Eddie Howe accepts his Newcastle side are at their best when they create chaos and no one in black and white is better at conjuring it than Will Osula.
The maverick Denmark Under-21 striker is, to say the least, unpredictable. No one, least of all Osula himself, ever seems quite sure what he will do at any given moment. Here though he stepped off the substitutes’ bench to score a fabulous, virtuoso 90th-minute winner for a home team reduced to 10 men by Jacob Ramsey’s controversial 45th-minute sending off for a perceived dive.
Although Bruno Fernandes enjoyed a fine game in Michael Carrick’s midfield even he could not quite prevent Ruben Amorim’s interim successor suffering a first Premier League defeat in charge of Manchester United at the ground where he cheered Newcastle from the Gallowgate End as a child.
If it made a mockery of any title talk at Old Trafford, Manchester United remain third, 12 points clear of Howe’s 12th-placed team who ended a damaging run of three consecutive home league defeats.
“I’m bitterly disappointed,” said Carrick. “We’re not happy with the way we played. It hurts me to say that Newcastle deserved to win. We can’t make excuses. The quality wasn’t good enough.”
