Newcastle United keep up Champions League chase with victory against West Ham United

It was a game that will go down in the history books as one that took place today, but that's about all that it will be known for. Newcastle United came away with a 1-0 win without ever really getting out of second gear.

Eddie Howe's lads never got out of second gear, but the Hammers never got out of first in what was a pretty dull affair if we're being honest.

They say that in space no-one can hear you scream, and yet there's more atmosphere up there than there is inside the London Stadium. Granted, there wasn't a lot to get excited about, but we heard better atmospheres during the COVID lockdown.

Even when Bruno Guimaraes scored, the crowd went mild. The Newcastle United fans behind the goal were in a different postcode to the net. Poor Bruno had to go off because he'd used all of his energy walking to the fans to celebrate with them.

Newcastle looked to avoid picking up any new injuries

Despite all of my moaning, I am a happy chap. Newcastle got the win that will mean so much to them this week. It puts Newcastle back up to sixth place, level on points with fifth-placed Manchester City, keeping us still within touching distance of a Champions League place.

Perhaps more pressing though, it gives us a big confidence boost that we can go into Sunday's massive game at Wembley on the back of a win.

Even more importantly, we didn't seem to pick up any more knocks so, apart from those who we already know we'll be missing, Eddie Howe will have a full complement of players to choose from for the final.

We've got work to do between now and Sunday but tonight should be a morale boost

Mind, we will need to massively up our game from tonight's performance to stand a chance on Sunday. A lot of our players were very sloppy with their passing tonight and equally sloppy in possession.

Our defence gave us a fright with 48 seconds on the clock, failing to deal with a cross, but they did ultimately wake up after that and while it was far from a perfect performance, they were solid enough.

We didn't see a lot of urgency in our play, though, and Alexander Isak was set adrift on memory bliss for the entire time he was on the field. I only remember him running at goal once, and even then he didn't have a shot, instead, infuriatingly trying to beat four defenders at once rather than having a speculative effort and hoping for a deflection or a mistake.

West Ham were poor all over the field and that was probably a bigger contributing factor to the result over Newcastle being good, but thanks to a dinked ball from Harvey Barnes and a point-blank toe poke from Bruno Guimaraes, the Magpies take the points and that's all that matters for tonight.

HOWAY THE LADS!