Newcastle ended an impressive Brentford run this afternoon

Add as preferred source on Google

It wasn’t pretty to watch but Newcastle United climbed back into third place in the Premier League after beating Brentford 2-1 on their home turf.

A lot of Newcastle fans were aware that this wouldn’t be a straight-forward game for Eddie Howe‘s charges and many had voiced their opinion that they’d be happy to come way from the G-Tech Community Stadium with a point, especially off the back of a four game winning run.

But this is Eddie Howe’s Mighty Mags we’re talking about and if points are there to be won, we’re going to go all-out to try and win them.

Things weren’t going Newcastle’s way in the first half

After a truly awful first-half display, Howe shook things up at half-time making two changes during the interval and gave fans an extended look at how Alexander Isak and Callum Wilson can play together. It didn’t take long for the formation change to yield positive results.

Fighting back from a goal down, Newcastle came out with the bit between their teeth in the second half and on 54 minutes, Joelinton went on a run into the box and saw his cross-cum-shot deflected into the net by Brentford ‘keeper David Raya.

Then just six minutes later the Magpies were in front as our strike partnership linked up beautifully with Wilson laying the ball off perfectly for Isak to sweep a shot into the top corner of Raya’s goal. Wilson had a goal of his own chalked off a few minutes later too after VAR adjudged the £20million man had handled the ball – he hadn’t, but it is what it is.

Newcastle had to weather some late pressure from the home side and Ivan Toney almost leveled things at the death with a looping shot that went just over the bar.

Newcastle are the first team to beat Brentford at home since September

Ultimately, Newcastle held on to claim all three points and subject Brentford to their first home defeat since September. That’s an amazing stat for Brentford and it also shows just how special this Newcastle team is.

Newcastle used to be the team that would gift teams an end to a poor stat. If a team came to St James’ Park off the back of a run of defeats, we’d kindly step aside and let them win. Or if a striker was going through a drought we’d let him help himself to a goal or two.

Now it’s flipped, we’re here ending clubs’ impressive positive streaks such as Brentford’s unbeaten home streak.

Long may it continue.