After Newcastle’s first-team beat Aston Villa 5-1 on Saturday, our U21s kicked off the new Premier League 2 season with an impressive 5-3 win over Southampton.
After a summer restructure and several young talents featuring in Eddie Howe’s pre-season plans, the likes of Lewis Miley, Alex Murphy, Remi Savage and Ben Parkinson all started in the 12.30pm kick-off at our Little Benton Academy.
Southampton won the Premier League 2 last season and raced into a 2-0 lead, scoring twice in the opening seven minutes through highly-rated striker Dominic Ballard.
However, a Amadou Diallo penalty, goal for local striker Ben Parkinson and Scottish centre-back Charlie McArthur – who signed last summer from Kilmarnock – sent us into the break 3-2 up!
Jay Turner-Cooke – the former Sunderland talent who scored in our pre-season win over Gateshead – then came on with 20 minutes to play and scored twice, with one being a superb finish to seal all three points for Ben Dawson’s young Mags.
We went down to 10 as Nathan Carlyon picked up a second yellow card late on, before Saints star Ballard completed his hat-trick with a 95th minute goal to make it 5-3.
A great start to the season for our U21 side, who recovered superbly from 2-0 down to beat last season’s champions in style. Happy days!
