As rain fell, incessantly, on Tyneside, Eddie Howe wandered around the pitch alone, his face taut and in an apparent daze.
The final whistle had just gone and Newcastle manager’s knew any lingering hopes of a top-six finish were surely blown with it.
His side look exhausted, mentally as much as physically, by a Champions League campaign that pits them against Barcelona in the last 16 and Everton thoroughly deserved a victory which boosts David Moyes’s hopes of European qualification.
Admittedly it took a stunning stoppage-time save from Jordan Pickford to deny Sandro Tonali a late equaliser but, much more pertinently for Howe, Newcastle’s players have forgotten how to defend, are far too careless in possession and seem stripped of the power of creative thought. Athleticism and physicality are all very well but they can only take a team so far.
Newcastle were slapdash from the start and swiftly paid the price at a set piece. Jarrad Branthwaite’s expertly flicked header from James Garner’s corner was dispatched from the tightest of angles, confounding everybody before going in off the far post.
