Harsh but fair result as Newcastle beaten by Man City in five-goal thriller at St James' Park

On the balance of play it was three points well deserved for Manchester City, but how it happened was super harsh on battling Newcastle United.

We said before kick-off that it was good news and bad news on Kevin de Bruyne - good that he was starting on the bench but bad that he was on the bench at all and it was the Belgian who made all the difference.

Newcastle got off to a flying start putting the ball in the net in the first two minutes which was rightly ruled out for offside. In the melee, City goalkeeper Ederson took a whack and required lengthy treatment and didn't look right when he got up. That led to an error by the keeper that Newcastle really should have taken full advantage of and scored from, but it wasn't meant to be.

Kevin de Bruyne is a human cheat code

At that point, it looked like it wasn't going to be our night. Then Manchester City took the lead on 26 minutes thanks to a sublime backheel by Bernardo Silva and given their dominance, it seemed like they'd just go on from there and put Newcastle to the sword.

Scott Heppell via Reuters

That's not how it went down though and Alexander Isak equalised after latching on to a brilliant pass by Bruno Guimaraes and then just a couple of minutes later Newcastle were in the lead after a quality finish from Anthony Gordon.

The Magpies went in at half time with a shock 2-1 lead but we knew that City weren't going to sit back and take it and after the hour mark, Pep Guardiola tapped in Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A and on came Kevin de Bruyne to take them to the next level.

We can come away with our heads held high despite the defeat

KDB had the ball in the net on 74 minutes and then in stoppage time played a quality ball to fellow substitute Oscar Bobb who took a magnificent touch to wrong-foot Martin Dubravka - who had a brilliant game by the way - and tapped into an empty net with no time for Newcastle to do anything about it.

Eddie Howe's lads barely touched the ball and could only cause City problems on the counter-attack and it looked like that tactic was going to work, but against a side like Man City it's always going to be a dangerous game.

Yes, we got beat, but we were so close we have to feel some pride after that. It was a special game with every goal an absolute beauty. At the end of the day, Pep Guardiola had Kevin De Bruyne to bring off the bench we had ... Lewis Hall. The longer that game went on the bigger advantage they had.

Now we have a couple of weeks for the lads to rest and work on things before attacking the latter half where we do tend to come good.