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BBC News
3 days ago
- Sport
- BBC News
Newcastle in talks with Wilson over new contract
Newcastle United are in talks with Calum Wilson over extending his stay at St James' 33-year-old striker was expected to leave the club this summer but Newcastle have confirmed that negotiations over a new deal are under has made 130 appearances for the club after joining from Bournemouth for about £20m in has scored 49 goals in all competitions during an injury-hit five years on struggled with both back and hamstring injuries last season, and only managed 18 appearances in the Premier contract was set to expire later this month, along with that of goalkeeper John Ruddy, who the club also confirmed was in talks over signing an extension. On Friday, the club released their retained list for the 2025/26 season, with Jamal Lewis leaving the club following the expiry of his Kelly's loan move to Juventus has been made permanent, with the deal set to be completed for an undisclosed fee on 30 other first-team players have been retained, with an option to extend Mark Gillespie's contract recently agreed new contracts with Fabian Schar, Emil Krafth and Dan Burn.
New York Times
27-05-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Inside Newcastle's ‘unicorn' season: A summer hangover, a crucial crossroads and Howe's diary
Eddie Howe is the kind of man who cringes in the face of hyperbole, but even he described the past 10 months as 'monumental' for Newcastle United. A first domestic trophy for 70 years brought joyous release, shifting a club's identity from forever yearning into icy winners. Following it with a return to the Champions League establishes the season just gone as one of the best in its history, but they brushed past disaster to get there. Advertisement Newcastle's 1-0 defeat by Everton on the final day felt uncomfortably appropriate. Knowing victory would guarantee a return to Europe's elite club competition, Howe's players laboured. At the final whistle, Fabian Schar slumped to the turf, cradling his head in his hands. Only when Aston Villa's defeat at Manchester United was confirmed did anguish evaporate. They were fifth, but what a struggle. Wembley, the Carabao Cup final, 300,000 people jamming into Newcastle's city centre to celebrate, equalling a club record of nine consecutive wins in all competitions, 20 victories from 26 matches, taking six points from Manchester United… all of those things will linger in the memory for decades. No wonder that senior club staff are referring to it as a 'unicorn season'; rare, beautiful and unique. Yet the foundations for it were shaky. A jarring close season threatened to unravel the positivity which had pulled Newcastle along since their Saudi Arabian-led takeover in October 2021. There was a fire sale of players, upheaval in the boardroom, awkward relationships, disquiet amongst the squad and stasis in the transfer market. On the pitch, they won three of their first nine league matches. In mid-December, they were 12th and teetering on a precipice. 'If you'd said in the summer — which was turbulent and difficult — what we would go on to achieve, I wouldn't have believed you,' Howe said. 'We had an inconsistent beginning, we had a disruptive summer, we haven't made a major signing in three transfer windows, we lost players we wouldn't have wanted to lose. It's very easy now to look back and see it through different eyes, but we have faced huge challenges.' To bastardise the old cliche, it has been a season of two distinct and very different halves. What follows is a story of two halves. Howe ends the season as a Newcastle legend, which feels all the more remarkable given he raised doubts during pre-season as to whether he would even still be head coach to start it. At Adidas HQ in Germany last July, Howe used speculation linking him with the vacant England job to publicise his unease following an off-season of upheaval at St James' Park. 'I absolutely want to stay, but there's no point if the dynamic is not right,' he said. Rather than reply in the affirmative that he would be in charge for the opening game, Howe underlined his discomfort by saying, 'As long as I'm happy in the position I'm in, feel supported by the club and free to work in the way I want to work.' Advertisement Two months' worth of built-up angst had burst out of Howe. The controversial post-season tour to Australia — which was not well received by sections of the dressing room — was followed by belated confirmation that Newcastle would not play in the UEFA Conference League following Manchester United's FA Cup victory (which, in hindsight, proved a blessing). Then came the destabilising rush to try to bridge a £60million-plus ($81m) blackhole and comply with the Premier League's profit and sustainability rules (PSR) by June 30, which led to Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh being offloaded to Nottingham Forest and Brighton & Hove Albion respectively. The fear of a double-digit points deduction drove Newcastle's desperation to sell, with Anthony Gordon floated to Liverpool and Alexander Isak receiving tentative enquiries from Chelsea. It also led to the £20m purchase of Odysseas Vlachodimos, Forest's third-choice goalkeeper, who was not on the club's recruitment list and made just one substitute appearance all campaign. That unedifying situation was quickly followed by the departures of Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi as co-owners. The public faces of the hierarchy post-takeover, they offered a human touch towards the players and were a direct point of contact for Howe. The subsequent arrivals of Paul Mitchell as sporting director and James Bunce as performance director left Howe feeling undermined. Howe was given less than 24 hours' notice of Mitchell's appointment, leading to immediate strain between the head coach and straight-talking sporting director. Darren Eales, the CEO, also appeared to curb the head coach's wider authority by insisting that 'what (Howe) does best is on the grass'. The word Howe kept repeating in Germany was 'boundaries'. He referred to it as the most stressful summer of his career. Advertisement His team was not materially strengthened, either. Lloyd Kelly joined from Bournemouth and Will Osula was signed as a 'project player' but, following the failed (and very public) pursuit of Crystal Palace's Marc Guehi, Newcastle ended the summer without the centre-back or right winger they sought and went through a second successive window without improving the first XI (which would extend to a third come January). Sean Longstaff revealed how unsettling it had been when it seemed 'everyone had their price'. Howe would later refer to a 'hangover' infiltrating Newcastle's early form, with Gordon and Isak among the underperformers. Kieran Trippier, so influential since joining, was also linked with an exit and when Howe made the contentious decision to take the on-field captaincy away from the right-back and hand it to Bruno Guimaraes, that caused further unrest. Yet, results-wise, the season actually started encouragingly. Following a win at Wolverhampton Wanderers in their fourth league game, Newcastle were unbeaten and third. But the points haul was misleading. They were wading through matches. It felt unsustainable. When Mitchell delivered a clumsy line about whether Newcastle's post-takeover recruitment had been 'fit for purpose in the modern game' during a media briefing in September, the behind-the-scenes tensions resurfaced. With no update on the future of the stadium, despite previous pronouncements that a decision was 'imminent', and little movement on a new training ground, some around the club were questioning the direction of travel. At the time, one insider described the mounting issues as 'like fires being lit everywhere'. At Fulham on September 21, Newcastle got the comeuppance their performances deserved. The 3-1 scoreline flattered them and Howe told his team that their failure to carry out the basics was inexcusable. Isak, who had scored only once across six matches, was given a detailed presentation about movement by Howe. Advertisement Although Isak's scoring improved, Newcastle's league form did not. Just two further victories arrived by mid-December, leading to external speculation about Howe's position. Internally, Mitchell and Eales always backed Howe unwaveringly, but the headlines did not disappear. Newcastle's progress through the Carabao Cup kept the season from flatlining, even if slender victories over Nottingham Forest (on penalties) and AFC Wimbledon were hardly convincing. The fourth-round triumph over Chelsea was heartening, but inconsistency was a consistent theme. Following a breathless 3-3 draw with Liverpool on December 4, when Newcastle went toe-to-toe with the champions-elect, they capitulated at Brentford three days later, losing 4-2. Guimaraes decried 'a mess' of a performance, Howe apologised to the travelling supporters and Alan Shearer, Newcastle's record goalscorer, wrote in The Athletic about a team and club that had 'gone stale'. With Storm Darragh grounding Newcastle's return flight, Howe spent the eight-hour coach journey to Tyneside watching the defeat back alongside Graeme Jones, his assistant, and he openly questioned the attitude and application of his players once more. Newcastle were languishing in 12th and, as Howe said this month, 'We reached a stage where we had to decide where we were going to go with our season.' What they had reached was a crossroads. Howe did not know whether to wiggle his hips or wag his fingers. The Champions League theme was playing at St James' and players and staff were dancing on the pitch. Newcastle had lost to Everton, but they had won something bigger. 'You have to join in, but I wasn't happy doing it,' Howe said. 'It was a weird experience.' Victory or defeat, light and shade, Jekyll and Hyde, black or white; this has been Newcastle's existence. After Liverpool, they did not draw another game for five months and although they settled into a rhythm of wins, when losses came they tended to be deflating. It has been a season of resets and recovery. Advertisement Brentford prompted the biggest of the lot. At Newcastle's training ground, Howe ripped up his plans for the week ahead. There were individual meetings with each of his players and stern reminders about standards. If any harboured thoughts about leaving, they were told in brutal terms to pull their fingers out. With no staff members present, the squad met to talk things through. The conversation was unsparing, but it came from a place of friendship and respect. 'It was like, 'Who are we going to be?',' Gordon said a few weeks later. 'From there, I don't think we've looked back.' Tactically, the seeds of recovery had already been sown. Sandro Tonali had struggled to provide match-defining contributions following his return from a 10-month ban for gambling offences in August, but when he was pushed back into a deeper position against Crystal Palace in late November, something clicked. As his fitness and confidence improved, Newcastle's midfield no longer felt like a giant question mark. When Leicester City came to Tyneside on December 14, Ruud van Nistelrooy had clearly not read the memo about keeping things tight. Naive and open, they were battered 4-0 and Newcastle were on their way. There were consecutive victories at Old Trafford, Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal, which was unprecedented over a single season. A pair of 2-0 victories over Mikel Arteta's side in the League Cup semi-final felt like a zenith under Howe. Newcastle became ruthless up top, scoring 26 goals in nine games, and mean at the back, conceding only three times. Isak scored in a club-record eight successive Premier League matches — part of his 23 top-flight goals and 27 in all competitions — while Martin Dubravka deputised for Nick Pope by keeping five clean sheets in six league games. Newcastle went on to record 13 shutouts, critical in pipping Villa to fifth on goal difference. That nine-match winning sequence underscored Bunce's positive impact, too, with the performance director quickly becoming valued by Howe as an 'elite' operator. Nine players started at least seven of those nine straight victories while, across the season, Newcastle fielded the joint-second-fewest players (24) and made the second-fewest starting-XI changes (51). GO DEEPER James Bunce, the man tasked with helping Eddie Howe improve Newcastle's performance That 'consistency of selection', which Howe craves, was important for myriad reasons, including the lack of depth, which was further eroded following the financially savvy sales of Miguel Almiron and Kelly (to Juventus, remarkably) in January. Extracting so much from a small group was made possible by Newcastle boasting one of the league's best injury records — a dramatic improvement from 2023-24 — while still producing physical-output figures amongst the highest in the division, according to their own data. Sven Botman, who only started eight matches, was a rare exception, alongside Callum Wilson (three starts). Advertisement The most high-profile absentee was Howe himself. Forced into hospital on April 11, he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Jason Tindall and Jones, the assistants, oversaw successive victories over Manchester United and Crystal Palace by an aggregate of 9-1, plus the bruising 4-1 defeat at Villa. The backroom staff's professionalism and commitment ensured standards did not drop in their leader's absence, but those nine wins set the tone. 'That was where we grew in confidence, we grew in our style, we grew in the knowledge that we were just going to go out and win,' Howe said. 'It was an unbelievable response from the squad with everything going on around it. The players were thinking, 'We need reinforcements' and we were losing Miggy and Lloyd. They never used that as an excuse. It was, 'OK, it's happened, let's just give a bit more'.' There had been a late-winter wobble: home defeats by Bournemouth and Fulham, when Newcastle struggled to rouse themselves; defeats at Manchester City and Liverpool, when they scarcely turned up. A red card for Gordon on the day they were knocked out of the FA Cup by Brighton briefly felt like resurrection for the old Newcastle. With Lewis Hall — the team's standout performer — ruled out for the season with a foot injury, Howe would be without his first-choice left side at Wembley. It was ruinous, self-inflicted, catastrophic. The new Newcastle had other ideas. The cup final was extraordinary. Having expended too much emotional energy in the build-up two years earlier, when they lost 2-0 to Manchester United, Newcastle were clinical. 'Everything felt different,' Jacob Murphy told The Athletic. 'Not scary. Almost belonging. I think everyone was just ready this time.' Murphy certainly was; he set up a goal for Isak and ended the season with 12 Premier League assists, second only to Liverpool's Mohamed Salah. Dan Burn certainly was; his towering header at Wembley was a moment for the ages, swiftly followed by a first England call-up at the age of 32. When Guimaraes lifted the trophy, he called over Trippier and Jamaal Lascelles, the club captain who did not play all season due to an anterior cruciate ligament injury, to share the honour, a selfless gesture that embodied Newcastle's unity. Advertisement Just as impressive was what happened afterwards. Newcastle kept winning, climbing into the Champions League places and threatening to overtake Arsenal in second. 'The reaction after the cup final was pivotal,' Howe said. 'There were concerns that it would be a massive high and then there would be a drop-off and the season would fizzle out. That it would always be remembered for the cup win but with a bit of disappointment and regret in the league. It boils down to the players' mindset. I saw a real confidence lift. It gave us a 'we can beat anybody' feeling.' But not quite everybody. The season ended with defeats against Arsenal and Everton and a squirming reminder that toil and peril have accompanied Newcastle on their journey. Howe, a man obsessed with self-reflection, kept a diary throughout the season, to remind himself of the scale of Newcastle's achievements and also of its most trying moments. To become the best, they had to dance on a knife-edge.
New York Times
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Newcastle are back in the Champions League. It changes everything
Have Newcastle United ever celebrated a defeat like this? On the final day of a transformative season, the team lost but the club won, qualifying for the Champions League by the skinniest of margins. For once, they were done a favour by Manchester United, whose victory over Aston Villa made the scoreline against Everton at St James' Park irrelevant, although the ramifications will be anything but. Advertisement After an epic campaign — 'monumental,' head coach Eddie Howe called it — Newcastle made it an appropriately drawn-out finale, playing poorly and losing 1-0 and then being forced to wait for the full-time whistle to go at Old Trafford. 'We didn't know the scores at all,' Dan Burn said of results elsewhere. 'Especially when I kept seeing Fabby (fellow centre-back Fabian Schar) up front, shooting. Someone might have let us know…' Only then could the party begin. Players and staff huddled together in the middle of the pitch and danced. They were then joined by family and loved ones for a long, slow, luxurious lap of appreciation. Howe did not quite know what to do with himself. The nerdy, obsessive, detail-freak side of his personality wrestled with joy. 'I'm as miserable as you like when we lose, especially if we don't play well, so that's a double hit for me today,' he told The Athletic later. 'But then I've got this nice feeling as well, which I'm battling internally. You're jumping up and down with the group, and you have to join in, but I wasn't happy doing it, so it was a weird experience.' For the record, Howe was also smiling. At the end of it, Newcastle are winners of the Carabao Cup — their first domestic trophy for 70 years — and are back in Europe's leading club competition, for the second time in three seasons, and while the former was beautiful, emotional and life-changing, the second part will materially affect the bottom line. Qualification brings money, prestige, exposure. 'The power and pull of the Champions League is huge and we can't get away from that,' Howe said. This is what it means. From the moment the trophy was lifted, it was job done for Howe and his players. In another sense, it was existence done. Football? Completed it, pal. For longstanding Newcastle supporters, silverware was the only part of the jigsaw still missing. From the Champions League to the Championship, from trying and failing to simply failing, they had witnessed (and suffered through) everything else. Advertisement Winning the Carabao Cup brought an end to all those years of yearning. It also meant hitting a target. Last summer, Darren Eales, the chief executive, stated that qualifying for Europe was the primary seasonal objective, and a place in the final play-off stage of the third-tier Conference League was the tangible reward for beating Liverpool 2-1 at Wembley that March afternoon. But Newcastle kept on winning in the weeks that followed, rejecting that reward and upgrading it for something far better: the blue-riband competition that attracts elite players to your club and encourages those you already have to stay. 'Winning the cup final gave us a freedom and a newfound confidence and a bounce,' Howe said. 'But delivering the Champions League was an expectation that we placed upon ourselves.' The effect of that will be manifold. In 2023-24, Newcastle received £29.8million ($40.3m at the current rate) in prize money after being knocked out at the group stage under the old format of the Champions League — almost 10 per cent of their revenue for that season. Since then, the competition has been revamped, making it even more profitable for participants, who get to share a €2.467bn (£2.07bn/$2.8bn) pot. The 36 clubs who reach the league phase will receive €18.6million, compared to €4.3m for doing the same in the second-tier Europa League and €3.2m in the Conference League. Money is also distributed via performance-related bonuses, for wins and draws across the eight opening-stage matches (up from six when Newcastle were last involved). Then there is the 'value pillar' — which is a mixture of the old market pool for broadcast contracts and coefficient pots. The overall maximum prize money for a participant in the Champions League is €156.9million (for comparison, it's €21.7m in the Conference League). The minimum is €20.2m for a Champions League competitor and €3.3m in the Conference League. When every factor is considered, Newcastle are likely to make a minimum of €37m from being in next season's Champions League. Advertisement Then there is matchday revenue. League-phase qualification guarantees you four home games in the Champions League (clubs could play a maximum of eight in a season if they get to the semi-finals) and Newcastle would be able to charge higher ticket prices in the most prestigious of the three UEFA competitions. Additionally, many of the club's commercial deals, including with Adidas, are believed to contain bonuses for being involved in the Champions League. When it comes to the Premier League's profit and sustainability rules (PSR), playing in the Champions League will allow Newcastle to spend more, given revenues will increase. To balance that, costs will also rise; many player contracts (and Howe's too) contain European bonuses, while a deeper squad will be required due to those additional matches, meaning greater transfer expenditure. They must also adhere to UEFA's cost-to-turnover measures — calculated annually rather than across the footballing season, as PSR is — which is reducing to a 70 per cent limit for 2025-26. However, Newcastle are confident that abiding by UEFA's regulations will not be particularly problematic. Having failed to bring in a first-team-ready player for the past three transfer windows, competition is required, although the Champions League is expected to mean a focus on a smaller number of quality additions. This was Newcastle's strategy in summer 2023, when Sandro Tonali and Harvey Barnes arrived, plus two youngsters to be developed in now first-teamers Lewis Hall and Tino Livramento. Howe would like a right-sided centre-half, a right-winger, a goalkeeper and a striker as a minimum, though greater churn is likely. Until their Champions League fate was sealed, Newcastle could not finalise their shortlist of targets by position, but they will now move swiftly to do so. 'Speed is key for us and I've reiterated that many times internally, because we have to be dynamic,' Howe said. 'We have to be ready to complete things very, very quickly, because good players don't hang around for long.' Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Newcastle's Saudi Arabian chairman, was on Tyneside for the Everton game, which usually helps in terms of getting things done. 'I will have a discussion with the chairman, so I'm looking forward to that and trying to lay some foundations for what lies ahead for the summer,' said Howe. Advertisement Having missed out on Bournemouth's Real Madrid-bound defender Dean Huijsen, Newcastle still admire Crystal Palace centre-back Marc Guehi, while Ipswich Town striker Liam Delap, Nottingham Forest winger Anthony Elanga, Brentford forward Bryan Mbeumo and Burnley goalkeeper James Trafford have featured prominently during transfer discussions. There will be exits, too. Striker Callum Wilson appeared to bid a tearful farewell after the Everton defeat, with his contract up next month and the 33-year-old England international potentially among the departures, even if Howe suggested conversations will still take place with his representatives. And there are further complications, notably UEFA's homegrown quota, which stipulates that participating clubs must have a minimum of eight homegrown players. Two years ago, Howe was restricted to a 23-man Champions League squad, two short of the limit, due to a lack of 'club-trained players'. This makes Sean Longstaff's future even more uncertain as the midfielder could generate some helpful PSR headroom by being sold, yet he would give Newcastle an additional European squad space if he stays. The Champions League means emotional armoury for Howe, too. With two qualification for Europe's top club competition, two League Cup finals, one trophy, and Premier League finishes of fourth, seventh and now fifth over the past three seasons, Newcastle have demonstrated they are an elite team, which is of vital importance when they are not yet an elite club with purpose-built facilities. Now Howe can point to his side's achievements, to Burn's elevation into the England squad, and argue that players' ambitions can be fulfilled at Newcastle. This is the stage which Alexander Isak, Bruno Guimaraes, Tonali and plenty of others yearn to grace. If any of them wish to leave now — and there has been no hint of it — it will not be for that reason. 'The excitement this will bring for the people here is a big thing and, of course, this is a selling point for us now,' said Howe. 'It's an opportunity for us to sell that dream to future players who might be considering coming to us.' When Newcastle were languishing in 12th place in early December, even those within the dressing room doubted this delayed moment of celebration would come. 'Probably I didn't see this then, not where we were,' Burn said. 'But we've always had the confidence that, when we perform, we know we can beat anyone in the league. That winning run we went on (nine in a row in December and January), it just felt like every time we stepped on the pitch we were going to win.' Advertisement Those wins propelled Newcastle up the table, to silverware and now back to Europe's top tier. Just as this incarnation of Newcastle were different — more business-like — on their second visit to Wembley inside three seasons, Burn is confident a similar evolution will take hold heading into their second Champions League campaign. 'It's an amazing achievement, but now we probably feel as if we should be there,' he said. 'The three years we've been with the manager, I feel like we're constantly improving — and we're starting to get to the stage where we feel like we're a top team. It's going to be tough to top this season.' The really exciting bit? They'll give it a go.
The Hindu
25-05-2025
- Sport
- The Hindu
Newcastle secures Champions League spot despite loss to Everton in season finale, Brighton thrashes Spurs
Newcastle United squeezed into the Champions League places despite losing 1-0 to Everton at home in its final game of the Premier League season on Sunday, thanks to Manchester United's 2-0 home win over Aston Villa. The Magpies, who ended a 70-year domestic trophy drought by beating Liverpool to win the League Cup earlier in the season, ended up in fifth place on 66 points, edging out Villa on goal difference. The final whistle led to a nervous wait at St. James's Park as the game continued at Old Trafford, with confirmation of Villa's defeat bringing a roar of joy and relief as the Champions League hymn was played to celebrate Newcastle's return to Europe's premier competition. Newcastle dominated throughout but was undone by poor finishing and sloppy passing. Its struggles were encapsulated in a 38th-minute tongue-lashing administered by defender Fabian Schar to team mate Jacob Murphy, who dawdled across the midfield before carelessly giving away the ball. READ | Liverpool ends victorious season with 1-1 draw against Crystal Palace The home side had its chances but its final ball into the box was often poor, and any efforts it did manage to get on goal were comfortably dealt with by Jordan Pickford in the Everton goal. Newcastle was eventually punished for giving away the ball once too often in the centre of the pitch in the 65th minute, with Everton's Vitaliy Mykolenko crossing for Carlos Alcaraz to score with a brilliant header. The home side poured forward late in the second half as it sought to salvage some pride with an equaliser, with Bruno Guimares sending a stoppage-time effort that might have saved its blushes whistling past the top corner. Other than that, Everton was in no mood to accommodate it and defended doggedly to the bitter end, finishing its season in 13th place on 48 points. Newcastle 4-1 Tottenham Hotspur Brighton & Hove Albion left Tottenham Hotspur with a hangover by thrashing the Europa League winner 4-1 away but missed out on a European place after finishing eighth in the standings. Spurs were in celebratory mood following their triumph against Manchester United in Bilbao in midweek and took the lead through a Dominic Solanke penalty after 17 minutes following a clumsy foul on Mathys Tel by Mats Wieffer. However, Brighton pushed for an equaliser and got it six minutes after the break through Jack Hinshelwood, who rifled the ball into the roof of the net, and he grabbed its second with a clever back-heel in the 64th following another corner. Matt O'Riley then scored from the spot after Diego Gomez was fouled by Yves Bissouma, and Gomez netted a stunning fourth in added time for the visitor when he expertly curled the ball into the far top corner from just outside the area. The defeat was the 22nd of a dreadful Premier League season for Spurs, which piled the pressure on their Australian manager Ange Postecoglou and led to speculation that he faced the sack. Tottenham ended the campaign in 17th place, its lowest league finish in 21 years, with 38 points being the club's worst ever Premier League tally. However, on Sunday the home fans were more focused on celebrating their European success. The players came back out after the game for a lap of the pitch with the Europa League, Spurs' first silverware since 2008 and their first European trophy for 41 years. Whether that is enough to extend Postecoglou's reign remains to be seen.
The Star
25-05-2025
- Sport
- The Star
Soccer-Newcastle secure Champions League spot on final day despite Everton defeat
Soccer Football - Premier League - Newcastle United v Everton - St James' Park, Newcastle, Britain - May 25, 2025 Newcastle United's Fabian Schar in action with Everton's Beto REUTERS/Scott Heppell NEWCASTLE, England (Reuters) -Newcastle United squeezed into the Champions League places despite losing 1-0 to Everton at home in their final game of the Premier League season on Sunday, thanks to Manchester United's 2-0 home win over Aston Villa. The Magpies, who ended a 70-year domestic trophy drought by beating Liverpool to win the League Cup earlier in the season, ended up in fifth place on 66 points, edging out Villa on goal difference. Newcastle dominated throughout but were undone by poor finishing and sloppy passing and they were punished for giving away the ball in the centre of the pitch in the 65th minute, with Vitaliy Mykoloenko crossing for Carlos Alcaraz to score with a brilliant header. The home side poured forward late in the second half as they sought to salvage some pride with an equaliser but Everton were in no mood to accommodate them and defended doggedly to the bitter end, finishing their season in 13th place on 48 points. (Reporting by Philip O'Connor; editing by Clare Fallon)
