5 hours ago
5
Three times the referee Craig Pawson awarded penalties to Newcastle in the second half. Twice they were overturned by VAR but the third one stood, and Alexander Isak converted to earn Newcastle a vital point in the race for Champions League football. They had not played well, but they never do against Brighton, and in that context a draw earned with an 89th-minute equaliser was extremely welcome.
“Keeping our composure and making sure our performance wasn’t affected by the outcomes [of the VAR decisions] was key,” said the Newcastle manager Eddie Howe, who acknowledged the VAR was right to rule out the first two penalties. “If you look at the season as a whole we probably haven’t dug out enough points from games that are in the balance.
“Today was a really battling performance. We were pretty good apart from around the box – but the majority of the performance I was really pleased.”
Arsenal’s defeat to Bournemouth on Saturday had opened up another possibility; if Newcastle won their final four games of the season, including at Arsenal in two weeks, they would finish second for the first time since 1996-97. Perhaps that added a layer of pressure: for a long time this didn’t look like a side that had won seven of its previous eight games in all competitions, never mind the second-best side in the country.
But then that’s very much the nature of the Premier League this season: Brighton didn’t look much like a side that had only won one of their previous seven. The truth is that there really isn’t a huge amount separating the teams from second down to mid-table, meaning small fluctuations of form can have a profound impact, positive or negative, on results.
Newcastle have now beaten Brighton only twice in 18 games, and they have never won in the Premier League at the Amex. But they remain in the Champions League places and others in the race are also stuttering as they approach the finish line. “All you can ask for is that it’s in your hands and you know what you have to do,” said Howe. “We’ve three really difficult games but they’re games to relish.”
Brighton have their own European aspirations. They lie 10th but just a point off the eighth place that, if Manchester City beat Crystal Palace in the FA Cup final, will probably bring Uefa Conference League qualification.
A scratchy first half was all about the battle between Dan Burn and Yankuba Minteh, who left Newcastle last summer. Burn had the better of their first two match-ups, but then, after the Gambian had skipped by him on the touchline, went bafflingly unpunished for a crude hack on him that curtailed a potentially dangerous counter. Perhaps that fired something in Minteh. “He pushed his limits and played with aggression,” said Fabian Hürzeler, the hosts’ manager. “He’s shown his level.”
When he gathered a loose ball on the right edge of the box after 28 minutes, he skipped by Livramento, feigned to shoot and, as Sandro Tonali turned his back – he had cost Newcastle a goal on this ground with similar timidity last season – went by him as well before finding the far corner with a shot that glanced off Burn’s head. When Minteh put Brighton ahead in the fifth round of the FA Cup at St James’ in March, he had ostentatiously refused to celebrate, even though he had never actually played a game for them. Something, evidently, has changed his mind: here he ran to the Newcastle fans, pointing at them and aggressively kissing his badge, eventually having to be led away by his teammates.
after newsletter promotion
Newcastle’s forward line had struggled to impose itself, so it was no great surprise when Jacob Murphy was withdrawn for Anthony Gordon 11 minutes into the second half. Newcastle improved immediately. Within two minutes he had drawn a foul from Tariq Lamptey. A penalty was awarded but a check showed the foul had happened just outside the box.
Another penalty, awarded after Joe Willock had dived over a challenge from Jan Paul van Hecke, was also overturned. VAR understandably gets a bad press; these were instances of it working. It did not, though, intervene when Tonali seemed to have clattered into the back of Matt O’Riley; Hürzeler, certainly, thought that should have been a penalty.
A third Newcastle penalty, awarded for a handball by Yasin Ayari as Fabian Schär’s free-kick arced past him at the end of the wall, though, was upheld. Isak converted, and when Diego Gómez put a free header wide from six yards in stoppage time, Newcastle had their draw.
