After a slow start, Anthony Gordon is back to his best.
A stunning early goal in Newcastle’s win against Aston Villa got the ball rolling, much to the delight of Toon boss Eddie Howe.
Jhon Duran’s sending-off allowed the Magpies to pile on the pressure and were rewarded with second-half goals from an in-form Alexander Isak and Joelinton who missed Newcastle’s win against Ipswich through suspension.
It’s now four consecutive wins in all competitions for a Newcastle side who could barely scrape together a win earlier in the season. At one point they had gone five league games without a win and questions were asked about Howe’s future.
That seems a long time ago now as the win saw Newcastle climb to fifth in the Premier League, just six points off second place. They’ve got an opportunity to close the gap to the top four when they travel to Manchester United on Monday.
With Gordon firing again, he highlighted one thing that shows how far Newcastle have come since their disappointing start to the season.
Anthony Gordon says mentality shift improved Newcastle’s performances
Gordon has scored four goals and bagged three assists so far this season. The 23-year-old had a shaky start to the season after being away with England for EURO 2024 in the summer.
Any suggestion of fatigue or poor for can be disregarded now as in the last five games Gordon has scored twice and provided two assists including one in Newcastle’s 3-3 draw with Liverpool.
Gordon spoke to The Mirror about what has changed in recent weeks.
“What has changed? We are not nearly men anymore, we have been winning! It is just a mindset shift. We got to the point where we had drawn the Palace game and should have won, we lost to Brentford quite poorly, then it was a case of asking how long we were going to continue missing these opportunities to get up the table. Everything is so tight.
“It was an impressive win over Villa. When you see that focus like against Villa we win games. We put teams on the back foot and thinking back to our Champions League season, we can score goals like that at any time.
“If we get an early goal teams have to come out and press us and that’s when we can do our stuff. The reaction has been unbelievable. We have got to keep going. On to the next game. Big games. We have to be relentless. Now it is about carrying home performances away from home. We don’t want inconsistency. We can do what we want.
“We started quite slow and missed opportunities. We are picking up form at the right time. Christmas is when the league starts to take shape. We are hitting form at the right time.”
Howe pleased with Gordon
Things could’ve looked a lot different for Newcastle had other plans gone ahead.
In the summer PSR was an ongoing issue for Newcastle. The club faced a points deduction and one of the options they had was to sell Gordon to Liverpool. The deal didn’t go ahead and Newcastle ended up selling Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh.
Gordon signed a new deal in October and hasn’t looked back. Howe spoke to Amazon Prime after the win against Villa and was asked about Gordon’s goal.
“It’s a brilliant goal from Anthony,” he said.
“He’s capable of that and great to see that go in as he has been working hard on his finishing and wants more goals.”
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