BREAKING: ‘Anger’ in the Newcastle tunnel as Southampton 25-year-old forward Ben Brereton Díaz response results in failure

After Southampton star Ben Brereton Diaz’s fancy play, Newcastle United were pumped up.

As always, Wor Flags set the mood before the ball was hit. A huge surfer was showing Joelinton, Bruno Guimaraes, Anthony Gordon, and Alexander Isak holding the Premier League, FA Cup, and Carabao Cup trophies. In the Gallowgate, there was a banner that said, “We still have wild dreams.”

If Newcastle United wants to reach their big goals one day, they will need more players and much better play, but they will also need heart. That was in plenty for Eddie Howe’s team at St. James’ Park on Saturday.

In fact, this 1-0 win over Southampton felt like going back to the beginning of this new era. Geordies were cheering their team over the line as Newcastle fought for their lives and held on against Burnley. After Fabian Schar was sent off after only 28 minutes, they did it again in the last few minutes of this hard-fought win that was anything but easy.

Now, you would expect Newcastle to have 77% of the ball, 19 shots, and 12 corners against a team that just got promoted. The only team that did well against 10 men at St. James’ on Saturday was Southampton.

Even with all of their players on the field, Newcastle was having a hard time scoring against Southampton. Things got even harder for the home team when Schar was sent off for a fight that left Ben Brereton Diaz holding his face on the ground. But the home team came back strong, and Joelinton scored the game-winning goal right before halftime. That shouldn’t have been a surprise at all.

It’s clear that Newcastle needs more “difference makers” before the transfer window closes, but these players know each other very well and are willing to do anything for each other. He said, “The team had great character to stick together and fight for each other.”

This show of heart came at the right time on the first day, when Newcastle was down to 10 men, which is a situation they rarely have been in under Howe. Surprisingly, Howe had only sent off five black and white players in all tournaments before this.

But Howe and his staff have been preparing the team for this kind of thing for years, and the red card was only going to have one of two effects: it would either spur the players and crowd on, or the players and crowd would be so angry at what they saw as unfair that it would work against them.

It turned out to be the first one. If anything, Brereton Diaz’s antics failed; Southampton had shut down St. James’s before, but they came back strong and easily passed the ball around even when Newcastle had 11 men on the field. Geordies yelled, “You’re not fit to referee!” over the chants of “Cheerio!” from Southampton fans high above Schar.

When Southampton played, the crowd booed every touch, and Alex McCarthy was still hearing those boos when he dropped a pass and gave the ball straight to Alexander Isak just before halftime. Newcastle’s record-breaking signing passed the ball to Joelinton, and the midfielder hit it perfectly, sending it into the bottom corner to give the home team the lead with their only shot on goal.

But those cheers didn’t last very long. At halftime, there were loud boos for the refs, and the players were still very angry as they left the field. Because Brereton Diaz was acting up, Dan Burn got so angry that the defender physically pulled the Chilean player off the ground before referee Craig Pawson sent Schar off.

When Burn turned around at halftime and saw Brereton Diaz going toward the away locker room with his head down, it was clear that the play was still fresh in his mind. Burn said some mean things to Brereton Diaz as the two walked side by side for a short time. Then Jan Bednarek, who was waiting at the top of the first set of stairs, yelled at the Geordie.

Burn just swatted Bednarek away, and when the Poland player stood his ground, Burn, who is 32 years old and very tall, grabbed Bednarek’s shirt and pushed him again. That told Newcastle’s assistant coach Jason Tindall to hold Burn back, and it told staff at Southampton to step in between the guys.

Brereton Diaz had already walked up the stairs and looked back for a moment to see what had happened. He was probably thinking if another Newcastle center-back was about to get sent off. Not this time, which made Eddie Howe happy.

“There was some emotion at halftime, but that’s what you want,” Newcastle’s manager told reporters. There is some anger about the call, the time, and what it means for the rest of the game for the other players.

“That’s great that they stuck together. It was cool to see them fight and stand up for each other. During the whole season, we need that.”

In the second half, they had to stick together for sure. It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that the second half turned into an attack vs. defense match after Newcastle was pinned back with only 10 players. When Adam Armstrong went back to St. James’, Lewis Hall blocked one of his shots, Nick Pope saved another, and he missed with a third. Late in the game, Pope saved headers from Charly Alcaraz and Cameron Archer, who came on as substitutes. Newcastle held on to get three important points.

Beautiful? Really? Howe chose the 2-0 win against Nottingham Forest, who were also newly promoted at the time, as his favorite moment from Newcastle’s memorable 2023 season, which included qualifying for the Champions League. So, if you ever wanted to know how important the first game of the season is to Howe, think about that. Why? Because it “set the tone for what came next.”

This changed the mood. The black-and-whites were not at their best, far from it, but they stuck with it. That makes a lot of sense.