Perhaps it was inevitable given how the half-time playlist gleefully segued between Dirty Cash (Money Talks), Price Tag and Can’t Buy Me Love that a divine second-half intervention from Newcastle’s marquee January signing, Bruno Guimarães, would earn a sixth win in seven matches and extend Eddie Howe’s unbeaten streak to nine Premier League games.
Chris Wood, another mid-season recruit, scored his first goal for the club to cancel out Southampton’s first-half opener before Guimarães’s touch of class sealed a victory that lifts Newcastle 10 points above the relegation zone and within four of the top half. Not that Howe is getting carried away, dismissing the notion his team might already be safe. “We’re not,” he said. “Football changes very quickly, as we’ve seen for the positive. What we have done is put a gap between us and the bottom teams, but that’s all it is.”
