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George Bennett

Newcastle United forward Callum Wilson insists service must improve despite opening day win

Newcastle United forward Callum Wilson believes that the service into him needs to improve, despite scoring in the Magpies' opening day victory over Nottingham Forest.

Forest frustrated Newcastle to keep the scores goalless until Fabian Schar rifled a rocket into the top corner from range in the 58th minute.

The floodgates opened once Newcastle broke the deadlock and Wilson added a second with a classy chip over Forest goalkeeper Dean Henderson to score in the opening game for the third straight season.

Nonetheless, Wilson was critical of his own performance and admits he would've been frustrated had he not found the net last Saturday.

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"I enjoy scoring on the opening game of the season and I wanted to do it again for the third year running for Newcastle," Wilson said in the Footballer's Football Podcast.

"The opportunities where I was square and players didn't pass the ball, if I hadn't scored a goal then I would've been frustrated after the game.

"I made some good runs but on the whole I wasn't pleased with my performance. I scored so it looks like I had a good game but it wasn't my best. I was getting frustrated but I can understand it's the first game back.

"Tired minds - players making the wrong decisions at the wrong time. [It's the] first game so we'll let it slide and we got the three points which was the most important thing.

“That’s probably something that we can work on this week. When I scored, you can see in my celebration that the frustration came out a little bit because I wasn’t really in the game. I wasn’t really playing too great and I was just grateful to get on the score sheet."

The Magpies dominated throughout and marked the start of the season in style. Despite calling for better service into the box, Wilson was impressed by Newcastle's overall performance.

“It was good, it was very good," Wilson said. "We dominated Forest, kept them to minimal chances, they didn’t really pose any kind of threat on our goal. The only fault was probably in the first half we didn’t break them down how we would’ve liked to.

“They played with a back-five, it was congested in the box, and sometimes we just weren’t patient enough. But then in the second half, Fabian [Schar] scored an unbelievable goal and then all of a sudden they have to come out of their pockets and try and implement themselves on the game and that’s where Wilson popped up.

“You can practice getting across your man at the front post. You can practice getting a connection on it and making sure that your putting it where you intend to. It’s something Michail [Antonio] is going to watch and I’ll teach him one day."

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