Newcastle United’s win over Manchester City typified the old cliché ‘a game of two halves’.
For the opening 45 minutes, until Jacob Murphy’s chance at least, Newcastle were on the backfoot against a heavily-rotated Man City side in the Carabao Cup.
After the break, however, it proved a different game.
Alexander Isak scored after a period of sustained pressure and, frankly, Eddie Howe’s side were good value for their victory.
To say it was easy, however, would be wrong.
Newcastle seriously struggled at times before ending strongly and BBC Sport pundit Neil Lennon picked out one player.
Neil Lennon says Sandro Tonali is struggling for Newcastle
Indeed, a lot of attention is naturally paid to Sandro Tonali.
The 23-year-old was Newcastle’s biggest summer signing but despite a promising debut, things aren’t clicking all that well at the moment.
Though it would be wrong to suggest the Italian was the only player not to have fully convinced in the first-half, Lennon pointed to something deeper.
He highlighted that after a strong start to his Newcastle career, Tonali has since struggled.
“Tonali’s a very good player, I came up against him in the Europa League when he was with AC Milan. He seemed to start OK, but he’s struggling a bit lately,” he told the BBC Sport LIVE blog at 20.06.
How well did Sandro Tonali play vs Manchester City?
It wasn’t an ideal night for the former AC Milan star.
According to WhoScored data, only Joelinton had more unsuccessful touches (5 to 3), while he did not manage a key pass or an interception despite playing the holding role for much of the game.
It is of course worth noting that the major improvement came when Bruno Guimaraes and Anthony Gordon came on at the break, so that does at least indicate that perhaps the Brazilian and Tonali can play together – something that has been doubted.
Playing City isn’t easy and we’ve seen with Gordon that players can take time to adapt. Surely, there will be more to come from Tonali.
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