Magpies now a side playing for far more than just survival
MANNER OF FOXES WIN SHOWS HOW FAR UNITED HAVE COME
Chief Newcastle United Writer NEWCASTLE United could be officially booked to dine at English football’s top table next season by Sunday afternoon. Many observers will probably tell you they’re already safe, and a quick glance at the standings in the Premier League indicate there seems to be danger when it comes to the threat of being even close to the bottom three. The way United’s players celebrated wildly in front of the 3,200 fans from Tyneside after beating Leicester City also suggested they feel they are just about there. Toon players threw their shirts into the crowd and quite rightly milked the applause and it was all a far cry from the pre-Rafa Benitez era just three years ago. Back then, United’s team were twice jeered and booed at this venue after an FA Cup exit and an awful 3-0 defeat to the Foxes in the Premier League. It was at Leicester that fans unfurled a banner which read: “We don’t demand a team that wins – we demand a club that tries.” On Saturday, those same supporters finally got what they deserved as Newcastle players steamed into challenges and put their bodies on the line for the black-and-white cause. As the Toon players filed out of the King Power Stadium on Saturday night, they did so safe in the knowledge they’d spend the majority of the week in the top 10. Benitez is right to be cautious and keep expectations at a reasonable level right now; after all, he is in charge of a team that went nine games without a Premier League victory before Christmas. A lot has changed since that streak for United, however, and confidence is oozing in Benitez’s squad after cajoling them from being a nervous newly promoted team into a side capable of taking three points from some of the so-called big boys in the Prem.
Few gave the black-and-whites a chance of emerging from Leicester with a maximum haul but by the end, they deserved everything they got.
Attention now swings firmly on to Sunday’s home encounter with what should be a jaded Arsenal team, with the Gunners set to arrive on Tyneside on the back of a long journey back from eastern Europe having faced CSKA Moscow in the Europa League quarter-finals.
Newcastle have already proved they can get in the faces of the top six this season with an impressive win over Manchester United and if they can manage it again on Sunday, they will be home and hosed in terms of being a top-flight team again next term.
There will be no nervous finale like 2009, 2015 or 2016 when Newcastle twice slipped out of the top division and once scraped off the threat of relegation in the last throes of the campaign.
Instead, Newcastle’s strait will consist of matches in which they could earn a respectable position and even seal a top 10 slot for the first time since 2014.
The way Benitez has his team playing at the moment makes you feel that is more than a possibility.
Right now, Newcastle United are showing some impressive signs akin final six to a side that are playing for more than just survival. It wasn’t just the way United carved open Leicester in the first half, when Ayoze Perez picked out Jonjo Shelvey and he fooled England defender Harry Maguire with a clever turn before prodding home the opener. Lee Ryder
Nor was it Florian Lejeune’s defence-splitting pass which allowed Perez to dink home the winner and lob Kasper Schmeichel for a goal that Philippe Albert would have been proud of!
As stated on these pages last week, Perez’s strike against Huddersfield Town felt like one of the defining moments of the season, and here he weighed in with another one.
Perez is discovering his killer