Very good first half from Newcastle
Indeed. Followed by a very unconvincing second half, alas. And a possible season-ending injury to Almiron. (Liverpool fans can now rest assured that if their team scores two goals during their visit at SJP they'll win. Likely, one will be sufficient).
Southampton deserves as much credit for their improvement after they switched to 4-2-3-1 at half time as they do blame for their dismal attempts to match Newcastle's 3-4-3 before the break. Stuart Armstrong appears to be a Scot who can play football, so we should probably put him in a zoo and breed more of this sadly endangered species. Nathan Redmond, meanwhile, clinched his place in my Hall of People I'm Told Can Play Football But Who've Never Played Football When I've Been Watching Them. The direct correlation between playing Redmond and finishing in the bottom half of the league comes as no surprise. (Even the one time a Redmond team finished in the top half, they regressed to the tune of 17 points from the season he was playing elsewhere).
The sight of Shane Long prompted more fear than it ever reasonably should, because it feels as though he's scored about 80% of his career goals against Newcastle (despite all the praise heaped on him for his pace and strength he's scored eight EPL goals since the beginning of the 2016-17 season. In that period of time, even Joselu has scored 11 top-flight goals (five in Spain, six in England)).
But Ayoze Perez was at his absolute best, a combination of marvellous finishing and glorious touch, the sun shone, the atmosphere sounded fabulous and even the barman in the pub I was watching the game at remembered whose turn it was and what I was drinking. 41 points means NUFC is all but mathematically safe, and so we can return to what really matters - watching the best manager in the club's history be driven out of the door by the worst owner in the club's history on account of the latter's personal inadequacy. The only questions appear to be whether Benitez's replacement will be someone utterly mediocre or someone utterly terrible, and how much money will be squandered on bad players judged to be prospects by people who've achieved far less in football than Rafa Benitez.