Riding our luck

Just a quick one troops as I’m really busy with work at the moment.

So as expected, a fiery game at St James’ park and we expectedly had to weather the storm in the opening half hour, as a fervent crowd roared Newcastle on and in truth, we could have been two or three nil down by the time Gravenberch scored but what a finish on the Dutchman’s first game of the season.

Then came the red card as Gordon got his marching orders for an unnecessary foul on Van Dijk and when the impressive Ekitike netted the second with another fine finish, that should have been the game. Unfortunately it wasn’t.

Our defending continues to be a worry, with Konate in particular continuing his poor start to the season. Their second in particular is just one long ball forward, flicked on and goal. For everything we do well, we concede such soft goals time and again. We can’t be blowing two goal leads against ten men if we expect to win any of the big trophies this year.

However just like Chiesa’s heroics last week; it was another case of cometh the hour, cometh the man, except in this case it was young Rio who made a dream PL debut, scoring a dramatic 100th minute winner with a fine finish, after a brilliant dummy from Szoboszlai that sent Red fans into raptures.

Two games, two wins then but a far from convincing start to the season and lots of work to be done on the training pitch to find a better balance to our game. Last night however, belongs to young Rio. Walk on!