Toothless Toon look resigned to drop
SELDOM has a football team looked so resigned to their fate as Newcastle United.
There was no heart from them here, no spark. No bottle, no battle. It was just a doomed group of players so bereft of confidence and vulnerable to mistakes that their performance pitched somewhere between the comical and the farcical.
If the escape is coming, it is cutting it damn fine.
Rafael Benitez’s team sit six points adrift of the safety line and realistically need four wins from their remaining six matches to stand any chance of avoiding trips to Wolverhampton, Rotherham and -Burton-onTrent next season.
Southampton so overran them in every department, it was hard to know which failing to start with.
This latest defeat, sealed by goals from Shane Long, Graziano Pelle and Victor Wanyama, was their ninth consecutive loss on the road in the Premier League.
Newcastle’s loyal travelling support, who had set out at the crack of dawn on this 700-mile round trip, were reduced to ironically cheering when their hapless team finally mustered a shot on goal 48 minutes in.
Though Andros Townsend reduced the arrears with a spectacular second-half strike, there was never any prospect of a late rally.
Pummelled 4-0 on their last two visits to St Mary’s, Benitez had urged his players to keep things watertight early on. But his gameplan was shredded before the fourth minute, as Long rolled in the opener.
Long couldn’t believe how simple it was and Newcastle’s defending left Benitez fuming.
‘I’m really disappointed and really upset because we started the game very poorly,’ said the Spaniard. ‘We’re talking about 90 minutes with concentration, focus and not making mistakes and we started the game making a massive mistake.
‘Everything we had — the gameplan, the ideas, how to manage the situation — had to change.’
Another comedy of errors led to Southampton’s second as Daryl Janmaat slipped and injured his groin while trying to intercept Sadio Mane’s ball to Dusan Tadic.
With Janmaat on his backside, Tadic squared to Long, who nudged to Pelle. The Italian stroked the ball home. It was an embarrassingly easy goal, they were queuing up to convert.
The contest ended 10 minutes after half-time. From a corner, Mane burst to the byeline and cut back to Jose Fonte, whose shot was blocked by keeper Karl Darlow’s legs. Wanyama pounced and scored via a deflection.
They did then rally, with the redundant Fraser Forster saving from Ayoze Perez and then Townsend, before the winger cut inside and fired into the top corner for a consolation.
‘Today was one of the best starts we have played,’ said Saints boss Koeman. ‘We put pressure on the players to play this system and it worked fantastically.’