Newcastle 1-0 Southampton - Hardly a classic, ruined by the officials, football is back

Newcastle United overcame adversity to win the first game of the season as St James' Park beating Southampton 1-0.

In keeping. With. The rhythm. Of the game. I. Will be adding full stops. All over the. Place for. The entirety. Of. This report.

No, I won't, obviously. But have you ever seen a more stop-start game of football in your life? Every time a Southampton player went to the floor they were given a free kick. It took two or three fellings of Newcastle players to get one, but in total there were 31 fouls committed, that were given by the ref that is, way more that he just ignored because they were on Newcastle players.

Craig Pawson had a stinker of a game really. There was no consistency on what was or wasn't a foul, what was card-worthy and what wasn't, and giving Fabian Schar that red card was absolutely ridiculous.

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The shocking first-half red card ruined the game

Lewis Hall picked up a booking within the first 10 minutes so we should have known then what kind of game we were in for, but when Fabian Schar was shown the red card, 50,000 jaws hit the deck. Even on the replays, the movement towards Ben Brereton-Diaz was minimal, the contact was practically non-existent. It was a yellow card at most.

By the letter of the law, yes, probably a red - he did make a forward movement towards Brereton-Diaz, but you also have to employ common sense. If you get pulled doing 32 in a 30, you're likely to get away with a warning even though you technically broke the law. This is a similar thing - Letter of the law: Red card. Reality: Yellow.

That sending-off took all of Newcastle's momentum out of the game, the game plan was ruined and Southampton had the better of the game.

Joelinton was sensational for Newcastle today

Fortunately, it's not how much you have the ball, it's what you do with it, and Joelinton put the Magpies ahead just before half time after Southampton got caught trying to play out from the back.

Joey was phenomenal all game and thoroughly deserved to be the one that bagged the win for Newcastle. It's just as well he scored in the first half though, as it's about 10 minutes since the final whistle blew, and we're still waiting for Newcastle to come out of the tunnel for the second half.

Newcastle just buried themselves in their own half for the entire second 45. It was a great advert for if the club are trying to convince Go Outdoors to sponsor the stadium because the entire team were camped in their own area for the majority of the second half.

It was far from pretty, it was a win but hardly one worth staying sober/awake enough to watch Match of the Day for tonight.

Three points on the board though and that's all that matters. HOWAY THE LADS!