Newcastle United continued their excellent home form with a sixth consecutive win at St James’ Park, defeating Premier League title challengers Manchester City 2-1 and stopping Pep Guardiola’s team from closing the gap on leaders Arsenal.
Although City controlled the ball for most of the first half, they could not create many clear-cut chances, while Newcastle were very dangerous on the break. Jacob Murphy generated the first real chance with a wonderful cross to Nick Woltemade, but Gianluigi Donnarumma was quick off his line to save the header. Jérémy Doku got the better of the hosts all the time, and only a brilliant block by Fabian Schär stopped a shot from Phil Foden in an action-packed first half.
Newcastle were very close to scoring when Harvey Barnes failed to convert a very close-range chance, and just before the interval City also had a great opportunity as Foden went wide after a perfect one-two with Rayan Cherki.
The goal that changed the game came after 60 minutes when Bruno Guimarães played Barnes through, and the latter fired a powerful shot into the bottom corner. City restored the parity through Rúben Dias five minutes after the restart, but the home team responded straight away as Barnes was the fastest to react to score his second after Guimarães’ header hitting the bar. Although there was a lot of pressure on Newcastle’s defence in the final moments of the game, they were able to hold out and secure a very significant win.
