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What price Keith Andrews for manager of the season? Thomas Frank’s surprise successor certainly added to his fanclub as he choreographed Brentford’s fourth win in six Premier League games to leave Eddie Howe looking even gloomier than the unremittingly wet Tyneside weather.
While outstanding performances from Dango Ouattara and Keane Lewis-Potter left Andrews’s seventh place side appearing genuine European contenders, Howe’s Newcastle have won only one of their last eight matches in all competitions and lost four of their past five.
Along the way they have sunk to 12th in the table. Right now the boast, made only last week, of the Saudi Arabian owned club’s chief executive, David Hopkinson, that Newcastle can win the league by 2030 rings slightly hollow. Moreover Tuesday’s trip to Tottenham has suddenly assumed real importance for both Howe and his opposite number Frank.
Brentford began buoyed up by a sense of injustice. In the second minute Kieran Trippier tugged Lewis-Potter’s shirt sleeve inside the penalty area and sent him tumbling. There seemed a decent case for a penalty and a red card but, to considerable visiting chagrin, neither was awarded.
That decision left Andrews incandescent. Not that fury was confined to Brentford’s technical area. While travelling supporters vented their anger at their former striker Yoane Wissa for defecting to Newcastle last summer, tribalism surfaced as home fans booed Andrews’s one time Sunderland midfielder, Jordan Henderson.
Although Harvey Barnes swivelled imperiously before shooting fractionally wide, Newcastle were slapdash in possession and struggled to quite fathom out what to do about Keane-Potter and his habit of leaving his nominal left wing station to drift all over the place.
Howe though had his talismanic, captain, Bruno Guimarães, back in midfield following an ankle injury and when Guimarães whipped in a corner the pace on the ball was so fast that it needed only the slightest of glancing headers from Sven Botman to give Newcastle the lead.
It was the first league goal Brentford had conceded from a corner since August and Andrews, the team’s set-piece coach before succeeding Frank as manager last summer, looked suitably irked after watching the Dutch central defender rise above all comers in a crowded penalty area.
Howe’s side might have been two goals ahead by the interval but Wissa’s goalbound was shot was cleared by Vitaly Janelt and seemed to hearten a visiting team whose counterattacking menace ruffled Newcastle’s defence.
That threat ensured the teams headed down the tunnel at half-time, with Brentford in front. It was Janelt who headed the equaliser after meeting a sublime left wing cross from the influential Ouattara.
Significantly, a little earlier Andrews had instructed Keane-Potter and Ouattara to swap flanks and that switch appeared to flummox hosts who, displaying excessive generosity had left Janelt unattended as he advanced from midfield.
Andrews span on his heels and punched the air in delight but there would soon be further cause for celebration. At the end of a typically swift visiting break featuring the struggling Trippier being left thoroughly wrongfooted Mathias Jensen’s shot seemed set to fly past Nick Pope but, instead, the ball was diverted after striking Jacob Murphy’s hand.
Following a lengthy video assistant referee check a penalty was awarded and Igor Thiago stepped forward to send Pope the wrong way from the spot.
It proved the cue for a lingering embrace between Igor Thiago and Andrews and a bout of manic notepad scribbling from Howe.
Newcastle’s manager duly made a couple of changes at half time, introducing Anthony Elanga and Nick Woltemade in place of Murphy and Joe Willock as he shape shifted from 4-3-3 to a 4-4-1-1 formation. It featured Woltemade in the No 10 role behind Wissa yet possessed sufficient flexibility to morph into 4-2-4 as Howe’s side poured forward.
Andrews’s backline appeared incredibly well organised, while his relocation of Keane-Potter to the right had succeeded in cramping the customary style of Newcastle’s usually highly creative left-back Lewis Hall, but could it hold? And, equally, would Newcastle avoid conceding again at the end of one of Brentford’s rapid counter-attacks?
The visiting goalkeeer, Caoimhín Kelleher saved superbly to deny Malick Thiaw from the edge of the area as Howe, who replaced a disconsolate Wissa with Will Osula, looked increasingly anxious.
His optimism levels must have risen a little as, following another lengthy VAR review and an extended contemplation of the pitch side monitor on the part of the referee, Andy Madley, Newcastle were awarded a penalty of their own.
Once it was decided that Michael Kayode really had tripped Guimarães as the Brazilian stretched to connect with Elanga’s cross, Newcastle’s captain sent Kelleher the wrong way from the spot.
Kayode’s body language screamed righteous indignation but replays suggested he had caught Guimarães on the back of a leg.
Not that he and Brentford would be downcast for too long. They duly caught Newcastle cold on the break with Jensen’s fine pass met by Ouattara who shot low, left footed and straight through Pope’s legs.
It was a fabulous goal that prompted chants of “Wissa, Wissa what’s the score,’’ from the Brentford fans perched high in the Leazes End.
