Steve Bruce’s Newcastle confounded expectations on Sunday when they went to Tottenham and came back with all three points courtesy of Joelinton’s first goal for his new club.
It was a completely different performance from Newcastle after their 3-1 defeat to Norwich last week – they were organised and determined, and left Tottenham precious little space to exploit.
Talking on Match of the Day 2 (Sunday, BBC 1, 10.30pm), Alan Shearer was full of praise for the entire team and the manager, but he singled out defender Paul Dummett as “absolutely magnificent”.
“I want to praise the setup and I think the whole team deserves praise,” Shearer said.
“It was totally the opposite of what we saw last week at Norwich. They were well organised, disciplined, so many positives from the team… especially Paul Dummett who I thought was absolutely magnificent the whole game.
“The whole team, from the goalkeeper to the striker was magnificent.”
TiF tactics – Bruce got it spot on
Bruce was under a huge amount of criticism last week after a terrible performance against Norwich.
Former player Michael Chopra said on talkSPORT that he’d spoken to senior players who said they didn’t know what their job was and that they weren’t working on their shape in training.
Bruce disputed this but what better way to prove Chopra wrong than on the pitch. Every single Newcastle player knew what they were doing and everyone put in a brilliant shift for their manager.
This wasn’t an easy game at all. Tottenham had 80% possession but, according to WhoScored, only had two shots on target to Newcastle’s three.
That was largely down to the Newcastle defence, which was brilliant throughout. Dummett got a 7.6 rating from WhoScored, higher than every Tottenham player and behind only Jamaal Lascelles and Fabian Schar for Newcastle.
He made 12 clearances during the game, more than any other player on the pitch, and typified the spirit of the Newcastle players.
If he thought he had to make amends after his warm-up comments from last week’s game, he did it in style.