Burnley 1-0 Newcastle: Toothless Toon miss big guns badly in terrible game at Turf Moor

Well how typically Newcastle United. Two steps forward and one step back. And sadly not even a half decent performance, nor a whimper of quality to go with it.

This was always going to be a really poor game of football, I mean come on, Sean Dyche vs Steve Bruce. Yet despite injuries being against us, but form actually being on our side, that was atrocious. An absolute crash down to earth after 7 points from the previous 9, and nothing to even write home about.

I don’t want to be too critical given Bruce and the boys have done brilliantly of late, but zero shots on target against a side who’ve shipped 11 goals in their last 3 isn’t good enough – whether your key players are missing or not.

On the subject of key men, we missed Shelvey’s quality, Almiron’s energy and Saint-Maximin’s spark, with those that replaced them doing little to impress.

Sean Longstaff looked sluggish off the ball and sloppy on it, and in truth looks an absolute shadow of the player who had us speculating about how Manchester United could sling their hook for £50m. Atsu was anonymous for most and wasteful for the rest. That moment in the first half when he decided not to shoot and turn back on himself…. well you tell me?

Joelinton actually looked much better playing off the left, and nearly had a wonderful assist that would have been all down to his hard work but sadly Dwight Gayle missed a sitter deep into the game:

? #NUFC pic.twitter.com/7uhCRhKVQ3

— Aziz Khalil (@azizk47) December 14, 2019

Now, this will be an unpopular opinion, but Andy Carroll needs to react a lot better to not getting decisions or everything his own way. We all know how destructive he can be when things are going well but when they aren’t, his standard throwing of the arms up in the air is petulant and painful to watch.

Better teams than us lose at Burnley but we’re capable, and deserving of so much more than that performance.

Time to dust ourselves off and get ready for Palace.

HTL.

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