Steve Bruce was the last man to leave the pitch. “Last man standing,” as he put it with a half-smile afterwards.



There have been a few times this season when Newcastle United’s head coach has heard the final whistle and pivoted straight down the tunnel — there has been very little to linger for — but on this occasion, he waited for Federico Fernandez, embraced the centre-half and then lifted both arms to the away end. It brought a response, and that response was warm.



Bruce is too modest a man to milk these moments and after all these years he knows as well as anyone that football’s bite can be sudden and rabid, but this is not so bad, is it? Not as bad as it could have been, certainly. Fifteen games in and Newcastle are 11th in the table, not quite enough for a ticker-tape parade, but far better than most people expected when he arrived in July as Rafa Benitez’s replacement, during a truncated pre-season and amid the cordite...