Lacklustre Leicester nuked by Newcastle United as Geordie Boys find their form at St James' Park

Leicester City want to thank their lucky stars that Newcastle United have such an aversion to scoring goals otherwise the 4-0 lumping they got today could have been a whole lot worse.

Newcastle needed a big performance today and a win, and they got both. Leicester City were woeful and Newcastle took full advantage.

It was a strange game in some respects as we spent the first 30 minutes digging out Jacob Murphy for being rubbish and he came away with two goals and an extremely positive rating in the end.

The Magpies were once again extremely wasteful in front of goal with Alexander Isak missing a couple of glorious chances as well as Murphy. Dan Burn, Tino Livramento, Anthony Gordon, Harvey Barnes and Sandro Tonali all could have found themselves on the score sheet too but missed big opportunities.

Jacob Murphy's Jekyll and Hyde showing today was typical of Newcastle's season

Joelinton picked up his fifth booking of the season and will now miss next week's game against Ipswich, however, he is still available for Wednesday.

That is where the negativity stops this week. Four goals and a clean sheet while Eddie Howe was able to bring some big players out of the game early to keep them ready for Wednesday's Carabao Cup quarter-final is all great news.

Jacob Murphy made up for missing his sitters with a sublime right-footed effort into the bottom corner from the edge of the area as part of a well-worked corner on the half-hour mark. If only he'd shown this level of composure earlier.

Newcastle could easily have won by a bigger margin

Newcastle went in at half time a goal up but should have been out of sight. That's probably exactly what Eddie Howe told his players during the break too because they came out for the second half with fire in their bellies.

Leicester switched goalkeeper during the break and that just seemed to spur Newcastle on even more and two minutes after the restart, the Magpies were 2-0 up after Bruno Guimaraes, who was playing more advanced with Tonali playing deep, nodded home for his first goal of the season.

Three minutes later, Alexander Isak got the goal he deserved for his unselfish work up front in similar circumstances to Bruno - a nod home on the line.

Then, just ten minutes after that, and just before he was about to be replaced by former Leicester man Harvey Barnes, Jacob Murphy drilled home his second of the game shutting us all up in the office.

The Carabao Cup quarter-final is next up for Newcastle

Lewis Hall had another fantastic game for Newcastle with some sublime forward passing and seemed to be involved in everything, while Anthony Gordon looked like he had a point to prove.

Everyone just looked up for it today, and if we can get our confidence back in front of goal we should start tearing teams apart again.

The performance and the result were the perfect set up to seek revenge on Brentford for last week's defeat in the Carabao Cup quarter-final at St James' Park on Wednesday.