Steve Bruce likes to say teams are only as good as their strikers. Fortunately for Newcastle’s manager, he possesses a very good centre forward in Callum Wilson who has proved wonderfully adept at camouflaging colleagues’ flaws while keeping his side in mid-table.
Wilson was at it again here, helping airbrush a poor home performance by winning, and converting, an equalising penalty which also prefaced the sending off of Fulham’s Joachim Andersen. It made for a mixed return to Tyneside for Scott Parker whose improving side are surely too good for an immediate return to the Championship.
Steve Bruce made five changes from the side who succumbed 5-2 at Leeds last Wednesday, with the two most notable alterations coming in both full-back positions, where DeAndre Yedlin and Paul Dummett made their first league starts of the season. Both were given thorough workouts.
As a former Newcastle midfielder, Scott Parker knew how much a place in the first team would mean to Aleksandar Mitrovic and duly reintroduced the former St James’ Park cult hero at centre-forward. Meanwhile Tom Cairney’s left-foot creativity was restored to midfield where he was joined by Bobby Decordova-Reid after Ivan Cavaleiro injured himself in the warm-up.
Karl Darlow was soon required to divert Cairney’s deflected shot and, shortly afterwards, Fulham failed to accept an excellent opportunity to take the lead. When André-Frank Zambo Anguissa crossed from the left, the lofted ball was met by an unmarked Ademola Lookman around 12 yards out but, fortunately for Bruce, he headed straight at Darlow and the save was comfortable.
Alphonse Areola had far fewer frights in Fulham’s goal as Parker’s side increasingly controlled possession, something facilitated by Newcastle’s penchant for repeatedly gifting the ball to their guests.
Matt Ritchie’s, albeit unintentional, generosity even extended to scoring an own goal, the ball flying, bizarrely, off the frantically back peddling winger’s chin and beyond a wrong-footed Darlow after Tosin Adarabioyo had caused consternation by flicking on a Cairney corner. Poor Ritchie can confidently expect to see this moment of mortification earmarked for repeated views in compilations of the season’s most comedic moments.
As Bruce trudged off to deliver his half-time homily, Newcastle’s possession quotient had dropped to 33%, while Areola had only been properly stretched once in the opening 45 minutes when he dived smartly to smother Miguel Almirón’s low shot.
In mitigation, Newcastle’s manager is still without a quartet of senior players struggling to recover from Covid-19, with two particularly unwell. But his side’s unfortunate stylistic contrast with Fulham will not have been lost on Bruce’s critics.
If Fulham are beginning to detect a clear pathway to the sunlit uplands of mid-table, their hosts are in danger of slipping down towards the danger zone. As the clocked ticked down on the second half, Newcastle’s League Cup quarter final at Brentford on Tuesday started to look more of a burden than a joy. And particularly considering Manchester City, Liverpool and Leicester are their next three Premier League opponents.
In recent weeks Bruce has reverted to 4-4-2 but it can tend to look a bit analogue against more fluid sides such as Fulham and, on this evidence at last, Jonjo Shelvey and Sean Longstaff are not the solution to his central midfield conundrum.
Bruce’s detractors like to sneer that his successes derive from sheer luck. That is a little harsh but, here, they benefited from Joachim Andersen’s self-destructive decision to bundle Callum Wilson over in the box after Newcastle’s leading scorer had been put clean through on goal by Almirón in the wake of Ola Aina’s careless concession of possession.
Graham Scott, the referee, immediately pointed to the penalty spot, but was then sent to his VAR monitor and Andersen was subsequently shown a red card for denying a clear cut goalscoring opportunity.
As the defender headed down the tunnel, Wilson sent Areola the wrong way to register his eighth goal of the season since arriving from Bournemouth in the summer. Goodness knows where Newcastle would be without Wilson and his goals.