Newcastle’s chief executive has likened the task of reconstructing the club to building a plane in midair and, after this, Eddie Howe will know precisely what Darren Eales meant.
There were moments when Tottenham proved so dominant here that Howe’s team did not merely seem to be running on one engine but with a wing close to falling off and the landing gear jammed.
Precisely how Newcastle ended up taxi-ing safely towards the final whistle with three points neatly stowed away is something that appears set to puzzle Ange Postecoglou and his Tottenham staff for some considerable time to come.
“We controlled most of the match and just needed to kill it off,” said the visiting manager who, given the amount of balls his team sent whizzing across Newcastle’s six-yard box, could have done with his new £65m striker, Dominic Solanke, having been fit on a day when Tottenham’s most menacing shots were dispatched from outside the 18-yard area. “I’m very disappointed. We had chances to win comfortably so to walk away with nothing is a bitter pill to swallow.
Howe has warned about the need for his club to avoid “tearing ourselves apart” in the aftermath of a most bruising and underwhelming transfer window. Perhaps heeding that message, Newcastle’s players began as if on a mission to rip Spurs to shreds. Despite being unable to sustain such ferocious momentum, they not only kept their unbeaten start to the season intact but, in exploiting Tottenham’s high defensive line, remembered how to win on the counterattack.
“It was tough,” said Howe. “We came under pressure but responded really well and found a way to win. It’s been stressful and tough for us this summer so to move forward in such a positive manner bodes well for the rest of the season. We’re not playing as well as we’d like but we’re defending very well. It was a massive win”
There was certainly sufficient on view to reassure Newcastle’s watching chairman, Yasir al-Rumayyan, on his latest visit from Riyadh.
If the post-match conversation between Rumayyan, Howe and the club’s sporting director, Paul Mitchell, is unlikely to be have been dull, at least the tension surrounding the latter’s forlorn, month-long pursuit of Crystal Palace’s England centre-back Marc Guéhi, is likely to been partly assuaged by the initial strength, and ultimate resilience, of the home performance.
Harvey Barnes represented a key reason for Tottenham’s early travails and never more so than when he connected with Lloyd Kelly’s left-wing cross and volleyed his side into a 37th-minute lead. Given the awkwardly swerving bounce of the ball as it reared up from a slick surface greased by sporadic rain showers, Barnes’s finish was exquisite.
Yet as Gallowgate Enders marvelled at such a sublime execution, Postecoglou’s glare suggested Kelly seemed to be finding it far too easy to contain Wilson Odobert.
In an attempt to change that narrative, the Australian introduced an enormously impressive Brennan Johnson at the interval. With Johnson now wide on the right and Dejan Kulusevski’s ineffective stint as a false 9 over, Spurs were suddenly a very different proposition as the match’s entire topography altered.
The equaliser duly arrived when Dan Burn turned the ball into his own net after Nick Pope parried a shot from the increasingly elusive James Maddison into Johnson’s path and Burn’s attempted clearance morphed into a moment of mortification.
Considering that, just before the leveller, Son Heung-min, rather more effective attacking through the middle than Kulusevski, had a menacing shot deflected and Pedro Porro hit the crossbar, Newcastle were wobbling.
The time had come for Sandro Tonali to replace Sean Longstaff and mark his Premier League comeback following a 10-month suspension for breaches of betting regulations.
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Yet as Spurs forced a blizzard of corners and the excellent Pope, who made some vital saves throughout, stretched every sinew to divert Maddison’s free-kick, the Italy midfielder had precious little chance to impose any sort of order in the centre.
No matter; Jacob Murphy, on as a substitute, was well schooled in the art of counterattacking by his first manager at Newcastle, Rafael Benítez. Accordingly, Murphy made the very most of Joelinton’s defence-bisecting pass, racing clear before squaring for Alexander Isak to complete a routine tap-in.
By his lofty standards, the Sweden striker had not played that well. Yet as Isak turned up in the right place at the right time and Rumayyan rose to his feet and swayed along to chants of “Up the Premier League we go” the reality that Howe had a specialist centre-forward on the pitch and Postecoglou did not was fully emphasised.
“If we continue playing like that, I know we’ll get our rewards,” said the Tottenham manager. “The result doesn’t reflect the performance. It’s a sore one.”
