow American Steve Kaplan, is in talks about potentially completing a takeover at Swansea this summer – to be casting an eye on his prospective new investment from the directors’ box.
There are suggestions the new owners want to replace Guidolin with Brendan Rodgers which, given the Italian’s success in steering a once apparently Championship-bound side to safety, seems rather harsh.
Benítez’s replacement of the tiring Tioté with Shelvey possibly, coincidentally, served as the cue for Guidolin’s players to finally wake up and create some chances. After Williams half-volleyed narrowly wide, Jefferson Montero and Bafétimbi Gomis both missed presentable shooting openings.
It was time for Newcastle to reassert themselves and Sissoko could not have chosen a better time to score his first goal of the season. The increasingly influential Townsend delivered another stellar corner and, following a bit of pinball, the Frenchman extended one of those telescopic legs and forced his shot past Fabianski from around eight yards.
Townsend deserved a goal and, appropriately, the England winger registered the third, defying Swansea’s offside trap to shoot beneath Fabianski’s body after being played in by Mitrovic.
Benítez’s birthday cake must have tasted particularly good.
Guardian
