Nick Woltemade scores as Newcastle United register first win of what looks like will be a long season
Newcastle United finally have their first win of the season on the board at the fourth time of asking, but they didn't half make hard work of it.
Record signing Nick Woltemade got his Newcastle career off to a dream start by nodding home the only goal of the game on his debut.
There have been plenty of pundits and journalists who have questioned Newcastle's decision to sign the German, but with one goal in one appearance, you can't really ask for much more.
In fairness, Woltemade was one of Newcastle's best players alongside Sandro Tonali and Jacob Murphy, who can both feel a bit unlucky not to have joined Woltemade on the scoresheet.
Newcastle are back to being good in the middle of games and awful at the start and end
Wolves started the game very brightly with a few chances very early on, before Newcastle settled into a rhythm, leading to Woltemade's headed goal on 30 minutes.
Jacob Murphy had the ball in the net in the first half, too, but his well-taken goal was rightly ruled out for offside. It was one of those where the linesman let play go on until the move ended before raising the flag, which is great when it's a close call, but I rang Stevie Wonder and he said that even he could see that Harvey Barnes was offside in the buildup.
Murphy also grazed the outside of the post with a long-range effort, while Tonali hit the inside of the post with a 20-yard drive.
A win is a win
Newcastle started well in the second half, but then both sides made several changes just after the hour mark, and the game took a turn for the worse. Neither side could put together anything noteworthy except for one nice move by Harvey Barnes, where he played a couple of one-two passes on the edge of the Wolves area before assassinating a pigeon that was in the rafters at the back of the Gallowgate.
The game was a prime example of what a difference having a striker makes, given that our new centre-forward was the one who got the goal, but it's so hard to see where the next goal is going to come from.
We still have no clue what to do in the final third. Jacob Murphy kept playing good balls in for Woltemade to attack, and that looks like our one good plan right now, but anything else is just so slow, laboured and unimaginative.
If we don't start working on the final phase of moves, it's going to be such a long, painful season.
But hey, enough grumping. A win is a win, and that's what we have. BRING ON BARCELONA!
