Osula, Burn and Barnes end Newcastle's five-match slide as Brighton fall 3-1 at St James'
Newcastle ended a run of five straight defeats on Saturday with a 3-1 win over Brighton at St James' Park, the kind of result Eddie Howe needed to walk into Monday with rather than another inquest. Will Osula put the home side ahead inside 12 minutes, Dan Burn doubled the lead against his former club, and Harvey Barnes finished the night off in stoppage time.
The opener came against the run of play. Bart Verbruggen, normally the calmest goalkeeper in the league, got tangled up trying to play out of his own area, and Osula was alert enough to take the gift. From there the crowd lifted, the long-ball platform Howe has fallen back on through this cold spell started to find its targets, and Newcastle stopped looking like the side that has lost nine of their last twelve.
Burn's header against his old club
The second came in the 24th minute. Dan Burn, who spent four seasons at Brighton between 2018 and 2022 before the £13 million move home to his boyhood club, climbed unmarked at the back post and headed in. There was no celebration. He turned away with a hand half-raised and let the noise from the Gallowgate do the rest.
Newcastle could and should have had a third before the break. Anthony Gordon, subject to reported Bayern Munich interest with Newcastle said to be valuing him at around £80 million earlier in the week, looked sharp on the left and twice tested Verbruggen, who recovered from his earlier error. Brighton, with six wins and a draw from their previous eight Premier League games, were unusually flat for an in-form side.
A wobble, and a Barnes finish to close it
The wobble came on the hour. Jack Hinshelwood, picked out by a smart Danny Welbeck flick, fired past Nick Pope in the 61st minute, and the last half-hour stretched out longer than the home end wanted. Brighton pressed for an equaliser, Welbeck found pockets, and Newcastle's lead began to look the way every Newcastle lead has looked through this run.
Then, deep in stoppage time, Harvey Barnes drove forward, ran straight at a tiring back line, and slid the ball past Verbruggen for the third. The roar inside St James' was as much relief as celebration. Howe, who had spoken openly this week about a "challenging" conversation with the club's PIF ownership, walked off with the first three points he has had to celebrate in well over a month.
The result lifts Newcastle out of immediate danger and back into the conversation for next season's European places, although that conversation now needs another two or three wins from the run-in to mean anything. Brighton's surge towards Europe takes a knock; they came in sixth, dropped to seventh, and on most measures had been the better side over the eight games before this one. Fabian Hurzeler will not be losing too much sleep, but the run that had pushed them up from mid-table is now broken.
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