Magic Murphy scores a brace as Newcastle United coast to victory against turgid Leicester City

A double from Jacob Murphy and one from former Leicester City winger Harvey Barnes within the first half an hour was all it took for Newcastle United to claim their easiest victory of the season on Monday night.

Newcastle took an early three-goal lead, dipped the clutch, knocked the gearbox into neutral and coasted to victory without ever touching the gas again.

The Magpies never really got out of second gear, but they never needed to because Leicester had clearly filled up their diesel tank with petrol. Okay, I'll stop the car analogy now, I'm just trying to entertain myself after that rancid second half.

Overall it was a good night for Newcastle, three more goals to the tally and more importantly, another three points. Newcastle are back up to fifth in the league now, level on points with Chelsea in fourth but the Blues are five goals better off.

If Newcastle tried they could have really closed that goal difference gap on Chelsea

It's the fact that we're five goals behind Chelsea that is so frustrating because if we could have been arsed tonight we could have put a big dent in that deficit, but instead we just saw the game out without really trying.

Leicester had a good early chance in the opening seconds, and then they just powered down. We aren't surprised there were so many empty seats in the King Power because it must be painful forking out hard-earned money to watch that crap.

The Foxes have now become only the second-ever Premier League team to lose eight games in a row without scoring, the first being Sunderland - it seems they really wanted to emulate the Mackems tonight with the number of empty seats and number of consecutive defeats.

Newcastle had the game wrapped up after 34 minutes

It took Newcastle less than two minutes to break the deadlock thanks to a Tino Livramento cross which was poked home by Jacob Murphy at the back stick.

Less than nine minutes later, Murphy doubled his tally for the night after an outrageous attempt from Fabian Schar from his own area bounced back off the bar into the path of Murphy who couldn't miss.

The goal-scoring was complete on 34 minutes when Harvey Barnes prodded home with the winger showing a bit of respect to his old club by refusing to celebrate.

From then on the game was dead as a contest and completely done as a spectacle. The second half was one of the most rancid halves of football we've watched in a long time. One side cruising with the job being done and the other being utterly clueless and unable to do anything to get back into it.

When the second half highlight was the introduction of a 15-year-old who becomes the second youngest Premier League player ever, you know you're clutching for talking points.