Newcastle 4-0 Rotherham - Match Reaction

A game that had this sort of result written all over it. Four goals for Newcastle and a clean sheet looks pretty standard against Rotherham at home, but was it really as easy as the scoreline suggests?

Newcastle’s home form, as we all know, has been below par this season. Eight wins and four losses before today shows we’ve been far from invincible at St. James’. However, Rotherham have the worst away record in the league, and have conceded the most goals.

The first half started off slow, and you could tell Rotherham were setting up just to frustrate the players and the fans, and for a good portion, they succeeded. They were busy, energetic, and just generally not giving Newcastle much space to play in, something we seemed to give them plenty of. They carved out a few decent chances, and arguably should’ve been ahead, but for one man.

Karl Darlow. I don’t even know how to feel about him. The chance only came after he slid across his area, grabbing and letting go of the ball, with their striker seemingly through on goal and a nigh-on empty net to hit. Yedlin put in a great tackle to stop the initial shot, followed by Clark who slid in front of their striker, missing the ball, and following through to take the sprinting Darlow out. A blessing in disguise it seemed, as mid fall, Darlow somehow composed himself and pulled off a miraculous save. The good and the bad of Darlow showing itself in the space of around 10 seconds.

After this, it seemed to be like it would be another one of those games, chances to score but just not putting them away.

But Daryl Murphy had other ideas, a simply stunning ball from Shelvey, onto the toe of Yedlin, who crossed in and Murphy controlled it and fired it home.

From then on the game had a completely different feel about it. Newcastle bombed forward time and time again, threatening to extend the lead, eventually doing so through two goals from 'Magic Matt Ritchie' and one from Ayoze Perez. After the initial frustration, 4-0 could’ve be turned into 6-0. A true game of two halves.

The win for Newcastle puts them back into top spot ahead of Brighton, who have a game in hand, and seem to have saved up all their luck for this one season. It looks like this will go down to the last game of the season, but honestly, first or second, it doesn’t really matter.

Just as long as we get out of this poorly officiated, tactically disgraceful league.