Newcastle's 22-game streak comes to an end in embarrassing fashion as Brighton hold on for win

Newcastle United's 22-game run of scoring in every home game has come to an abrupt end following a toothless display at St James' Park which saw Brighton take their only real chance of the game.

From the first whistle Newcastle were full of energy and drive, it looked for the first half an hour that it was going to be the Magpies' day, but shocking decisions in the final third and strange fear of having a shot ruined what should have been an easy win.

The game ran beyond 100 minutes and they could have played 100 more and Newcastle still wouldn't have scored, it was just that kind of performance which saw the 11-game unbeaten home record come to an and as well.

The lack of goals is becoming a theme lately with our last two coming from the penalty spot and our only real chance of scoring against Everton also coming from a penalty which was missed.

Newcastle have absolutely no clue how to score at he moment

All of our build up play is quality, slick passing, good running and then when that ball goes into the final third everyone goes to pieces, either they fail to see the killer ball, or they see it and under/over hit it so the player receiving it has no chance to do anything with it. The one that happened far too often today, though, was players trying to be too cute with a back-heeled return pass that their teammate wasn't expecting or wanting.

When we did manage to play the right ball, our forwards seemed scared to actually have a shot. Alexander Isak wasted some great chances by pissing about trying to beat defenders instead of just lashing the ball goalwards and seeing what happens.

Even when through one-on-one, our forwards don't know what to do any more. Isak and Anthony Gordon both should have scored after bearing down on Bart Verbruggen's goal.

Danny Welbeck got the only goal of the game in the first half

Meanwhile at the other end, on 35 minutes Brighton managed to carve out their first chance and score from it after Fabian Schar completely lost Danny Welbeck who controlled the ball and held off the challenge from Tino Livramento to calmly slot home beyond Nick Pope.

That ended up being the only goal of the game, although Dan Burn, who had an outstanding game at the back for Newcastle did have the ball in the back of the net late on but he was so far offside there were hardly any celebrations.

We can make excuses about how the referee never had a handle on the game but in truth his poor decisions went both ways, and it wasn't him who let Sean Longstaff take a crucial stoppage-time free kick. Like anyone expected anything other than him hitting the first man.

If Eddie Howe doesn't manage to put this attacking problem to bed soon it's going to be a long, hard season and we can kiss Europe goodbye. That January transfer window is looking extremely important, especially in terms of bringing in a right winger because Jacob Murphy is pants and Miguel Almiron is twice as bad.