Newcastle teamwork pleases Rafa Benitez but manager says top sides will punish their mistakes

Newcastle celebrate
Newcastle have made the league sit up and take notice

Rafa Benitez does not look well. Dosed up on painkillers, he appeared pale and frail as he continues to recover from an infection picked up after an operation a fortnight ago. He rarely ventured out of the dugout during Newcastle United’s victory over Stoke City, but the win has done wonders for his recovery.

Benitez may have looked like a man who needed to lie down after his side secured a third successive win, but he could not have been happier. Having started the season with two defeats and ended the transfer window harangued by allegations they had left themselves short on both quality and numbers, the Magpies are flying.

The political battles lost by Benitez over the transfer budget may still come back to haunt them, but for now he is in his element. Whatever Newcastle lack, it is not character, unity or drive. There have been more talented teams in black and white stripes in recent years, but few have worked as hard for each other as this one.

As a result, Newcastle have the most important thing of all on Tyneside, the unwavering support of their fans.

It has always been a powerful combination and with Benitez able to organise a team as well as anyone in English football, Newcastle will not be under-estimated for long. Stoke were out-thought and out-fought.

They travelled under the assumption they were the better side, with the superior players and lost. They fell into Benitez’s tactical trap, dominating possession, only to be frequently sliced open by their hosts on the counter.

Christian Atsu slots home the opening goal for Newcastle
Christian Atsu slots home the opening goal for Newcastle

Had their former striker, Joselu, not missed a hat-trick of chances for Newcastle, when he was left with just goalkeeper Jack Butland to beat, this would have been a thrashing for Mark Hughes’ side, even if they did miss chances of their own as they scrambled to try and snatch a point.

“The main thing for me is to see the team working as hard as they were working,” said Benitez. “There were a lot of positives.

“The team is believing in themselves, but there are still a lot of things to improve. If we play against a top side and make the kind of mistakes we did here, we will pay for that. You have to believe that you can win against certain teams.

Atsu of is mobbed by Matt Ritchie and Ayoze Perez
Atsu of is mobbed by Matt Ritchie and Ayoze Perez

“The players are trying to understand the way we have to play our game. We have to play with our own style of play. We are not a team that have a lot of possession, so we have to play to our strengths and we are doing that now.”

For Stoke, this was a setback. They may have believed they did enough to earn a draw because of the chances missed by Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting Mame Biram Diouf in the closing stages, but they were poor for long periods.

The one bright note was an excellent performance from Xherdan Shaqiri who scored a fine equaliser in the second half to cancel out Christian Atsu’s first-half volley. Until that point, Newcastle had been the more dangerous team in the final third and grabbed all three points when captain Jamaal Lascelles headed in Matt Ritchie’s corner.

Jamaal Lascelles grabbed Newcastle's second
Jamaal Lascelles grabbed Newcastle's second

Hughes, though, claimed his team are still ahead of where many people felt they would be at this stage of the season and this was only their second defeat.

"We've had a decent start,” he said. “We had a difficult run of fixtures - two home games against Man United and Arsenal. Overall, we are not displeased, our performances have been good.

"We've more points at this stage of the season than many people thought we would anyway.”

License this content