The result of today’s pre-season friendly at Middlesbrough has finally been announced – and it’s grim reading for Newcastle United fans!
It’s emerged that Neil Warnock’s Boro put FIVE past us in a convincing win for the Championship side at their Rockliffe Park training ground – a game which took place at 1pm today.
After a trio of early goals from the hosts, Allan Saint-Maximin scored just before the break to make it 3-1, however both Jamaal Lascelles and Boro’s Lewis Wing saw red in the second half for an ‘off the ball incident’.
Middlesbrough then added two more goals in the final 45 with no reply, coming away with a resounding 5-1 win via goals from Britt Assombalonga and Marcus Tavernier.
NUFC XI: Darlow – Yedlin, Lascelles, Lejeune, Manquillo – Hayden, S Longstaff, Ritchie, Almirón, Murphy – Saint-Maximin.
Subs: Mark Gillespie 70, Paul Dummett 60, Federico Fernández 60, Matt Ritchie 70, Daniel Barlaser 70, Ciaran Clark 60, Andy Carroll 60, Henri Saivet 75.
It may only pre-season – we were once slaughtered 6-0 at Leyton Orient then won promotion the season that followed – but this doesn’t reflect well at all on us and should raise a few alarm bells for Steve Bruce.
Interestingly, it’s since been confirmed that we’ll play Middlesbrough again in a pre-season friendly at our Benton training base on Monday.
Let’s hope we do better next week and that this is a wake up call to both Bruce, the board and the players, with us needing to sign well and up our game considerably if we’re to start the new season well at West Ham next Saturday!
Was this the game that both clubs decided to ‘scrap’ and had the audacity to not communicate it to anyone? How dare they play a game that they said they would, and then go ahead and actually play when they said they would. This is a scoop! Anyone want to comment on it?
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