Eddie Howe describes January as “season defining” for his side and Newcastle’s manager looked suitably delighted to kick it off by collecting three points as Crystal Palace’s winless run continued.
Yet snapshots of a beaming Howe allied with the bald statistics do not quite tell the story of an often chaotic meeting of the Carabao Cup and FA Cup holders. By the 78th minute, when a corner was dropped for Malick Thiaw to poke the ball past Dean Henderson, the disappointment writ large across Oliver Glasner’s face suggested the Crystal Palace manager knew the game was up.
Until then, though, Palace had looked eminently capable of securing a draw from an ugly match almost as bleak as the bitter chill that ensured there would be no imminent thaw on a snowy, icebound Tyneside.
Out on a pitch warmed by undersoil heating it was all rather untidy. Admittedly, there were minor early highlights; Henderson acrobatically tipped Fabian Schär’s header over the crossbar and Yoane Wissa selflessly slid a square pass for Anthony Gordon to tap home before a VAR review detected that Wissa had been fractionally offside.
Generally, an injury debilitated Palace proved reasonably resistant to the attacking threat and pace of Gordon and Wissa and might even have opened the scoring had a tremendous interception on Thiaw’s part not prevented Yeremy Pino from making the most of Adam Wharton’s excellent pass.
