Newcastle has beaten Arsenal by the 2-0 scoreline, enjoying being the better team for much of the match., leaving us with diminished hopes of a top-four finish
It wasn’t the greatest start from our side, with the home team enjoying strong spells in possession with us being pushed back into our own half for much of the early exchanges.
Our defence was having to work hard to keep us level, and it felt obvious that we were in for a long night when Ben White was caught out and picked up a yellow card inside the opening 10 minutes.
We really had to weather the storm as we failed to find much composure on the ball, and a big save from Ramsdale to deny Saint-Maximim kept things alive for us. It worsened for us when we lost Takehiro Tomiyasu to injury also, but we eventually went into the break relieved to still be level.
Unfortunately the second-half only moved to get worse for us. While we did have a few chances, we were forced to take many of our shots from distance in what proved to be a relatively easy night for Martin Dubravka.
Ramsdale kept our hopes alive with a number of strong saves, but he had no hopes of stopping the initial goal, with Ben White failing to deal with the low-driven cross, clipping it into his own net.
We brought on Martinelli and Lacazette in hope of freshening up things in attack, but there was little improvement despite the hard work of the Brazilian, who was maybe trying a little too hard to force it.
The game was dead when we were hit on the counter-attack, and while Ramdsale managed to block the shot from Calum Wilson, the rebound fell to Bruno Guimaraes and he guides his shot beyond two Arsenal players to score.
Despite having an extra six minutes added to the 90, we simply couldn’t get close enough to the Toon goal, and didn’t deserve any more than we got after that performance. Ben White clearly wasn’t ready, either because of a lack of training or simply because he wasn’t at 100%, and our struggles allowed our rivals to build up their confidence, and they deserved every part of it.
Well done Newcastle, but on our part, that was simply not good enough.
Tottenham only need a point against Norwich next week to beat us to fourth, so our CL hopes are dead and buried.
Patrick