From a corner, Georginio Wijnaldum shrugged off Cesc Fabregas and guided a brilliant header past Begovic into the bottom corner to send St James Park into a frenzy.
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Ayoze Perez has challenged his Newcastle United team-mates to replicate their performance against Chelsea in future Premier League matches. After the match, he was called over for a chat by Sky Sports. There were six players I could have taken off. I wanted to make six substitutions.
“There were too many individual performances that were terrible”. Yes, the youngster will make mistakes, a feature demonstrated when Chelsea conceded their first goal; however, that is not the point.
But Ramires sparked the recovery with a long-range shot in the 79th minute.
He then distracted Newcastle goalkeeper Tim Krul sufficiently to enable Willian’s free-kick to find a way past him.
But the visitors showed their resolve thereafter, with Ramires’ wonder strike and Willian’s fortuitous goal ensuring they left the north-east with a point.
“Their attitude was 100% better, they had fight, desire, hunger in their play, in that first half particularly, and hopefully for them, they’ll be thinking that it can be a signal for better things to come – and it had to be that way”, he added.
Again Chelsea did not give up and kept pressing forward and eventually they got their goal through the substitute Ramires.
Chelsea got out of jail at St. James’ Park as two late goals saved their blushes against Newcastle.
I have to try to understand why this is happening.’ Defender Gary Cahill, meanwhile, says that Chelsea are running out of chances when it comes to regaining the ground lost amid their early-season malaise. It’s bad for them because if they play like this, they win many matches at home, and they don’t. I don’t know. John has to behave like the captain he is and wait for the decision he wants’.
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Krul helped lead a dressing-room inquest in the wake of Wednesday’s cup defeat, and head coach Steve McClaren also issued some harsh home truths in the build-up to Saturday’s game. I remember one at Middlesbrough in 2005, 2006, something like that, we were losing at half-time 3-0, so we have had a few. The Premier League champions failed to live up to expectations against the Magpies who have been struggled and Mourinho was looking for answers as to why his players put in an “awful” performances.
