SOCCER FA PREMIER LEAGUE: Newcastle 1 Manchester Utd 2:IT WAS not to be the night that prised open the contest for the title, but it was at least a departure from the norm. Manchester conceded a goal and, what is more, fell behind in a match. Although their recovery to re-establish the seven-point lead was then completed this was not the normal show of mastery, even if this effort brought an 11th consecutive league victory.
There is real encouragement for the losers in the show of spirit that had Obafemi Martins demanding a save from Edwin van der Sar as late as the 85th minute.
There is a habit of viewing Newcastle with bemusement, if not amusement, because of all the scrapes the club gets itself into on the pitch or in the boardroom.
Nonetheless, there is nothing bland about this institution. The fear of relegation must also galvanise it.
Newcastle’s confidence proved a shock to stop the clocks last night, however. More precisely, it ended Van der Sar’s stretch of impregnability in the league at 1,311 minutes. Danny Verlinden can relax. His 1,390 invulnerable minutes with Bruges in 1990 survives as the record for Europe’s top-flight domestic leagues.
This, all the same, will not have been a subject that was preying on Var der Sar’s mind. His thoughts must have been fully taken up with the mistake that left them a goal behind after nine minutes.
Newcastle did show brightness to set up the opportunity, breaking at speed from a corner by the visitors. Jose Enrique cut the ball back for Jonas Gutierrez and Van der Sar spilled the shot, leaving Peter Lovenkrands to knock in his first goal for the club.
While the wet surface had presented difficulties, it was still a surprise to see Van der Sar incapable of adjusting.
After that, there was a natural verve to an encouraged Newcastle. United looked fallible, almost as if they were like all other footballers, and a baffled Nemanja Vidic collected a booking for bringing down Martins after being left stranded by the attacker.
Such an episode had been inconceivable beforehand. United, after all, had turned the screw when they rotated for this match. As expected, the side was much-altered from the selection that won the English League Cup. Nemanja Vidic and Wayne Rooney took over, respectively, from Jonny Evans and Ryan Giggs.
United’s slickness could not be concealed indefinitely. The equaliser, after 20 minutes, was simple and unanswerable. The right-back John O’Shea worked a one-two with Park Ji-sung before finding Rooney and the attacker stepped inside Fabriccio Coloccini before registering with a low shot.
Some of the usual composure had returned to the visitors, even if Vidic did put a free header wide from Michael Carrick’s corner after 40 minutes.
The match was turning into a struggle for Newcastle then. Their combativeness was great, but almost dangerously so in the case of Steven Taylor. On the verge of half-time he kicked Cristiano Ronaldo and swung an arm at him as well before, in the same passage of play, fouling Carrick. Somehow the catalogue of disorder warranted a mere yellow card.
United were indignant, Rio Ferdinand was booked and there were squabbles with some Newcastle players in the tunnel as the sides made for the dressingrooms.
The game itself had been jagged in more legitimate ways. That note of disorder was to be the undoing of Newcastle in the 56th minute. A long crossfield pass should have presented no worries, but Ryan Taylor sought to chest it in the direction of goalkeeper Steve Harper and merely plopped it into the path of the ever-alert Park. His low ball was then knocked into the net from close range by Dimitar Berbatov.
There continued to be a note of aggression to this encounter, with Vidic, for instance, protesting that Martins had elbowed him in the face.
On other occasions, though, Newcastle did show a legitimate desire to compete. Their difficulty was that Alex Ferguson’s side made them conduct the struggle much closer to their own goalposts than they wished.
The caretaker manager Chris Hughton, nonetheless, would have appreciated the signs of an appetite for survival in the Newcastle ranks. Harper assisted with a save that put a rising drive by Berbatov over the bar in the 73rd minute.
So far as United were concerned, then, the narrowness of the lead was more than compensated for by the fact that they had control.
GuardianService
NEWCASTLE: Harper, Steven Taylor, Coloccini, Bassong, Jose Enrique, Lovenkrands, Ryan Taylor (Carroll 77), Geremi, Gutierrez, Martins, Smith (LuaLua 82). Subs not used: Krul, Cacapa, Butt, Ameobi, Edgar. Booked: Steven Taylor, Gutierrez.
MAN UTD: Van der Sar, O'Shea, Ferdinand, Vidic, Evra, Ronaldo, Fletcher, Carrick, Park, Berbatov (Giggs 90), Rooney. Subs not used: Foster, Anderson, Scholes, Evans, Tevez, Eckersley. Booked: Vidic, Ferdinand.
Referee: Steve Bennett (Kent).
