Substitute Harvey Barnes scored twice as Newcastle boosted their hopes of making it to the knockout stages of the Champions League with a comprehensive 3-0 victory over Benfica.<\/p>\n
Anthony Gordon set the Magpies on their way with his fourth goal in three game’s in this season’s competition, but it was Barnes, a 63rd-minute replacement for the excellent Jacob Murphy, who sealed the points with assured 71st and 83rd-minute finishes to hand head coach Eddie Howe just a second win in nine attempts over opposite number Jose Mourinho.<\/p>\n
It was no more than Howe’s men deserved as they took their tally to six points from their opening three games in front of a buoyant crowd of 52,073 at St James’ Park.<\/p>\n
The Newcastle boss, who saw Gordon turn in arguably his best performance of the season, had to do without key midfielder Sandro Tonali, who had been ill in the run-up to the game, but the Italian’s sizeable boots were filled admirably by 19-year-old Lewis Miley.<\/p>\n
After a positive start by the Portuguese side, Antonio Silva arrived in the nick of time to take Murphy’s eighth-minute cross off Jacob Ramsey’s toe in front of goal and Dan Burn’s header from the resulting corner was hacked away as black and white shirts prepared to pounce.<\/p>\n
Goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin was called upon for the first time to save Murphy’s 10th-minute shot after an enterprising run to the edge of the area, but opposite number Nick Pope was stretched much further five minutes later.<\/p>\n
Midfielder Enzo Barrenechea drifted a long ball over Burn to Dodi Lukebakio, who controlled superbly before forcing a fine save from the keeper at his near post.<\/p>\n
Pope needed the help of an upright with 21 minutes gone when, after his defenders failed to fully clear a corner, Lukebakio curled a left-footed shot beyond his dive.<\/p>\n
Murphy whistled a drive just wide from distance seconds later after Nick Woltemade had turned cleverly to find him in space and Trubin had to block Bruno Guimaraes’ stabbed effort from close range after Burn had headed down a Kieran Trippier corner.<\/p>\n
However, he was finally beaten 13 minutes before the break when Guimaraes slid the ball into Murphy’s run and he picked out Gordon in the middle to side-foot home.<\/p>\n
Pope had to claw away another Lukebakio attempt two minutes before the break after the visitors had broken, with Trippier appealing in vain for a free-kick at the other end, but the home side went in at the break with their advantage intact.<\/p>\n
Trubin saved well from Murphy after the restart and, as the visitors grew increasingly careless in possession, it was Newcastle who continued to look the more likely team to score.<\/p>\n
Guimaraes saw ambitious appeals for a 68th-minute penalty waved away by referee Szymon Marciniak, but the Magpies increased their lead with 19 minutes remaining when, after claiming Lukebakio’s cross, Pope hurled the ball beyond the halfway line and, with Silva failing to cut it out, Barnes raced away to shoot past Trubin off the foot of the far post.<\/p>\n
The win was secured when Gordon steered the ball into Barnes’ path and he beat Trubin with ease to make it 3-0, with the keeper sparing his side further damage as time ran down.<\/p>\n
Watch Eintracht Frankfurt vs Liverpool in the Champions League on Wednesday from 7pm on RT\u00c92 and the RT\u00c9 Player. Follow a live blog on the RT\u00c9 News App and on rte.ie\/sport<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Substitute Harvey Barnes scored twice as Newcastle boosted their hopes of making it to the knockout stages of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,19,17,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-137136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}