There is no such thing as a routine victory for the Magpies these days
IF YOU look behind the result at anfield last weekend you’ll find a reasonably good performance for big parts of the game on Merseyside.
the two goals conceded before half-time were down to defensive errors rather than being sliced open. and for the first half-anhour, Newcastle looked capable.
the test is now to piece everything together over 90 minutes against a Brighton side that has failed to win in 13 of the last 14 Premier league games (2018/19 & 2019/20)
like Newcastle, Brighton have conceded eight goals in the Premier league so far, and there’s not much in this one if we are being brutally honest.
toon players were hurt by their collapse at liverpool and Bruce may not need to give them much of a gee-up. I think United will emerge victorious.
THE REFEREE
WHO Newcastle United “should” be beating and who Newcastle United did beat was something which used to irk Rafa Benitez.
The reality is even a home game like Brighton cannot be taken too lightly.
It is a big game in every sense of the word and in a week in which memories of the famous 3-2 win against Barcelona emerged on social media it is the Seagulls who pose the threat 22 years later - and there is no Tino Asprilla on board to illuminate the stage nowadays.
Geordie fans are well aware of that, though, and the tone has been set for a long time - something Benitez decided to immerse himself in.
In 2017, after what he deemed a below-par summer transfer window, United started a winter slump but Benitez, on more than one occasion said: “We are where we are because we did what we did.”
It was not games against the top six which seemed to worry the meticulous Benitez, but more so the clashes against this weekend’s opponents Brighton, AFC Bournemouth, Watford, Crystal Palace or Southampton.
Pundits looked at those games and often said: “Newcastle should win that one.”
Behind the scenes Benitez would ask “why should we?” and in the first season after promotion he felt there was no reason why Newcastle could not lose four or five home games in a row due to the minimal amounts spent in the transfer market.
It was Benitez’s fear of complacency which helped keep the team afloat for two seasons in the top flight, but the struggle now takes place without him.
In his view the only way United were going to beat teams with a “smaller” name than Newcastle was by outworking and out-thinking them, because the so called smaller teams were spending much more than United.
His theory was Newcastle - due to their reluctance to spend big - could not afford to be so arrogant to simply expect to beat teams just because they were playing a t