Steve McClaren paid tribute to the character of his Newcastle United players after hearing them fire each other up in the dressing room at half-time and promptly deliver a morale-boosting 2-1 comeback win at Tottenham Hotspur.
Newcastle had trailed 1-0 at the interval but goals from the substitutes Aleksandar Mitrovic and Ayoze Pérez – the second deep into stoppage time – gave them victory on another dramatic day in the Premier League.
Arsenal went top with a 2-0 win at Aston Villa, Liverpool drew 2-2 against West Bromwich Albion at Anfield while Newcastle’s victory lifted them out of the relegation zone and pressed the champions, Chelsea, to within a point of it, before their visit to Leicester City on Monday night.
Newcastle had beaten Liverpool last Sunday and this success meant that they had won back-to-back fixtures in the league for the first time since November of last year. McClaren and his players had come in for stinging criticism after the defeats to Leicester City and Crystal Palace at the end of last month but with the owner Mike Ashley in attendance at White Hart Lane, they showed reasons for optimism.
“This was a win for the players,” McClaren said. “Half-time was a big test for this team. We’ve come in at half-time before and the dressing room has been quiet and disappointed, but it was so vocal here. There was such a determination among the players not to lead down the normal path of losing the game. The response in the second half was fantastic.
“There was so much going on in there – Robbie Elliot, Fabricio Coloccini, to be fair, all of them. We couldn’t shut them up, and they took it on board. That’s the pleasing thing for me. We’ve not won back-to-back games for over a year, we’ve not had a comeback win for about a year, so to do it was immense. You can talk and talk but the players did it on the field.”
McClaren said with a smile that Newcastle were always “only two days away from another crisis” as he stressed the need for feet to remain on the ground. But for perhaps the first time in his tenure, there is the impression that a little bit of momentum has built behind the team.
“There have been two excellent performances and results,” McClaren said. “We said after Liverpool: ‘That’s what we are. That’s what we want to be.’ And today: ‘That’s what we are. That’s what we want to be.’ We want to be this every week. It only comes from a platform or a bed of hard work and attitude and commitment and discipline. And the players had that. When they do that, we have got a chance of winning games.
“We’ve had difficult times and the season has been up and down. We’ve asked for consistency and the last two weeks have provided that, on the back of a lot of criticism. But there’s still a long way to go. And we’ve got a tough one next Saturday against Aston Villa.
“I haven’t spoken to Mike Ashley. He is probably pleased he saw that. We have had glimpses of that and threatened to do that on occasions. But the character in the dressing room was great. It was great to be in there.”
McClaren felt that the team’s desire and personality was epitomised by Mitrovic and Pérez, who put aside the disappointment of having been overlooked from the start to make the difference when they came on.
“All you ask from players is that they give a response,” McClaren said. “If you are on the bench, come on and have an impact. Ayoze and Mitro have not played so they are disappointed. You can be disappointed, come on and not perform but they were disappointed, came on and showed that they wanted to play. They’ve won the game for us. Today will do them and the team a world of good.”
Mauricio Pochettino, the Tottenham manager, was stunned after seeing his team’s 14-game unbeaten run in the league come to an end. “If you see the first half, nobody expected that,” Pochettino said. “Maybe we deserved more and the result was not fair.
“But it is impossible to see these two Tottenham teams, the one in the first half and the one in the second half. The feeling was not the same in the second half. We made some easy mistakes but it wasn’t about any one player. If anyone was responsible for the result, it was me.”
