Newcastle United hardly impressed but they were, at least, able to savour their first away win under Steve McClaren after some heroic, last-ditch and fraught defending. But for all of their shortcomings, in a performance decidedly light on quality, they held on to receive a priceless psychological boost, a victory to see them somehow trump Bournemouth and move out of the relegation zone.
“It is a massive thing for us because we have a lot of players who have come from other leagues and they don’t really know how hard the Premier League is,” said Fabricio Coloccini, the captain whose side have now kept two consecutive clean sheets. “For us it is very important to get confidence and to look forward, because I think we are going in the right way. We have had hard times but we are looking forward because the points will come.
“It is good to see the team fighting. We have to play football – we try, of course – but we don’t, we have to give 100% on the pitch and I think we did that. We were a hard team to beat.”
The Newcastle goalkeeper Rob Elliot was key to his side’s win – only their second of the season – throwing himself into blocks and hauling the ball out of the box, and to safety, from one of Bournemouth’s 16 corners. “I am glad for him because he was injured last week but he said he wanted to play,” said Coloccini. “We need people like him in the changing room – he is an example for young players.”
Chancel Mbemba and Coloccini had a tough time contending with Bournemouth’s lone striker Joshua King and the visitors’ makeshift left-back Paul Dummett rarely stopped Matt Ritchie’s crosses from the wing.
Coloccini was fortunate not to concede a first-half penalty when he upended King in the box, after the Norway striker had nutmegged the defender, but the referee waved play on. McClaren said after the game that he was grateful his side had got the rub of the green.
Going forward, too, his side were poor yet ultimately ruthless. They created one meaningful chance, which they took, when Ayoze Pérez rounded off a rare moment of class from two of McClaren’s summer captures, Aleksandar Mitrovic and Georginio Wijnaldum.
It is unlikely any of McClaren’s five new signings, who arrived in the north-east for a combined cost of almost £50m, would have envisaged going another game without victory – defeat here would have seen them spend the international break in the relegation zone. The French winger Florian Thauvin, one of four of those arrivals on display, did not arrive in anticipation of a relegation battle. The former Marseille player helped eke out the win, drawing the occasional foul, but his fellow substitute Papiss Cissé was somewhat subdued. The man who brought them both to the Premier League, however, believes that the collective tide is turning.
“Slowly, like a big ship, we’re trying to turn that around and results will help that,” said McClaren. “The first eight games were so difficult and you could see the hangover that the team was experiencing. I’m always consistent in saying we can get better and be better and we’re making progress but the turnaround is slow.”
Newcastle’s character showed largely in isolation, though, most of which stemmed from Elliot. The club’s third-choice keeper has been named in the Republic of Ireland squad to face Bosnia-Herzegovina on Friday, although McClaren is hoping he will not link up with Martin O’Neill’s side, after battling to keep him fit in the absence of the injured Tim Krul and Karl Darlow.
Bournemouth need to erase any hard luck stories from the memory if they are to evade a relegation battle, with fixtures against Manchester United and Chelsea on the horizon. They were wasteful but their manager, Eddie Howe, will take confidence from the manner in which his side aimed 20 shots at the Newcastle goal.
“We have to take that from it, there are ways to lose and there have been disappointments this season when we have not performed,” said Howe. “I think we have given everything; it should have been enough but it was not. I would say we need to work better at what we are doing. We will be working very hard on our game to make sure that those fine margins go in our favour.”
Man of the match Rob Elliot (Newcastle United)
