Magpies mauled in China
Newcastle United opened their pre-season with a humiliating 4-0 defeat to single season Premier League side Wolverhampton Wanderers.
With more shenanigans back at the ranch in Newcastle, trying to appoint a coach to replace Rafa Benitez, it was left to Ben Dawson and Neil Redfearn to front up a bedraggled and hotchpotch bunch of kids, want aways and has-beens against a Wolves side brimming with confidence and ambition.
The result will be a surprise to no one. I mean, seriously, what do you expect with Colback, Lazaar and Murphy all starting.
And whilst you can point to the fact that Dubravka, Schar, Lejeune, Dummett, Longstaff and Almiron either didn’t play or were missing from the squad the whole things is just an utter mess.
STARTING XI: Darlow (Woodman, 46), Sterry (Manquillo, 46), Lascelles (Fernandez, 46), Clark (Watts, 59), Lazaar (Bailey, 63), Hayden, Shelvey (Ki, 59), Colback (M. Longstaff, 63), Murphy (Allan, 63), Ritchie (Aarons, 55), Muto (Sorensen, 63)
It didn’t take long for Wolves to take control of this one after a cagey start. Just 15 minutes in fact before Jota fired past Darlow to open the scoring. Another 15 minutes later and it was 2-0. this time Gibbs-White to smash home from outside the area, Jonny the provider again.
Newcastle were, frankly, awful. Comical errors and a lack of shape, something that fans have are just not used to seeing whilst the players worked for Rafa were all to evident here. And it was this school boy defending that allowed Jota to get Wolves third and double his own tally before half time.
Some spirit at least from the kids thrown on at half time stemmed the tide but perhaps typical the display (although harsh on debutant Allan) that it would be an own goal on 85 minutes that would put the icing on the cake for Wolves and condemn the Magpies to a pitiful 4-0 loss on the day.
Yes, we all knew what would happen. It doesn’t make it any less depressing!