AN ANDY BOOST!
STEVE BRUCE is in for a long, hard relegation scrap on the evidence of this meek display.
Newcastle are a diminished Premier League outfit this season, the team who are the worst in possession and struggling to score.
A point lifted them out of the bottom three but they needed a win with tough games ahead.
Only Bruce and Steve McClaren have failed to win any of their first three home games in charge of the club.
Graham Potter’s side bossed the game and were neat and tidy but Brighton lacked the firepower to turn their superiority into a win.
The only big roar from the St James’ Park crowd came after 82 minutes but it wasn’t for a goal.
It was for the introduction of Geordie Andy Carroll, back in black and white for the first time since he become a British record £35million transfer to Liverpool in 2011.
That’s what it’s come to on Tyneside. Roaring on the big man, hoping for a hoof-ball miracle, from a player with a chronic ankle injury.
“He’s one of our own,” sang the home fans and Carroll lifted the sombre mood, muscled the defence around, won some free-kicks and caused a bit of late panic.
Yet Bruce’s men were poor on the ball and lacked any sort of consistent composure and pattern.
They started the game in the bottom three and there was no surprise that large swathes of St James’ Park remained empty with 8,000 home tickets unsold.
There was little intensity from the home side early on with a muted atmosphere and Brighton dominating possession.
Newcastle couldn’t get hold of the ball, living up to their billing as having the lowest possession stats in the league at 33 per cent.
The sight of Carroll, on the bench for the first time since returning in the summer, brought the biggest ovation of the half.
Brighton stretched Bruce’s side and hit the bar when a deflected Lewis Dunk header looped over Martin Dubravka.
Miguel Almiron had a great chance for the Magpies after Isaac Hayden played him clear but Brighton keeper Mat Ryan blocked. Pascal Gross then had a free header which was scrambled away, while Neal Maupay had two nibbles in front of goal blocked.
The Seagulls are in the top five in the league for keeping the ball, a vast improvement this season under Graham Potter, and they pinned Bruce’s men in their own half.
It was such a poor start from Newcastle that Bruce changed his starting formation of five at the back to 4-1-4-1 after just 28 minutes.
That almost worked, winning an immediate corner, but Joelinton nodded a free header wide.
Bosses Potter and Bruce met in February with Bruce’s Sheffield Wednesday side beating Potter’s Swansea 3-1, but this was the more pressured environment of the top flight.
Newcastle’s early fixture list is punishing – they face six of the elite in their first nine games – and it has caused Bruce problems bar the win at Spurs.
Where Brighton had a fluidity, but a lack of ruthless finishing power, the home side leant on their resilience and grit to stay in the game.
Brighton resumed their dominance after the break, pinning Newcastle back and swaggering around with the ball.
There was a lack of aggression and intensity off the ball from Bruce’s men, who banked up and let the visitors play, restricting them to a long-range Gross shot in the early second-half sparring.
Bruce shouted and cajoled on the touchline and had some testy exchanges with his players as he attempted to bring some order to his side’s game.
Almiron livened it up with a sharp turn 40 yards out before racing goalward, only for his side-foot curler to be gathered by Ryan.
Jonjo Shelvey then speculated from 35 yards out and went close after an hour, while Schar cleared off the line from sub Aaron Connolly’s lob and Joelinton had a shot blocked.