The smile on Eddie Howe’s face looked more like relief than jubilation. Isaac Hayden had swivelled in the box and turned Newcastle around, pulling them back level. Finally, the team Howe will now inherit was showing some fight, having been roused from a worrying first-half slumber that showed the extent of the task facing their new boss.
When Howe took his seat at kick-off in the directors’ box at the Amex Stadium next to Amanda Staveley, Newcastle were bottom of the Premier League thanks to Norwich’s win at Brentford.
Nothing they showed in the first half made that a surprise, and even after Hayden’s 66th-minute strike cancelled out Leandro Trossard’s first-half penalty, they only hauled themselves off the foot of the table by virtue of goal difference.