This was much more like the team that appeared set for the Champions League before a five-match winless run left them behind malfunctioning Big Sixers Spurs and Liverpool. It says a great deal about the mistakes of that pair – as well as the more catastrophic collapse of Chelsea – that a run of one win in eight hasn’t entirely derailed their top-four chances. They’re now back up above Liverpool in fifth, and just four points behind Spurs with two games in hand.
But at least Newcastle have put themselves back in the conversation. There were a couple of significant factors that bode well for Eddie Howe’s team. Most obviously, the re-energising return of early-season Miguel Almiron. On the bench for the first time this season, he stepped off it to score the winner and dismantle the growing impression that his – and the team’s – regression to the mean was total.
They still look quite tired. They still look ever so slightly short of top-four nous despite the frequent bed-shittings of Liverpool and Spurs. They still don’t quite score enough goals – this was the first time they’d managed more than one in a Premier League game since Boxing Day. But overcoming a spirited second-half fightback from Wolves shows there’s still something there.
Newcastle deserved their lead on the balance of play, but there’s no point pretending they weren’t hugely fortunate minutes before the opening goal when Nick Pope’s questionable footwork could have cost them dear once again. Having miscontrolled a backpass he clear-and-obvioused Raul Jimenez but somehow escaped VAR’s glare. It’s boring writing about VAR, but this was a baffling failure to take advantage of a situation that is the video ref equivalent of an open goal.
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