What price Keith Andrews for manager of the season? Thomas Frank’s surprise successor certainly added to his fanclub as he choreographed Brentford’s fourth win in six Premier League games to leave Eddie Howe looking even gloomier than the unremittingly wet Tyneside weather.
While outstanding performances from Dango Ouattara and Keane Lewis-Potter left Andrews’s seventh place side appearing genuine European contenders, Howe’s Newcastle have won only one of their last eight matches in all competitions and lost four of their past five.
Along the way they have sunk to 12th in the table. Right now the boast, made only last week, of the Saudi Arabian owned club’s chief executive, David Hopkinson, that Newcastle can win the league by 2030 rings slightly hollow. Moreover Tuesday’s trip to Tottenham has suddenly assumed real importance for both Howe and his opposite number Frank.
Brentford began buoyed up by a sense of injustice. In the second minute Kieran Trippier tugged Lewis-Potter’s shirt sleeve inside the penalty area and sent him tumbling. There seemed a decent case for a penalty and a red card but, to considerable visiting chagrin, neither was awarded.
That decision left Andrews incandescent. Not that fury was confined to Brentford’s technical area. While travelling supporters vented their anger at their former striker Yoane Wissa for defecting to Newcastle last summer, tribalism surfaced as home fans booed Andrews’s one time Sunderland midfielder, Jordan Henderson.
