Tranmere Rovers 1-2 Newcastle United Match Report

If Sunday showed how far we’ve come, tonight showed how far we’ve still to go.

Although Newcastle came away with the victory, their performance was far from convincing. Not helped by Tranmere opting to kick lumps out of our players resulting in what will be a busy treatment room and a referee who seemed to have forgotten what the whistle was for.

Eddie Howe made ten changes to the team that started against Manchester City with only Joe Willock regaining his place. As suspected, Elliot Anderson was handed his first start of the season and for the first half an hour looked like the only Newcastle player interested in the game at all.

Newcastle fell behind on 21 minutes when Matt Targett was caught out of position and Elliot Nevitt easily out-paced Sean Longstaff and slotted calmly beyond Karl Darlow in the Newcastle net.

It wasn’t until Kieran Trippier’s forced introduction following a bad injury to Emil Krafth, that Newcastle showed any real signs of life beyond Elliot Anderson’s effort. Trippier almost immediately had an impact as he floated a corner towards the back stick where skipper, Jamaal Lascelles risked aggravating his broken nose by getting his head on the ball and directing a shot towards goal. The header was blocked but the ball sat up nicely again for Lascelles who poked it home to equalise on 40 minutes.

Kieran Trippier was the provider once again on 52 minutes as he whipped a corner into the box and put it on a plate for Chris Wood who just needed to get any sort of touch with his head to guide the ball into the net.

There were a few performances tonight that suggests that we still have players who don’t belong at our club, unfortunately. Jacob Murphy and Sean Longstaff managed to look out of their depth against League Two opposition, both of them managing to make the simplest of things look difficult, and Longstaff’s lack of pace is embarrassing.

Wood did manage to score, but it would have been harder for him to miss, although he did prove that he can miss any chance a couple of times in the game. Dummett didn’t have the best of games but he has missed a lot of football, so it’s hard to criticise him too much. Even Botman looked a bit dodgy when he came on. It just wasn’t our night at all.

But, despite the ref’s best efforts, Newcastle managed to see out the game and hold on to the win and will now enter the hat for the next round of the EFL Cup.