Maybe it was tempting fate when, a few days ago, Rafael Benítez posed for photographs in front of the Angel of the North. Or perhaps six changes simply represented too heavy a home rotation against possibly underestimated visitors but, whatever the precise reason, Newcastle United’s nine-game winning run game to an abrupt end.
The final whistle was supposed to see Benítez’s team celebrating a 10th straight victory in all competitions and the attendant establishment of a new club record. Instead their old vulnerabilities at defending set pieces returned to haunt them, leaving Blackburn Rovers the jubilant ones.
This was a big win for Owen Coyle’s players, their success in subduing Jonjo Shelvey and Matt Ritchie while also slowing the play down at every opportunity not only lifting them out of the bottom three but offering glimmers of a brighter future.
“Very disappointing,” said Benítez, whose side remain top. “I didn’t like it. We were poor in a lot of things, we allowed them to play the way they wanted.”
He had Jesús on his side but, perhaps ominously, Jesús Gámez’s first act was to get caught offside after misreading Shelvey’s through ball. Undeterred, the ground echoed to choruses of “Jesús is a Geordie,” as the Spaniard finally made his league debut at left-back following a summer move from Atlético Madrid.
His inclusion reflected a heavily refreshed home lineup in which Dwight Gayle, the leading scorer, was among those warming the bench. Suitably encouraged, Blackburn quickly forced Benítez’s team on the back foot, Danny Graham drawing a save from Karl Darlow after connecting with Liam Feeney’s cross.
Although Aleksandar Mitrovic had one shot blocked and Christian Atsu another deflected to safety, Newcastle were clearly out of sorts and conceded a string of set plays. Along the way, it became increasingly hard to credit that Blackburn had begun the afternoon in the relegation zone. Tellingly. the moment when Chancel Mbemba met DeAndre Yedlin’s deep cross and seemed certain to score, only to freeze and permit a defender to whisk the ball off his toes, appeared thoroughly emblematic of Newcastle’s performance.
It left Benítez looking increasingly agitated and presumably regretting those six alterations to the side that won at Leeds last Sunday. Despite the presence of a 52,000-plus full house, St James’ Park fell eerily quiet, the atmosphere often falling as flat as much of Newcastle’s passing in the face of Coyle’s committed, organised and physically awkward opposition.
Like Shelvey and Ritchie, Ayoze Pérez struggled to make an impact but, even when his clever looped cross confounded Darragh Lenihan and Charlie Mulgrew, Atsu proved unequal to it, volleying wide.
Emboldened, the travelling support turned cheeky. “Have you won the Premier League?” inquired the Blackburn fans perched high in the sky at the top of the Leazes End. It was a reference to their team’s achievement in winning the title in 1995, followed by Newcastle’s tantalising failure to do so a year later and was followed by a subsequent taunting chant of: “Where did Shearer win the League?”
By then Jesús had been carried off with a suspected broken collarbone and replaced by Paul Dummett. The newcomer might swiftly have created a goal but, instead, Ritchie volleyed his cross fractionally over the bar. Next, the hugely underemployed Jason Steele did well to divert Shelvey’s volley for a corner.
From another corner dispatched, short, by Craig Conway at the other end, Darlow had no answer to Mulgrew’s left-foot volley following Feeney’s cross. It was the defender’s first goal for Blackburn and left Benítez a study in dismay.
On came Gayle as his side switched to 4-4-2 but Geordie pride had already come before a fall. “There’s no doubt Newcastle will win the Championship,” said Coyle. “But we had a gameplan which almost saw us marking them man for man all over the pitch. We were very good.”
