Burnley’s George Boyd thwarts Newcastle with late goal to grab point

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jan/01/newcastle-burnley-premier-league-match-report

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John Carver’s audition for Alan Pardew’s old job concluded with a smattering of boos and two dropped points. The jeers were a little harsh on a day that could hardly have provided more entertainment – albeit some of it was of the slapstick variety – but the caretaker’s increasingly anxious expression betrayed the reality that this was far from a vintage Newcastle United performance.

With Danny Ings, Ashley Barnes and George Boyd impressing, Burnley, surely a decent bet to avoid relegation, fully merited the draw and probably more at the end of a day in which they hit the woodwork four times.

If alarmingly slapdash displays from Fabricio Coloccini and Cheik Tioté threatened to cost Newcastle – and Carver – dear, Sean Dyche’s wonderfully attack-minded side deserve every plaudit going for equalising three times after losing a trio of players to illness and injury in the first half.

“I’ve never been involved in a match where the cliche about a game of two halves was so apparent,” said Carver. “We were so good in the first half but so poor in the second. I’m so disappointed. We got a point we didn’t deserve.”

His gloom was exacerbated by Steven Taylor having almost certainly ruptured an achilles tendon. “It’s not looking good,” said Pardew’s former assistant, who expects the centre-half to be sidelined until next season. The loss of one of football’s good guys leaves Newcastle at least one defender short but Carver’s immediate concerns were purely human. “I’ve known Steven since he was in the centre of excellence and he’s a great lad,” he said.

Ironically, the afternoon began deceptively well for Taylor as, within minutes, he rose above Jason Shackell to head Jack Colback’s corner past Tom Heaton.

Carver’s joy turned to horror as Burnley launched a long punt upfield that Paul Dummett inexplicably succeeded in heading beyond Jak Alnwick after Taylor’s initial intervention had directed it back towards Newcastle’s goalkeeper.

Dyche limbered up for the trip to Tyneside by taking his family to watch Cinderella and, as that equaliser from the home left-back flew in, Burnley’s manager must have felt he was back at the pantomime. Up in the stands the joke that Dummett must be the only Geordie who doesn’t know where Alnwick is – for those unfamiliar with the north-east, it’s a town in Northumberland – quickly did the rounds.

An earlier, similarly comedic, moment, resulted in Tioté, increasingly unreliable these days, carelessly conceding possession in the face of Ings. It preceded a pass to Barnes that resulted in the striker unleashing a curling shot that rebounded back off the inside of a post.

After that it was all Newcastle for a while, with Colback compensating for Dummett’s own goal by meeting Daryl Janmaat’s pass and defying Heaton courtesy of a crisp, long-range shot.

The sense that it was not destined to be Dyche’s day seemed compounded by Burnley’s appalling luck. By the 36th minute the visitors had used up their full complement of substitutes, with Shackell hobbling off, Dean Marney succumbing to a violent vomiting bug and Kevin Long, who had replaced Shackell, being taken off on a stretcher with a potentially nasty ankle injury.

Theories that fate was working against the visitors heightened further when Ings’s stellar, subtly swerving, shot bounced back off the underside of the bar before Barnes’s header from the rebound struck a post. Dyche’s almost disbelieving grimace suggested he had just been subjected to a particular barbaric form of torture. It got worse.

When Coloccini, by now wobbly, erred, Ben Mee directed a close-range header against the bar. Dyche was reduced to sardonic shrugging but his smile returned when Ings – showing off the touch and movement that had made Pardew so keen to sign him – connected with Mee’s cross to finally register a richly deserved headed equaliser. With Newcastle’s first-half superiority a rapidly receding memory, there had been a feeling of growing inevitability about a goal that arrived shortly after Alnwick performed wonders to tip Boyd’s 35-yard shot over the bar.

Although Moussa Sissoko polished off a rare home counterattack by lashing Ayoze Pérez’s classy cross out of Heaton’s reach there certainly remained no cause for Geordie complacency.

Sure enough, when Boyd met Ings’ pass he surged, imperiously, through the home defence before beating Alnwick with a low shot. Instantaneously, Carver’s new year was ruined.

Man of the match George Boyd (Burnley)