'Top player': Bruno Guimaraes dishes out high praise for Newcastle United star after last night's win

Newcastle United's players had definitely had their Weetabix on Wednesday as they put in one of their most accomplished performances for a long time in order to send Chelsea tumbling out of the Carabao Cup with a 2-0 win.

It was hard to fault anyone overall last night as Eddie Howe shook things up with the lineup, even being so bold as to drop team captain Bruno Guimaraes to the bench and field a midfield three of Sandro Tonali, Joe Willock and Sean Longstaff.

Unfortunately for Eddie Howe and indeed Bruno, it may have worked too well as the balance in the middle of the park just seemed right.

Equally, at the back, Howe gave himself another headache after calling up Lloyd Kelly to replace Dan Burn with the former Bournemouth man having his best game in a Newcastle shirt - although, it seems if you were in the ground you saw a different version of Kelly to the one TV viewers saw as there has been some debate over how good he actually was.

The fact that both Bruno Guimaraes and Dan Burn had been relegated to the bench and that Kieran Trippier, Callum Wilson and Jamaal Lascelles are all injured, it left Howe with a decision to make as to who would wear the captain's armband.

That honour went to Mr Dependable himself, Fabian Schar who took to Instagram and X after the game to thank the fans and celebrate going into the quarter finals.

"Job done and into the last 🎱

"Incredible support under the lights at SJP"

Bruno is always on hand to offer kind words to his teammates on Social Media

As he so often does, Bruno Guimaraes chimed in with words of support in the comments on Instagram simply saying "Top player". It seems that Bruno didn't mind passing off the armband to the former Swiss international.

Arsenal come to St James' Park on Saturday and the lads should be absolutely buzzing after that win and that performance. Hopefully it was the kick up the jacksy that the side clearly needed.

Eddie Howe now really needs to think on his team selection for Saturday because some players made very strong cases for a place in the starting lineup last night.