Newcastle’s adventure has become a dour slog

FOR Brighton, this still feels like an adventure. at Newcastle, it is turning into a slog. Promoted together in May, Brighton have progressed, albeit slightly, but Newcastle have not. Shane Duffy, the outstanding Brighton defender, said as much after this dour draw. ‘You look at their team and it was basically the championship side from last year,’ he said. and that is where Newcastle are probably headed again unless there’s some intervention in the form of new faces this month. They face Stoke today in another match it is said they must win. But then that was said about Saturday’s game, as well as the home fixtures against Everton, Leicester, Watford and Bournemouth, all of which they lost. Of Newcastle’s 19 points, 18 have come against teams in the bottom half, evidence enough that they are indeed a championship side scraping by in the top flight. The manager knows the enjoyment is beginning to drain from their season. ‘You see sometimes the anxiety when you miss a ball or do a bad pass,’ Rafa Benitez, the Newcastle manager, said. Brighton, who entertain Bournemouth at lunchtime today, are a far better bet to survive, especially given the form of centre backs Duffy and Lewis Dunk, for whom this was an eighth clean sheet of the season. Manager chris Hughton said: ‘They have been fantastic. The two of them have been singled out and rightly so.’ Hughton and his players celebrated this point with their fans at the end of the game. They were smiling, unlike their hosts.