Horror challenge from Mitrovic

It was a man-of-the-match performance until he lost his head, yet again — raking his studs down the shin of Kyle Walker and getting his second straight-red of the season, and he’s lucky it wasn’t more in his alarmingly eager first outings. The championship could be a mutually beneficial arrangement for the player and club; he looks like the kind of striker that would bag about thirty goals in the second tier, all the while missing ten games through suspension.

Two-Nil was a fair reflection at half-time in a match that began with that peculiar end-of-season feel. It felt more like a pleasant day out than anything with any kind of edge, as had been the case at St. James’ all season. The already-relegated club were in fine voice, almost entirely reserved for Rafa Benitez, with his name a permanent fixture of the match — the matchgoers couldn’t have made it clearer who they want in the dugout next season. And as the gloating “Auf Wiedersehn Prem, Tyne To Go” plane circled over the stadium, paid for by Sunderland fans, it was responded with chants of “you support a Paedophile”, a reminder of how grim the cards you’re dealt can be in a game of one-upmanship, as a football supporter in 2016.

Ultimately it was a meaningless match between sides fighting between 2nd or 3rd and 18th or 19th, positions at either end that pass over non-existent thresholds in the league table. But the positive and relaxed vibe in the stands wasn’t matched by those on the pitch – the Spurs players well aware of what it would symbolically mean to finish ahead of their north-London rivals, and cynically, the Newcastle players might’ve been sending out a message.

Sissoko, Wijnaldum and Janmaat demonstrated what genuinely classy footballers they can be when they can be bothered, tinging the positive day with a little frustration and regret of how different the season might’ve been — a reminder that, categorically, these players should not be getting relegated, let down by poor management, let down by the dilly-dallying of Mike Ashley, but fundamentally let down by their own lack of endeavour.

In all honesty, they’d be the best players in the championship by a distance but if they can’t turn it on against the likes of Bournemouth and Stoke, what would they offer in trips to Burton and Rotherham? On the other side of that coin, it should be something any top-flight scouts should heed as a warning when dazzled by performances like today’s.

Wijnaldum and Sissoko, alongside Tiote, showed genuine industry in the midfield to win the fight against a Spurs midfield lacking the imposing presence of Moussa Dembele. Ryan Mason, in his absence, demonstrated that he probably has no place in a Spurs squad looking to build on the successes of this season; he offered little protection and the game passed him by, and might only offer something to a second-string League Cup line-up in the future.

Likewise they missed the creativity of Dele Alli — Son, Eriksen and Lamela were starved of the ball and crowded out in dangerous areas, looking unlikely to feed anything through to Harry Kane. Their only real chance of the first half came when Darlow produced a fine save at his near post from an Eriksen strike, while Alderweireld and Walker resorted to lame attempts from outside the box.

It was an surprisingly poor first half from Spurs, and Pochettino was entirely justified in a half-time double substitution, which paid dividends for all of twenty minutes — neither youngster Josh Onomah nor Tom Carroll had much of a direct contribution but Spurs shape had improved and they were able to pass the ball about more in the final third, eventually breaking through with Lamela beating Darlow with a short-range thunderbolt in at his near-post.

Lamela makes it 2–1

After Mitrovic’s dismissal, it was unthinkable that Newcastle would regain, let alone extend, their lead. In fact it appeared for all of five minutes that Spurs would avert the crisis and take advantage to take at least a point. But this wasn’t the composed and exciting young side we’d seen for 90% of the season. It was the side that went full-aggression when two-nil up against Chelsea and blew it, the one that lost to Southampton last week. But this was something above and beyond.

Sissoko’s dive for the third

Aarons makes it four

Janmaat makes it five

The north London side deployed a suicidally high line, and Newcastle broke again and again with Sissoko, Wijnaldum, Aarons, Townsend and Janmaat all running through to exploit it at different points. In a 13 minute period, Newcastle scored three goals but had created three other excellent opportunities; it genuinely could’ve been eight in total. Spurs can feel aggrieved that Sissoko had blatantly, shamefully dived to get the penalty for the third goal — but it’s no excuse for the sorry defending for the fourth and fifth. Townsend put in a shot which crashed off the woodwork, before being played back in to Rolando Aarons, uncharacteristically untracked by Alderweireld, who scored his first goal of the season after a difficult year of injuries and being played out of position. The fifth came just a minute later, Aarons himself making an interception before breaking to free the overlapping Janmaat who slotted in coolly to complete the thrashing.

To put the post-mortem of the day in a wider picture; despite going down, there should be some genuine hope for the future for Newcastle — Darlow & Elliot, Mbemba, Lascelles, Haidara, Dummett, Shelvey, Colback, Anita, Townsend, Aarons, Perez & Mitrovic resembles something like the team of a team that should be strolling the championship (though they’ll be lucky to keep hold of them all), and the departing senior players, deadwood and prima donnas will give the club a revitalisation, not to mention funds to invest in other areas. West Ham & Leicester this season and Newcastle themselves in 2011 can prove to be inspirations of how to utilise second-tier football into something positive in the longterm.

If Rafa Benitez does stay, and recent reports from Guillem Balague and Louise Taylor point to him strongly considering it, then the Championship season could be the start of an exciting new chapter at Newcastle, the first time there’s been a real bond between the manager and fans since Keegan, and the first time there’s been a genuinely exciting longterm project in god knows how long, certainly a first under Mike Ashley. If he doesn’t, then the likes of David Moyes and Nigel Pearson, with their similarly authoritarian style, should still do enough to at-least get the club promoted and it will be a much more appealing proposition for them than the mess currently at Aston Villa.

As for Spurs, it’s been a season above and beyond what they might have expected. But they should be alarmed at the capitulation in the final few weeks of the season, and hope that can be put down as useful lessons learned, with nothing of any real meaning lost — they’ll still be straight through to the Champions League group stages, which would’ve been seen as their loftiest ambition this time last year.

While their first XI can expect to compete again, they should be wary of the lack of quality options when the likes of Kane, Alli and Dembele (who will be missing the first four matches of next season) are out. It’s also worth considering that this season is something of an anomaly — that this side only gained one point more than Andre Villas Boas in 2012, and level on points with Harry Redknapp’s in 2010, yet looked “in a title race” due to a power vacuum at the top. With the likes of Liverpool, Chelsea, Man Utd & Man City surely improving next season, Spurs will have to raise their game next season if they’re hoping to just replicate the successes of this campaign.

Man of the match: Daryl Janmaat